[Hexman]

in reply to: Huntmore 360 stool – A Review #25809

Darren,
Thanks for the reply/dialog and the picture. It’s almost too funny but the chair you currently use was the chair that for me broke the camels back. For 40 bucks it’s a great product, it’s packable and light and at the time, it was the best that my hunting buddies and I could find. As soon as I had prototypes of the 360º to hunt on, one of my hunting buddies snagged mine. But with real world use their design flaws become very apparent. The tiny feet do not support you in the sandy or loose soil in Mi. or if you’re any where near mucky soil. Setting up the stool near or around tree roots hunting down in OH became a nightmare waiting for another thin root to break and send me on my backside. For me the push pin adjustment of the legs caused too much noise and had to be done with my gloves off in the dead of winter. The lack of rotation or the noise of fabric on fabric cost me venison streaks on the hoof! As the herd of does bounded away from the bush that just made man made noise! I could hardly keep from laughing at the comical look on their face and in their eyes. This finally failed encounter convinced me that there had to be a better way. The Good Lord made me a product designer, and if I could find a better hunting stool or chair, I just make my own! At that moment, I didn’t care the cost or if I only made one or a couple for me and my hunting buddies. The first three design parameters were seared into my brain, the need for Bigger Feet, 360º rotation and a padded seat with a backrest. Over the next year all of the other parameters and features came from feedback from hunting buddies and a few select folks in the Traditional Bow Hunting community. Well that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. As a product designer there is nothing greater in life than when folks agree with your design and invest their hard earned money for your product, the reverse can also be true and easier to take the older one gets. Over the years I’ve learned to try and take all positive critical feedback as a challenge to make the product better. Hopefully in ten years or so we’ll only recognize the original outline and the folding mechanics and hopefully she’ll have drop a pound or two. but as I’ve said before, right now, this best rotating hunting stool on the market no matter what the price! So why not hunt comfortable this season?

[Hexman]

in reply to: Huntmore 360 stool – A Review #25022

Hey Guys,

Scott from HuntMore. Let me try and answer a few of your questions and remarks, and hopefully I will not come across defensive, and I promise I’m not personal attacking you or your opinion. Truthfully it’s a little hard, it’s kinda like someone telling you your baby is fat, stupid, and ugly. But I’m a committed person to open dialog and debate, it is the foundation of our great nation and incredible important to keep on with product development and improvement. I’m just hoping to persuade you to look at the 360º from another angle or two.

But first, Darren, I enjoyed your last article on ground hunting that I read, great stuff, I actually was going to contact the editors and get you out a Demo 360º to test and give us feedback. So indirectly I’ve gotten the feedback, but I wish you had spent some more time with the 360º, learning to set it up and become more intimate with the product and actually hunted from it! The offer still stands. I am also curious… did you actually shoot from the 360º stool or just sit on it? Did you get a chance to see how the ergonomics and the rotation in the design actually helps you draw back your bow easier in a seated position then a fixed stool? or how the advantage of the rotation allows you to look over your shoulder easier or turn to where the game is and take the shot noiselessly? I’m always amazed how game shows up where we don’t expect it to be!

The advantage of the rotation and comfort offsets the weight, at least in my book and hundreds of our happy customers. Less than 1% of our customers have returned the product from reasons you’ve stated. Some folks expect the easy of setting up of a bag chair, you missed the video link on youtube, but then forget how hard it was to shoot from a bag chair? Hunters should be more successful if you hunt from a stool that is actually designed to shoot from while seated! And not a stool that you have to distort your shooting form to get off a shot or a stool that you have to try and quietly slide off of and get on your knees and into shooting position. The advantage of being a instinctive Trad hunter is we can get away with more distortion of our form, but why do so when you don’t have to!

As success story after success story are coming in from this years early Antelope bow hunters, I’m actual amazed on your “Not nearly that comfortable as I thought”. We’ve have also received great deal of feedback on the superior “all day comfort” of the 360º from this Springs Turkey hunters. I’m only hearing great things about the comfort? Did you have the seat pad pulled tight enough? I spent days afield, butt testing from dawn to dusk on the original 14″ seat, then to 16″ seat and now the production model 19x19x19″ foam seat pad. We tested and played around with foam densities and materials, as far as I know there’s not another rotating hunting stool out there as comfortable or durable hour after hour, day after day. I have friends and customers who tell me their office chair is not as comfortable as the 360º!

At 50, I’m still an extreme sports addict, Trad. bow hunting included, I’m in great shape for my age but at 50, I love the advantage of a quite hunting chair that helps keep me warm, comfortable and relaxed. A chair comfortable enough to nap in now and again does not hurt either. I’ve actually had more complaints that it is too comfortable and that they will fall asleep in it! What a great place to nap, you’ll kill more deer napping in the woods than at home on the couch!

I designed the HuntMore 360º because neither I or my Trad buddies could find a good quality “Hunting” stool on the market. Combined we probable tested and shared every design we could get our hands on, over the years everyone of us spend more than the 200 bucks than a 360º will cost you. Everything we found and tested had one or more major flaws to the design. You can find camp chairs, and camp stools, some even with well know hunting brand names on them, but most of them are just a basic bag chair or stools, they are not “Hunting” Stools, even with camo on them, just look at the little tiny feet and the uncomfortable noisy uninsulated seat pad on them! After a short time of usage they fall apart or break! There are tons of them scattered across our hunting landscape, broken and left to rot!

Just for the record, I’m not some big corporation, I’m one guys who has a sickness and love, called traditional bowhunting. When designing the 360º it was so I could shoot my long bow from a seated position, inside of a modern pop up ground blind or while wearing one of my favorite gillie suits. I was just so sick of stools that sunk into the soft earth, see our Big Feet. I was tired of listening to the “ping” on leg adjusters and wondering whether I just spoked a deer. I had a cheaper plastic rotating hub stool break on me in the freezing cold which cost me venison steaks on the hoof. To stay warm & comfortable, I would bring a thick foam cushion to put on top of the little tiny ball busting camp stool. I was also sick of rotating seats that did not have a backrest or if they did rotate you could not adjust the height or the ball bearings sounded like a dying rabbit.

This project has had one main goal in mind, make the finest hunting stool in the world and help make traditional bowhunters more comfortable while hunting on the ground and hopefully more successful to boot! Most quality products cost and are worth ever penny! Look at the current cost of the top of a line Trad. bows, Gortex® hunting clothing, and boots, etc… We also did not set out to make the cheapest chair, that’s already been done over and over.

On the “to heavy for your needs” weight issue, there is always a cost to weight to benefits & features issue when one is designing a product. For you it may be too heavy for your style of hunting, but the 360 is still lighter than the lightest treestands! If you’ve been lugging Treestand around the woods for years and you like to stay mobile, and now you’re ready to try the ground game, you’ll love the lighter weight of the 360º. If you’re willing to scarfice the benifits and features of the 360º for a basic camp stool, you can proable save yourself quiet a few bucks and about 6 lbs of weight, just don’t forget to bring your foam pad! But if you’re a hunter sick of the basic stool failing you and costing you venison steaks, maybe the extra weight and extra set up time is worth it to you? Maybe the design is a little of over kill, but the product must hold up for the life of the customer and guys up to 300 Lbs!

Will the 360º fit every hunters needs, no. Will it fit 80% of the ground hunters out there, yes!
Is the 360º absolutely perfect, no. Is it the finest hunting stool you can buy on the market today, absolutely!
Are we going to sit still and not seek improvements in the future, hardly. I’m hoping in the next 5 to 10 years the product will get lighter and better, but why wait when you can be comfortable now!

Here are a couple of sites of competitor products at the $107.00 to $169.00 price point. There are a few others out there that I saw this year at Compton’s and at the Great Lakes Longbow Invitational but I can’t find their sites right now or I’d list them. The ones I’m missing are in the $169.00 price point, twice as heavy and don’t rotate. Compare, materials, weight, spec.s and features and benefits and then select what fits your needs and budget.

We’re at http://www.huntmore.biz

http://www.comforthunter.com

http://www.magnusrackpack.com/home.php

http://quakeinc.com/stag.html

On your PRO comments, thank you, you nailed it! Hope you don’t mind me quoting you! just kidding! LOL!!!

PROS: This chair is built like a tank and should last forever. The design appears solid and the craftsmanship was superb. The legs are easily and infinitely adjustable and it does swivel all the way around in silence.

On that final positive note, I think we both can agree on this: Too many hunters are missing out on what I call the “Ground Game”! Go find yourself a good Gillie Suit, or leafy suit and pick a hunting stool or chair that fits your needs and style of hunting. Get on the ground, evolve out of those trees, But! get your heart stress tested before the season begins! There is nothing like being eye to eye, nose to nose with a deer, bear, or turkey! or being so close you can not draw back your bow because the broadhead would scrape the side of the deer! and that smell of deer so close…

Another big advantage to ground hunters hit me late in the hunting season! There is nothing like slowly getting up from your stool to go stalk a deer! Last Dec. in the midst of the coldest part of the season I gave up the warmth of my modern pop up ground blind and went back to a Gillie Suit. Actually I went out and was testing ASAT’s Leafy Wheel Chair cover for wheel chair bound hunters! Wow, was it great to back out in the open! I found that the leafy wheelchair poncho covered me and the 360º all the way to the ground from the back of the chair to the tip of my boots! The leafy suit broke up my human form and worked great even in with the white backdrop. But the real fun began when a deer would not close the deal and come in range to take a fair shot. When they looked away I would slowly stand up, tuck the extra material into my belt and stalk them from a down wind and unseen position. What fun! It felt as if my ear drums where going to explode! My breath in my lungs would come in and out of my mouth like I was a panting dog due to how hard my heart pounded. Then the primal instinctive hunter would take over my body, nothing except those targeted deer exsisted in all the universe and all was all right! It was the most fun I’ve had not killing deer in a long time!

Hopefully no offense taken on my review of your review!

Snuffy, I just wanted you to know, I’ve said almost the exact same thing about manufactures of hunting products. In the process of designing the 360º and marketing it. I came to the conclusion that most of the manufactures have never sat hour after hour or even used their hunting chairs, if they had they would be embarrassed to sell them or put their name on them, but that is just my opinion! (Brooks and Keith @ Double Bull excluded! I know that both of these guys use, abuse and test their products.)

I did spend countless hours discussing design features and benefits that hardcore Traditional folks, with like minds and persuasions, wanted in a hunting stool, I figured if it was good enough for my kinda, it would work for folks who hunted by other means and rules. What is a necessity for one Trad brother is just extra weight for others. I’m willing to carry the extra weight so that I’m both warm and comfortable. These two things for me have helped spell success over the years. Being both warm and comfortable equals that I don’t squirm around as much. Less moment equals greater success. If I’m warmer it normally equals greater success or a more enjoyable sit in the woods. Being warmer keeps my shoulders looser, which means I’m more accurate…

Thanks for the honest exchange, don’t expect that I’ve changed your mind and I’ve noted your constructive feedback seriously for the future!

Born a Hunter, Traditional by choice!™

Scott Hoffman @ HuntMore.biz

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