Deerhunter Pro Gamekeeper Jacket

In an exclusive review, Liam Bell field tests the latest version of Deerhunter’s Pro Gamekeeper jacket to see if it lives up to the hype

- Liam Bell

I am sure I am not alone in having a boot room full of overloaded coat hooks. In mine, the hooks groan with a collection of coats, jackets, and fleeces. A few favorites, and some rarely used.

Among the favored two or three, there used to be an ancient Deerhunter Montana 5-in-1 jacket. Bought new, patched, repaired, rezipped and my go-to coat for almost everything, until it finally gave up the ghost after 10 to 15 years of hard use.

For reasons I can’t remember, though it may well have been a fashion for newer brands, I never bought another Deerhunter coat to replace it. Now, having recently been sent and field-tested the new Deerhunter Pro Gamekeeper jacket, I wish I had.

Passion

To give you a bit of background on the firm, it was established in 1985 by the Engle family in Denmark, not in the US as is sometimes claimed, and was a direct result of the family’s passion for shooting and the great outdoors. They know what they want from their clothing — and they know that we want the same things too.

On first appearances, the Pro Gamekeeper is soft and light, no doubt due to its brushed polyester outer shell. It feels good when you are wearing it and doesn’t have that flimsy feeling that so many of the new generation of coats have.