I Wouldn’t Buy Cheap Kids Hunting Boots
ByOwning a hunting and shooting store, I get to pick up on trends and issues that I routinely see. One of those situations involves parents (mostly Dad's) buying hunting boots for their sons or daughter. In many cases, it's the first hunt or something along those lines.
In almost every instance, Dad doesn't want to spend that much money on a boot for 2 reasons:
- They aren't sure the child will enjoy or even continue in the hunting/shooting activity
- Kid's feet grow so fast they will outgrow the boot in a few months
Both are valid arguments, but here are a few things to think about:
- Cheap, especially really cheap, kids hunting boots are very rarely well insulated or even fully waterproof (water resistant, maybe). In many cases, either one of two things will happen: the child's feet will get cold and they will want to leave, or, even worse, they will step in water and their feet will get soaked, and they will want to leave. It's vitally important to make that first hunt or outing as fun and comfortable as possible, so this really isn't a good start.
- Even if your child is growing like a weed, when the boots are too small, you can always sell them on Ebay or Craigslist and at least recover some of your money.
I say this and speak about this issue from experience. Although I could have bought my 10 year old son a decent pair of boots wholesale, I elected to get the el-cheapo Wal-mart no names for all the reasons I talked about.
What happened on our first squirrel hunt? His feet froze and he didn't have any fun. If I could do it all over again, I would have bought him a decent pair of boots and then just resold them when he outgrew them. I've been able to overcome that initial bad experience, but it took some time. I had to re-visit the issue about midway through the following year before he would even express any interest in going back out.
My personal opinion: don't spend a fortune, but invest in a decent pair of boots for him or her. It's a small price to pay to get them into the woods.