As an alternative to the WR expedition / campaign shirts, last year I picked up two of their huntsman overshirts (one with 20% off in a Christmas / New Year sale, the other 50% as a discontinued line sale more recently).
I haven’t worn them in Africa yet (flying out on for my first trip in 22hrs but who’s counting…!) but I have used them to stalk deer through brambles, blackthorn, nettles and dog rose here in the UK. I’d say in temperatures from 5C (41F) up to 25C (77F) which, from my research, is relatively representative of the temperature range I expect to find in the E Cape in May.
I also took one to Mallorca with me to hunt boc last month where the temperature peaked around 20C (68F) but humidity was near 100%.
They are thicker than a shirt (closer to a halfway house between a shirt and a light jacket) and made of ripstop material.
Each time, I’ve worn them untucked and on top of a fairly cheap, basic green t-shirt designed to wick moisture away from the skin and the combination has been perfect: I’ve stayed warm / cool as necessary, dry and had perfect freedom of movement to hike, sit, crawl and take shots from high seats, on sticks and from prone.
The added advantage is that the t-shirt underlayer can be easily swapped out if I get too sweaty in the middle of the day (hasn’t happened yet) or at the end of each day so I don’t need a huge number of them in a camp that does daily laundry: 2 shirts and 4 t-shirts should see me through an 8 night / 7 day trip nicely.
I’m not going to be in tsetse fly county on this trip but I have enough trouble with ticks and, when it’s warm enough or I’m on the W coast of Scotland in August / September, midges that I liberally soak in permethrin periodically anyway so I would expect to be OK if I were, particularly given the thickness of the material.
I’ll report back in a couple of weeks on African bush suitability but I have high hopes based on my limited UK testing so far.
