Head Down: A brilliant innovation in duck hunting headwear - with minor drawbacks

I love showing duck hunters my new Head Down duck hunting cap that I picked up at the 2011 SHOT Show, because it never fails to get the same response: Holy cow, how come no one thought of this sooner?

(OK, one exception: Boyfriend's first response was, "Uh, could you have gotten more than one?" Sorry, hon!)

If you're a duck hunter, one look at this photo tells you everything you need to know.

But for those who aren't waterfowlers, here's the deal: Duck hunters spend a lot of time tracking birds flying all around them, and the trick is to cover as much of your face as possible - usually with the bill of your cap - while still watching the bird. Head Down puts a mesh window in the bill of the cap, which means your face is still covered, but you can see through the bill.

It's kinda like having an invisibility cloak for your face.

I picked up a free sample of this hat at the Feather Flage booth at SHOT, and that gave me two whole weekends of duck hunting to test it out before our season ended on Jan. 23. It took time to get used to this cap, but here's what I learned:

Tracking birds up high: Looking up through the mesh at high angles for more than a second or two at a time made me dizzy. Try it for a second - face straight forward and crank your eyeballs up as high as they'll go, then hold 'em there. Not fun!

Tracking low birds: This is where the Head Down hat shines: I found I could tilt my head down pretty far and look up without causing eye strain.

Pre-dawn: It was almost impossible to see birds through the dark mesh in pre-dawn light. Then again, that's when you least need to hide your face, so it's largely irrelevant.

Acquiring vs. tracking: Don't bother scanning the sky for birds through the mesh - it's too hard to find flying things and distinguish between, say, duck and cormorant. Instead, drop your head once you've acquired the sight of the bird.

Bright sun: The Achille's heel of the Head Down hat becomes apparent when you're hunting a north wind and facing south into the late-morning to early-afternoon sun. This is when you'll tell yourself, "Oh yeah, there's a reason we don't put holes in bills - we need to keep the sun out of our eyes."

When I was hunting north wind/bright sun conditions midday, I found myself struggling to put the sun behind the opaque parts of the bill to keep it out of my eyes. At least once, I switched to another hat under these conditions.

But if you don't have to face the sun or track birds across the sun, this hat works fine in bright light.

Gray days: This hat is perfect for gray days, as well as early morning and late afternoon when the sun is less intense than midday.

The upshot: Once I got used to this hat and learned when to look through the mesh and when to treat it like a regular cap, I liked it. But it did take getting used to, and it wasn't perfect for all conditions.

If I hadn't gotten one for free, would I plop down $15 for this? Yep. And it'd certainly make a great gift for your duck hunting friends. I'm pretty sure Boyfriend is expecting one before the next season begins.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011