LL Bean or Schnee's Pac boots

[Alvey]

Is there a diffrence in the shnees verses Kentrek?i was planing on buying the kentrek Rancher because I thought it looked a little less bulky in the rubberbottoms.I also have the llbean main hunting shoe for cool weather whitch are excellent for cool damp weather.

[smokin joe]

The LL Bean "Maine Hunting Shoe" is the same boot they made 30 years ago. If you make a mistake and get the "Bean Boot" from LL Bean you are buying a newer, cheaper version that looks like the old "Maine Hunting Shoe" but has some cost saving construction features that make them OK for yuppies dashing to the store on Saturdays, but not for hard hunting. The "Maine Hunting Shoe" is still the tough boot it always was. It can be repaired and refurbished by the LL Bean shop, and it has the great LL Bean lifetime guarantee.

I have a pair of the "Maine Hunting Shoes" in the 12" height from the mid 1970s and a pair I bought last year. Side by side, and except for the holes I wore in the old ones, they are the same in materials, quality and construction.

You can still get the "Maine Hunting Shoe" in all of the original heights including the 16" high ones. I don't know why Mr. Bean chose to call his boots shoes.

[amar911]

Originally posted by Steve O:
 

Originally posted by amar911:


I hate to disagree with Steve O., because he is almost always right and is a heck of a good fellow, but Jim did not own Schnee, he was their chief boot designer. Jim does own Kennetrek, and he definitely knows his stuff and designs great boots that are built by master craftsmen in Italy, with some work done in other countries.
Allan

Hey Allen, we don't disagree, I was just assuming...I called Schnee's 10 years ago to thank them for making the boots that saved my Stone sheep hunt after my Russel's failed.  The gal connected me to Jim and I just assumed he was the head honcho. [/b]

Steve,

When it came to the boots, Jim was the head honcho for quite awhile at Schnee's -- he just wasn't the owner -- so you got it mostly right.    Heck, if I didn't know Jim from many SCI conventions, I could have thought the same thing. One thing I like about Jim is that he never says anything bad about his former employer or any other competitor. He just tries to build the best boot possible -- even though at times I may like one of his competitor's boot styles better than Jim's. Kennetrek is a great company, and I own multiple pairs of the boots they design and market, which I think are the best of their type for me in those models of boots. But in the pac style boots, I prefer the Schnee boots.

Allan