The burrs can be a pain. Last fall my buddy used a small medal flea comb to brush out the burrs and it seemed to work fairly well. The higher loft in the new fanatic is slightly worse than the old series because of the higher loft, which was to be expected, but I think it's a good trade off for the increase in quietness. The stratus series seems about the the same as the original. I wore the fanatic bibs and jacket for the first 4 days of our hunt and then the weather broke warmer and I had to switch to some lighter weight stuff. Unfortunately we only had three pieces of the new line in my size so I didn't get to try any of the lighter weight new stuff. But I liked it all enough to sell all my original forest gear and make an upgrade.
I will def be getting a full set up of the lighter weather gear. Can't decide if I should try to sell my old Finatic bibs/jacket to get the new style.
Just loaded up last year so I'll probably wait until next summer to get this new pattern. Not a fan of the forest pattern but it worked great this past season. As for the burrs, it's not really a problem. Strap the outer, insulated layers on your stand or pack and walk in with your base layers. The fanatic/incinerator was made for long, cold sits in a stand - it wasn't made to push through brush.
Seems like maybe going with the Stratus pants and then fanatic jacket might be the way to go...my legs and feet don't seem to get cold as long as my core(trunk) stays warm...then I can still walk in and not worry about the burrs and the berber combo on the legs. For late season it would be easy to carry in the Fanatic bibs and put on in stand or even if snowy just walk in with them as the burrs and stick tights seem to be an early to mid season issue. Why in the world did they get rid of the Stratus bibs?
I was never a fan of the Stratus bibs because the leg zippers were to short to pull the bibs on over boots in stand. I never "upgraded" my bibs from the Celsius bibs to the Stratus for two reasons. I strongly dislike the green elevated optifade pattern and the stratus bibs offer nothing that the Celsius bibs do not. I do however think that the new Elevated II pattern is a tremendous upgrade in the pattern over the green optifade and will pick up the new Fanatic set most likely as they have longer leg zippers than the Stratus.
I got the stratus line and the down pour jacket. I'm wrighting up as we speak the 2015 gear list. Still have a few items on back order but should be here soon! Sent from my arrow using Mathews!
