Gear

The headline feature on this year's flagship compounds is not speed. It is tunability: cam systems designed so that lateral adjustment can be made without a bow press, on a stable axle-to-axle platform around thirty inches. BowTech's Alliance is the clearest example, built around a refined version of the company's DeadLock cam.

That design choice is aimed squarely at a real problem. A bow that drifts out of tune mid-season used to mean a drive to a pro shop, and pro shops have been thinning out for a decade. Being able to correct cam lean at camp with a hex key changes what a hunter can fix themselves.

Arrow makers have moved the same direction, with tighter straightness and weight tolerances at mid-tier prices rather than only at the top of the range. Consistency between arrows does more for a group at forty yards than most of what gets bolted to the riser.

The archery product calendar runs on a January cycle, announced at the trade shows and reaching shops through spring, which is why September is a quiet month for launches and a loud one for discounts on last year's flagship. If you are buying a bow this autumn, last season's model at a markdown is usually the better purchase; the year-over-year changes are rarely worth paying full price to have first.

The thing nobody sells you and everybody needs: a draw length that actually fits, and enough arrows to shoot a real practice session without walking to the target every three shots.

Blade Show ran June 5 to 7 at the Cobb Convention Center in Atlanta, drawing 350 to 400 entries in the factory competition, roughly level with last year. The overall Knife of the Year went to the Hawk Knives Talon Auto, which also took best automatic, on the strength of a slider mechanism hidden under the scale that keeps the handle clean.

The result worth noting for people who use a knife outdoors rather than collect them is the Microtech Akris taking American Fixed Blade of the Year. It is the company's first production fixed blade: a 3.7-inch straight-back blade in Bohler M390MK, stonewashed to hide wear, full tang, on a 4.49-inch orange G-10 handle chosen so you can find it when you set it down in leaf litter. Eight and a fifth inches overall, 6.2 ounces.

Blade Show Texas earlier in the year pointed the same direction. The Null Knives Voodoo took best folder and best of show with a tri-stud deployment system and a Damasteel blade, and the Tenable Loki took best fixed blade for being small enough to actually carry every day at just under three inches.

The pattern across both shows is that high-performance steels like MagnaCut and Vanax have stopped being a specification to brag about and started being paired with designs built for real use rather than shelf appeal. A new category for traditional slip joints was added this year, which tells you where some of the demand is going.

REI introduced Westward in March as a camp line for members who want a base camp rather than a shelter. The Westward 6 tent runs $549 and the 4 runs $449, with a 77-inch peak height, front and rear doors with awnings, an electrical cord pass-through, and a vestibule sized to hold two camp chairs.

The rest of the line prices the same idea out. A Westward Shelter at $329 fits over a picnic table with nearly seven feet of peak height and zip doors at both ends. A camp tarp set is $249. The padded folding chair is $129.95 and the standard chair $119.95. Self-inflating beds run $199 to $299 depending on size and whether you want a double.

An electrical pass-through on a tent is the detail that gives the category away. This is gear for a site with a power pedestal thirty feet from the truck, and it is designed without apology for that.

The co-op also refreshed apparel and updated its own Co-op Cycles ADV 2.1 gravel bike to $1,499 with a simplified drivetrain and a clutched rear derailleur, which is uncommon at that price.

The Tortue Pro arrives in a 2026 edition on Snow Peak's new-arrivals shelf. The Japanese company, still headquartered in Sanjo in Niigata prefecture and family-run since 1964, occupies an unusual position in the American market: priced as luxury, built as tools, and bought by people who would never describe themselves as gear collectors. Worth watching as a counterweight to the direction the mainstream camp category is heading.

The clearest move in the 2026 family-tent lineup is the vestibule as a room. One new large shelter pairs an enormous front vestibule that seals fully for gear, opens for half-sheltered lounging, or props overhead as a shade canopy, on a footprint north of eighty square feet. It undercuts the established competitor by around forty dollars, though it gives up interior pockets to do it, which matters more than it sounds like when four people are unpacking at once.

Chairs got serious. One new camp chair replaces the stiff webbing your grandparents sat on with foam across the whole back and seat, adds a stiffened mesh cup holder and wooden armrests, and ships with integrated backpack straps. It weighs eight and a half pounds, which is irrelevant thirty feet from the tailgate and disqualifying anywhere else. A full recliner sits above it.

On the sleep side there is a small trend worth naming: quilt-style bags with fold-over wings across the torso, showing up in more than one line this year. It is an attempt to give side sleepers and people who overheat a way out without abandoning a bag entirely.

None of this is backpacking gear and none of it pretends to be. The honest way to read the category is that the gap between a good campsite and a bad one is now mostly furniture, and manufacturers have noticed.

Neither is new, and both are the kind that stay in a garage bin for years. Roughly 201,000 Ozark Trail tabletop single-burner butane stoves, model BG2247A1, sold at Walmart between March 2023 and October 2025, were recalled in November after 26 reports of stoves exploding or catching fire and 16 burn injuries; Walmart is refunding. In March, Amazon recalled its Amazon Basics camping folding pocket knife, model B0DM5BJK3H, in three manufacturing lots, for a laceration hazard. Model numbers are on the fuel compartment label and the packaging respectively.

The ultralight tent shelf was updated again this month, with a revamped version of Gossamer Gear's long-running The One drawing most of the attention in the latest round of testing published on September 2.

The design that keeps turning up on trail, though, is Durston's X-Mid. The standard version runs about $269 and uses an offset pole arrangement to buy interior volume, pitching easily and staying reasonably dry inside. The Pro swaps the double-wall silpoly for a single-wall DCF fly and drops close to a pound, at the cost of modularity: its floor is integrated, so you cannot leave the inner at home.

Big Agnes has spent its 2026 development on keeping moisture out of down fill, using a hybrid baffle construction across new sleeping bags, one of which adds an integrated pad sleeve so you stop sliding off in the night.

For packs, Gossamer Gear's Murmur 36 remains the extreme end of the frameless category: a little over five ounces carrying 36 litres, using your sleeping pad as the frame sheet and unusually wide hipbelt webbing to move the load. It rewards people who already pack light and punishes people who do not.

None of this is a reason to replace working gear. It is a reason to know what the options are when something finally gives out.

Outdoor Retailer opened in Minneapolis on August 19, its first show after leaving the Mountain West, and it is a different event. Organisers have pointed it at specialty retailers, emerging brands and industry innovation, with a steering committee drawn from across the sector and a scholarship fund to help small shops cover the cost of attending.

Anyone who remembers the show at its peak should adjust expectations. It is much smaller and dominated by small brands, and the major players largely did not bring product. What filled the space instead were founders building businesses from the ground up, which made for a better floor to walk than a better floor to buy from.

A pavilion run with Garage Grown Gear and Founded Outdoors gathered more than fifty independent brands and ran an inaugural summit for a couple of hundred founders. The Industry Day conference took on tariffs, artificial intelligence and sustainability, which is a fair summary of what is keeping the trade awake.

Among the actual products, the updated Hyperlite Unbound packs drew the most attention from thru-hiking reviewers: retooled fabric and revised features on a pack that became a favourite almost immediately when it first appeared.

Two separate things happened and they keep getting merged. First, beginning January 1 the federal making and transfer tax under the National Firearms Act dropped from $200 to zero for suppressors and several other categories, under the reconciliation bill signed in July 2025. Machine guns and destructive devices still carry the $200 tax.

That change removed the cost and nothing else. The Form 4, the fingerprints, the photographs, the background check and the wait all remained, and the agency's position was that the rest of the registration process stood.

Then on August 5 a federal court in the Northern District of Texas entered final judgment in consolidated cases brought by the Silencer Shop Foundation and others, permanently barring enforcement of several NFA registration, transfer and making requirements as applied to items whose tax Congress had reduced to zero. The order took effect August 13.

What it does not do is make suppressors unregulated. The relief runs to transactions covered by the order rather than to everyone, the government is defending the statute on other grounds, and appeals will take years. Anyone reading a headline saying the Form 4 is gone should check whether it applies to how and where they are buying.

State law did not move at all. Eight states still prohibit civilian suppressor ownership outright, others allow ownership but restrict hunting use, and local restrictions in parks, municipalities and specific wildlife units remain in force. For a hunter, the state and unit rules are still the ones that decide whether you can carry one into the field.

The Outdoor Market Alliance summer show is where next year's catalogue gets shown to reviewers before it reaches a store, and this year's floor leaned hard on weight and price at the same time, which has not usually been the same conversation.

Kelty brought a budget ultralight tent, which matters more than a spec sheet suggests: the sub-two-pound category has belonged to cottage brands and cost accordingly. MSR showed a short-pole version of the Freelite that packs down further than the standard model. LOWA showed the Paceterra Pro on the footwear side.

Sleep systems keep getting sold as systems rather than parts. One bundle on the floor pairs a quilt, sheet, pad, pillowcase and pillow bladder with a dry sack to hold it, at just under three pounds for the 25-degree version.

The detail that will actually get used: Kelty's updated Loveseat has durable mesh and a cover that doubles as a pet mat, so the dog gets somewhere to sit and your partner gets the chair. Most camp furniture design is not this considered.