When I was a young man I once went deer hunting with my brother in the hills above our home. I was wearing a red and black Filson Mackinaw Cruiser and a worn Stetson outfitters hat. I was also carrying an old savage rifle chambered for the 250/3000. We went quite a distance into the woods that day. Just before dark my brother spotted a mule deer. It was standing on a gentle slope not more than fifty yards away. At first sight I thought it was an elk because its antlers were almost black with silver tips and I knew that there was a herd of elk in the area because I had hunted in there earlier. My brother counted the antlers. It had at least five points on each side and its antlers had a wide span, extending far beyond its ears. It was the biggest deer I had ever seen. When I fired my first shot I jerked the trigger and shot just over his front shoulder. I was amazed how quickly he moved; almost like a ghost he vanished over the hill and was gone. I quickly chamber another round into my gun and ran to the top of the hill, hoping to have another chance. When I came to the top I nearly stumbled into two bull moose that were grazing in a meadow. In my excitement I rushed past them not fully appreciating my danger. I never did see that trophy mule deer again. Naturally, my brother was very disappointed in me. Thinking back on that experience now in a way I am grateful I did not shoot that deer. I have no doubt I encountered a true monarch of the forest. It was fitting for me that I was wearing a true classic. My Mackinaw Cruiser was both rugged and warm. As we quietly made our way down to the valley below, with the shadows of night closing around us, I was grateful for the added warmth I felt from my Mackinaw Cruiser, and I marveled at what I had seen. I knew I would never come that close again to a deer of that size and grandeur. It does me good to know that there are still giants in the forests.

Share your own memories about your Filson Mackinaw Cruiser. We want to hear who wore it, where it’s been and how it performed for you. You can include photos or not. If you just want to send a photo, that’s OK, too. We will go through all the stories and select the best. The winner will receive a free new Mackinaw Cruiser. Click here to enter.

In 1954, I was working in N.W. Montana. I was a city kid from Chicago and this was my first time away from home living in Montana for the year. Working for the US Forest Service, it got cold and I needed a warm coat, so I asked around (loggers, muleskinners) and everyone said get a Filson Cruiser.  Just that, Filson Cruiser. Period.

I bought it at a little store in Troy, Montana near the Idaho border. It’s still in use, but not by me. My first wife still has it and wears it in winter months. She wouldn’t give it up! So that was that.

Years later I bought another one just like it. There’s no moral to this story, at least none that I can think of. My second wife and I’ve been married for thirty some years. And yes, she likes to put on my Filson Cruiser when it’s cold here in Illinois. I don’t mind. It’s okay. And maybe I’ll get her a Cruiser for her very own. I think I just might this year before the cold winds blow here in Illinois. Nice surprise, huh? What a gal. What a coat

Share your own memories about your Filson Mackinaw Cruiser. We want to hear who wore it, where it’s been and how it performed for you. You can include photos or not. If you just want to send a photo, that’s OK, too. We will go through all the stories and select the best. The winner will receive a free new Mackinaw Cruiser. Click here to enter.

Doc got off the Piedmont Airline DC-3 wearing a scarlet red Filson Cruiser Jacket and an Open Road Stetson hat. To a 9-year-old boy in 1954 raised in Burlington, N.C., he was The West. My Dad was invited to hunt elk in Idaho by a distant relative. Idaho needed doctors back then and he was being courted to relocate. His boyhood passion was to go west and live that open and natural lifestyle. Medicine was his calling in North Carolina, but he cherished an hour or so every day to read Jack London, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour and others to vicariously experience the west.

To a Pennsylvania coal miner’s kid, hard work and harsh weather were old friends. Dad knew what it took to handle them both, so when we saw that scarlet jacket, we knew he had purchased the genuine best. “Buy the best,” he would say. “It may cost a little more, but it reminds that with a little more, you can be the best yourself.”

Filson to us was the symbol of winter outdoors. It was hauled out for snowy days and ice storms when nature had its way over our routine. Dad’s patients knew the scarlet Filson Cruiser as well. Families felt relief when they anxiously spotted that scarlet jacket coming up their drive in the dead of night, knowing that “Doc” had made it through. Dad never made it back to Idaho. He died in 1964 when I had just turned 18. One of the few material things of my Dad’s that I kept was the scarlet Filson jacket. I wore it at college and packed it with me when I went out on my own to Texas. It was an essential.

After another 49 years, time and wear got the best of the jacket. It had a great run. After a time, I began to miss not having it around. It’s the memories, you know. I searched the Internet and found Filson’s website. Best of all, Filson is still making the Cruiser Jacket…manufactured in the USA. I missed out on last year’s run of scarlet Filson Cruisers. Perhaps scarlet will be offered again, maybe as a Mackinaw vest as well.

Share your own memories about your Filson Mackinaw Cruiser. We want to hear who wore it, where it’s been and how it performed for you. You can include photos or not. If you just want to send a photo, that’s OK, too. We will go through all the stories and select the best. The winner will receive a free new Mackinaw Cruiser. Click here to enter.

Adirondack end of summer mornings can be cold and damp, especially before 10 am., so borrowing my daughter’s Macinaw was a necessity. Moving back and forth between the creek bank and the small barn to relocate her woodpile where it would be safe from spring flooding, it kept me comfortably warm as well as dry. This jacket, now 25 years old had seen college hiking trips, great camp tours, and winter naps in front of the wood stove. The task was done; I brushed off the still handsome jacket and headed off to the farmers’ market looking great. Someday, I need to get me one of these!

Share your own memories about your Filson Mackinaw Cruiser. We want to hear who wore it, where it’s been and how it performed for you. You can include photos or not. If you just want to send a photo, that’s OK, too. We will go through all the stories and select the best. The winner will receive a free new Mackinaw Cruiser. Click here to enter.

I moved to NY about 30 years ago and ended up living with a guy that had a large piece of property and a wood stove. I noticed this wonderful red plaid jacket in the closet and asked whose it was. He said he doesn’t remember who had it originally, but it was his now and he’d had it about 20 years. I said ”well, it’s mine now” and I called it ‘the wood coat’ because I used it to haul wood to the house and general outdoors winter work. I LOVED this coat, but it was way too big for me since it was a man’s coat. Nevertheless, it was mine.

Fast forward 5 years, I marry someone else and bring the coat along. He decided that the coat fit him better so he stole it from me. He wore that coat about 10 years doing all the outside work around the house. Fast forward again, my son turns into a teenager and gets a logging job and needs a work coat. He decides he needs the coat now. He uses it continuously for years. Somebody stole it from him and it’s been gone for a long time now. I think about that coat from time to time and wonder who has ‘stolen’ it from that person by now. That says a lot about this coat!

Share your own memories about your Filson Mackinaw Cruiser. We want to hear who wore it, where it’s been and how it performed for you. You can include photos or not. If you just want to send a photo, that’s OK, too. We will go through all the stories and select the best. The winner will receive a free new Mackinaw Cruiser. Click here to enter.

I confess that I only discovered Filson a few years ago. I mentioned to an avid outdoorsman friend of mine that I was in the market for a good quality winter coat. I explained that I wanted a wool coat that would hold up to the elements, one that could transition from the woods to the office, and finally, one that was made in the USA. I said that I had given up looking and was on the verge of caving in and going with a synthetic, foreign made product. My friend looked at me quizzically and asked why I didn’t just buy a Filson. I checked out Filson on-line, read the reviews, ordered a catalog and very quickly became the owner of a Double Mackinaw.

Since then I have ordered a vest, a weekender jacket, two wool hats, and a raincoat. I got tired of having my Mack “borrowed” so for Christmas last year I gave my son his own Mack! Filson does it all. I have a hunting dog and winter is our favorite time of the year. The more snow the better. My Filson Double Mack has not let me down. Whether I am shoveling snow or layered-up trudging thru the woods in near-blizzard conditions I am ALWAYS confident that my Filson is going to keep me dry and warm. What more can you say about an article of clothing. Thank you, Filson for making great products, from a fairly new but dedicated customer.

Share your own memories about your Filson Mackinaw Cruiser. We want to hear who wore it, where it’s been and how it performed for you. You can include photos or not. If you just want to send a photo, that’s OK, too. We will go through all the stories and select the best. The winner will receive a free new Mackinaw Cruiser. Click here to enter.

I was 17 years old when I bought my red/black Mackinaw Cruiser at the Portland Outdoor Store in 1973. I had just moved to Portland, and the coat served me well that year. Through numerous trips in the woods and on city streets, the Mackinaw would soak up all the rain and still keep me warm and dry. The coat proved to be a sturdy companion throughout the years that followed—up to The Evergreen State College where the duck pocket came in handy for all sorts of things (though never for ducks) up to Seattle, where I trained to be a teacher, and then with me across country to Boston where I got my first job. Eventually, my 17-year-old body expanded a bit, as aging men’s bodies sometimes do, and I passed the coat on to Dan, a good friend who had long admired it.

A number of years later, Sam, another old friend of mine, called me to say that his son, Nathaniel, who had just moved from Woods Hole, Massachusetts to begin studies at The Evergreen State College, wanted to know if I had that old jacket and, if I did (and if I didn’t wear it anymore), whether I would mind giving it to him. I told Sam I no longer owned the coat but that I would call my old friend Dan on the outside chance that he might be willing to part with my hand-me-down of some years past.

As it turned out, the timing was perfect. He told me his great affection for the coat was not shared by the woman who would become his future wife. In fact, she had such strong feelings about the coat that she had said that she might not become his future wife if he kept wearing it when they went out. So Dan packed up the Mackinaw and sent it to Nathaniel, who wore the coat throughout college and continues to wear it today on his farm in Galvin, Washington. While no longer spanking brand new, it has held up pretty darn well for a coat that is nearly 40 years old and has made its way across coasts and generations. (Photos: Me standing, circa 1986, Nathaniel with dog, circa 2010)

Share your own memories about your Filson Mackinaw Cruiser. We want to hear who wore it, where it’s been and how it performed for you. You can include photos or not. If you just want to send a photo, that’s OK, too. We will go through all the stories and select the best. The winner will receive a free new Mackinaw Cruiser. Click here to enter.

From the woods of the Adirondack Mountains to the cosmopolitan streets of Manhattan, my Mackinaw served me well and kept me warm. While others chose noisy, temperamental, synthetic fabrics I sported my Mackinaw made from comfortable and reliable wool. During the week my Mackinaw set me apart from the pack, kept me warm and provided some unique pockets for carrying the essentials a city slicker needs. Why do I speak of my Mackinaw in the past? About 3 years ago a good friend was in need of a winter coat for his next assignment in Toronto, Canada. He remarked at how great looking my Mackinaw was and wanted to know where he could get one before he left in 24 hours. I took the coat off my back and gave it to him. I always lived by the motto, I might as well have the best, and I wanted my good friends to live by that, too. He is now living in Switzerland and the Mackinaw continues to perform well for him and set him apart from the pack. He told me that everyone there wants to know how to get the VERY BEST as well. Someday I will get around to replacing my favorite winter coat, but until then I will wear one of my 5 other Filson jackets.

Share your own memories about your Filson Mackinaw Cruiser. We want to hear who wore it, where it’s been and how it performed for you. You can include photos or not. If you just want to send a photo, that’s OK, too. We will go through all the stories and select the best. The winner will receive a free new Mackinaw Cruiser. Click here to enter.

My Filson Mackinaw story begins long ago…in the winter of 2012. I am a self-affirmed outerwear aficionado. I own high-tech down jackets and waterproof parkas. I own motorcycle jackets. Classic black pea coats. A shearling car coat. A wool greatcoat. And on and on. My wife has to remind me to buy socks and periodically “misplaces” my rattiest t-shirts, but my outerwear collection is the one area of clothing that I truly love.

I had heard of Filson and their legendary wool garments. I had been searching for a heavy all-wool jacket. Not 60/40. Not 80/20. Not 90/10. One-hundred percent pure wool. Well, last January I bought a Filson Double Mackinaw in Charcoal. It is the ultimate evolution of outerwear. Now I understand. Is it absurd that I didn’t want to stop wearing it after Winter had passed? Is it absurd that I tried it on once in June just because I missed wearing it? Yes…it’s completely absurd! I can’t explain it. The coat has the widest range of temperature I’ve ever felt. I wore it in bone-chilling weather with a sweater underneath and was toasty. It was sixty degrees outside and rather than grabbing one of my lightweight jackets I wore the Double Mac. Crazy except that I wasn’t too warm. It was just right. I can go on for days about details – how I love that the inner sleeve can go inside the side pocket while the outer sleeve covers all and keeps the wind at bay. Or the fact that my Kindle fits perfectly in one of the top pockets.

I’m aware that my Mackinaw story isn’t one for the ages. My grandfather didn’t hand it down to me after using it as a middle layer while climbing Everest, but I am definitely going to complete the holy trinity of outerwear when I purchase a Single Mac and a Mackinaw Vest. I’m looking forward to handing them down to someone someday. In an age of more/cheaper/faster it’s inspiring that a company still values quality and value over profits and trends. Keep up the great work.

Share your own memories about your Filson Mackinaw Cruiser. We want to hear who wore it, where it’s been and how it performed for you. You can include photos or not. If you just want to send a photo, that’s OK, too. We will go through all the stories and select the best. The winner will receive a free new Mackinaw Cruiser. Click here to enter.