CoyotieKiller
FNG
In 2016 I decided to try a pair of Hanwags and and thought I found the perfect boot for my wide'ish foot (got the tatra top wides). I wore them all summer to make sure they were broke in. I probably had 250 miles or so in them, but I figured they were all easy miles in comparison to mountain hunting. (In the office, at the construction site, walking in the pasture to get horses (rolling hills), going up and down the steepest good size hill in the area at a game preserve, but even that had a railroad tie stairs going up it .) Fall comes and the 2 week hunt happens. Everything was still great until it wasn't. And that hit with maybe 4 days left. The weather had been crap almost the whole time rain, then snow, then melting, then more rain, so I'm confident saying that the boots had not been dry since day 1. Extenuating circumstances ensue and at the beginning of the end of my boots life I was pouring water out of them a couple days in a roll. Anyway the sole started flexing more than they had previously and with the layout of the lacing it forced the crease on the top of the boot to line up with the middle of the second bone in on my big toe. So it felt like my boots were trying to break my big toes. And that became insanity painful.
AT THE TIME, I was assuming that their very stiff soles (which I loved) were finally breaking in and that Hanwags weren't the boot for me. But as time has passed and I've bounced around from brand to brand not loving any of them I've started to wonder if I was expecting too much of the them and instead of being broke-in they were Broke-down?? And even more recently the thought crossed my mind since I probably was running too short of a boot and didn't have the recommended fingers width of room to avoid bruising the end of your toe, could the second bone in somehow been baring the brunt of that punishment and getting a stress fracture?? I don't remember the tips of my toes being bruised.
So if you made it through my novel and got to this point, what's your opinion? Were they broke-in, broke-down, or was the shortness somehow ******* up the second bone in on both big toes?
AT THE TIME, I was assuming that their very stiff soles (which I loved) were finally breaking in and that Hanwags weren't the boot for me. But as time has passed and I've bounced around from brand to brand not loving any of them I've started to wonder if I was expecting too much of the them and instead of being broke-in they were Broke-down?? And even more recently the thought crossed my mind since I probably was running too short of a boot and didn't have the recommended fingers width of room to avoid bruising the end of your toe, could the second bone in somehow been baring the brunt of that punishment and getting a stress fracture?? I don't remember the tips of my toes being bruised.
So if you made it through my novel and got to this point, what's your opinion? Were they broke-in, broke-down, or was the shortness somehow ******* up the second bone in on both big toes?