Beninese Anti-Poaching BDU Jacket, Surplus

Here’s a really rare treat! The jacket of the Beninese wildlife park rangers in a truly unique camo pattern featuring African wildlife. A small batch. If you want a fantastic and dirt cheap light jacket that none of your friends have, act now. Forget the 80s leopard patterns and wear buffalo hooves!

Use

This jacket is part of the uniform of the wildlife park rangers that operate under the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resource Protection in Benin, located in Western Africa. The uniform also has cargo pants and a field cap that are sold separately. This camo pattern is specifically designed for this unit. It utilizes paw and hoof prints as well as lion and cape buffalo heads in addition to abstract patterns. The unit primarily operates in the Pendjari National Park located in northwestern Benin.

The illegal killing of wild animals in Africa is very often part of international organized crime operations and there’s a lot of money involved. For this reason, national parks employ park rangers that conduct anti-poaching operations, chasing professional poachers that are after ivory and ingredients for fucked up eastern wee-wee meds. It is a very challenging and dangerous job because the criminals often shoot first rather than surrender.

This isn’t perhaps an ideal camo pattern for the northern coniferous forests but if you don’t need to hide from your enemies, it is quite a comfortable jacket for summer hikes. And e.g. with jeans, this makes a fantastic and very unique casual outfit in the urban environment as well. These could easily be one of the wild visions of a fancy fashion house. With the exception that these are durable and cheap.

Materials and features

These jackets don’t have any material info but they are most likely some sort of polycotton. There isn’t any lining, which isn’t surprising because Benin has a tropical climate. In case you have more than one season, these are technically meant for summer use. However, the fabric is fairly thick, so with warmer mid-layers, you can extend their use.

For some bizarre reason, we tested this on a seven-kilometer dog walk in a blizzard, at just below zero Celsius. We used the Särmä Wool Field Shirt as the mid-layer. It was surprisingly pleasant when walking at a brisk pace. It isn’t a total windstopper though, so not an ideal jacket for standing still.

The jacket has two front pockets and two outside breast pockets that have three snap fasteners, which enables you to keep your stuff more securely inside the pockets. There are two rows of snap fasteners, which gives the jacket strong Belgian military gear vibes. Furthermore, there is a buttoned inside breast pocket on the right side.

It has both a zipper and button closure and a drawcord at the hem. The cuffs come with an adjustable three-button closure. Furthermore, you can roll up the sleeves and fasten them in place with a button to turn this into a short-sleeved jacket. Rolling up the sleeves is its own process though. The jacket features a low, soft collar and epaulets on the shoulders.

Sizing

Our customers often ask for “adult sizes” because the military surplus we get tends to be somewhat small in size. However, this time we only got a bit bigger sizes. According to the supplier, it is because these rangers like good eating. We don’t know whether they were pulling our leg or not. However, especially the pants have quite a bit of space.

The numeric size is the recommended chest circumference of the user in centimeters, and it is fairly accurate. The size 116 jacket fits very nicely on one of our employees that has a 116 cm (45.7”) chest, and you could even put a moderate sweater underneath.

The sleeves aren’t overly short either. You can see the recommended chest size of the wearer and the actual sleeve length in the table below.

Size chart

Condition

These jackets are unissued so they are intact and quite clean. They are wrinkled and might have some warehouse dust due to long storage but that is easy to remedy. When looking at the condition, rarity, and cheap price, this is a true bargain.