I took my new Sheltowee Boone 40 hammock out on a recent camping trip in Columbus, OH this past week. I slept in it exclusively for 4 days straight.
I like the stuff sack. It's a kind of closed end bishop with just one end that opens, and the other end has a cinch buckle hanging out of it. This cinch buckle has a little sheath on that end for convenient storage. This actually works pretty well, but it does tie you down to the cinch buckle suspension to a certain extent, or at least you're carrying around that little bit of extra gear you don't really need to. That particular suspension has a lot going for it though, and it fits easily in to the stuff sack.
You know what else fits in there as well? My BIAS Buginator. I can leave it on, or pack it in the bottom (remember how that one end is closed?). That works out really well.
I slept comfortably at night. I'm a full-timer, and use a pretty high end Brazilian at home. I feel like I'd like to replace the fixed ridgeline with an adjustable ridgeline and dial it in to see if I can't eek out a bit more comfort (I tend to prefer a deeper sag than most), but I was a happy camper.
There are a lot of options for adjusting the underquilt. One of the things I found myself doing was simply using the whole underquilt as storage. You don't need to worry about your weak sauce underquilt suspension sagging; this thing is solid. I even actually missed the hammock one time getting in (whoops) and didn't ground out - the underquilt held me. It was a bit of an adventure getting back out of it though. So I ended up throwing my jacket and phone and whatnot down there and just forgetting about it.
That's not to say that the cool saggy storage at the ends is useless. Well, they are kind of useless if you don't cinch the thing up, which you may not want to do, especially on the foot end. But I did use it, and it's great for storing stuff like a bottle of water and your shoes and phone and stuff. Heavier, smaller stuff.
I'm not sure what to make of the edge adjustments though. Pulling that essentially shortens the shock cord that runs along the length of the underquilt, which draws the quilt up closer to the hammock. It also raises the height of the underquilt edge itself, which is something I'm kind of ambivalent on. It's kind of nice to have that up so high in the morning because it gives you a little extra darkness in which to sleep. But it also restricts your view and is a little weird compared to a less aggressive underquilt. I usually left that adjustment uncinched.
It's easy enough to move the underquilt completely to one side, but it's less easy to do halfsies on it. At home, I'll often pull my underquilt off to the side so that my back is uncovered but my butt and legs are covered. This makes it easy to pull back when it gets too cold later. Trying to do that with the Sheltowee underquilt didn't work out so well. I think you can do it, but it's under more tension than usual and wont to go back to it's initial position.
Of course, the awesome thing about the underquilt is how darned effective it is. You're protected from draft, no need for edge baffles on the quilt. It's easy to adjust from loose (which is how I used it most of the time) to up close and personal. I feel like it's much more effective loose than a normal underquilt due to it's sealed nature, but this also means that no matter how much you want it, the quilt's warmth is not going to be mitigated by a gentle breeze. Fortunately, one of the nights was really hot and I didn't have any trouble with the underquilt in it's loose configuration being too hot to handle.
One of the other neat things I think you'll be able to do with this underquilt is just put your down jacket in it for extra warmth. It should be held in place pretty well when things are cinched up. You can also use that approach with a secondary underquilt and maybe even some wide CCF (kind of like a looser double layer hammock).
Using it as a chair didn't feel very good. It was too tight at the legs.
Overall I really like the Sheltowee Boone 40. The underquilt is effective and adjustable. The hammock is comfortable (I slept well, at least). I think it will be my go-to camping hammock for some time to come.
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