I spent nearly a year walking around Eastern Europe and the Middle East, sleeping out most nights in a buffalo (summer weight) sleeping bag wrapped in a an old Lowe Vector bivi bag. I'd sometimes supplement this by using my 58 pattern poncho and bungee cords to make a rain shelter above me. I started my trip with a thermarest mat but binned it after the third puncture and to this date prefer to use a foam mat.
Occasionally I wouldn't want folks to know that I was sleeping nearby and for 'stealth' camping you cannot beat a bivi bag, walk until its dark, find a spot, lie down and go to sleep.
Some years later when I started to get into the 'bushcraft' thing I was introduced to the Aussie hootchie, which was lighter than the 58 Poncho and provided a larger area for living under, I also learned how to use knots instead of bungee cords which shaved away a few grams (like Doc I walk long and far and need to consider weight more than most).
I tried my first hammock, A Hennesy ultra-light, during a month long trek in Turkey, at first I loved the thing, it was really comfy, kept the insect population at bay and with the snakeskins it could be up in minutes, however I did not like the feeling of being permanently closed in under the net and it was also just a little too high tech. I spent a night around the fire with two old goatherds and when they went to sleep wrapping themselves in their blankets it seemed a little out of place to start pulling all that high tech nylon out of my pack, so I slept on the ground in my sleeping bag and have never used a hammock since.
My Buffalo sleeping bag has been retired and replaced by a Nanok one. If its wet I still sleep under an Aussie Hootchie but if it's dry I prefer the simplicity of the sleeping bag/bivi bag combination (I have recently given thermarest another chance and have occasionally used one inside my bivi bag).
That said... I still seem to spend a lot of time looking for two trees roughly the right distance apart with level ground and no rocks or stumps between them to set my hootchie up and while doing so I cant help thinking that nature has provided many many more trees with bad ground in between which would better suit a hammock arrangement. So I may return to Hammocks again one day.
I had a chat with Mr. Mears about his preferred gear for sleeping out, and of course much of the time he would use his own hammock, however what I did find interesting was that he had several combinations of shelter that he could use depending on what he had planned and each combination would fit into the same type of bag, kept in the same spot and taking up the same space in his pack. So for some trips hed have his hammock and hootchie, on others his hootchie and a bivie bag and occasionally has Hillberg Akto and he could change his choice in the last minutes before setting off without having to rearrange the rest of his gear.
