Boonie Hats
Vietnam Heritage • Tru-Spec • Multicam / Tiger Stripe / Flecktarn
The jungle hat the US Army adopted in 1967 for Vietnam — still the single most effective sun-and-rain cover a field soldier or outdoorsman can wear. Our 18-hat catalog spans Tru-Spec Multicam, Multicam Black, and Multicam Tropic ripstop; OCP Scorpion and Desert Digital Gen-2 Adjustables; vintage Vietnam-style Tiger Stripe and Olive Drab from Rothco; German Bundeswehr Flecktarn in cotton ripstop and wet-weather construction; Phantomleaf WASP Z1B wet-weather; plus Woodland, 6-Color Desert, City Camo, and Black ripstop options.
Boonie Hats at Keep Shooting
Keep Shooting carries one of the deepest boonie hat selections in military surplus — eighteen distinct hats spanning the complete tactical camouflage spectrum from US SOCOM-issue Multicam to vintage Vietnam-era Tiger Stripe, with construction options ranging from traditional cotton to ripstop, wet-weather, and adjustable crown-vent designs. The boonie is the single most field-proven hat in modern US military history: issued continuously since 1967, worn through Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and favored by outdoorsmen, hunters, anglers, and range-day shooters for its unmatched combination of 360-degree sun protection, rain shedding, and all-day wearability.
The boonie hat earned its name from Vietnam. "Boonie" is short for "boondocks" — American military slang that entered English during the Philippine-American War from the Tagalog word bundok, meaning "mountain." The name stuck to the hat because the jungle hat was what soldiers wore in the remote mountainous and jungle terrain — "out in the boonies." The design itself has a longer lineage, tracing back to the hat issued with the M1937 US Army Indigo-Blue-Denim Uniform and updated in the M1941 with ventilation eyelets and bound interior seams. But the boonie as we know it today came together during the Vietnam War, when US Army Green Berets of the 5th Special Forces Group — working alongside Australian SAS and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units — began wearing locally-tailored jungle hats in Tiger Stripe and leopard-spot camouflage in the mid-1960s. The original Vietnam-era boonies were made by Vietnamese tailors from salvaged parachute cloth and uniform fabric, cut in the style of the French chapeau de brousse Mle 1949 — the hat the French Army had used in Indochina before the American involvement.
The US Army officially adopted the boonie in 1967. Natick Labs had begun development of the Tropical Combat Hat in 1966 after the US Army Vietnam Tropical Combat Uniform Board unanimously agreed that the standard OG-106 field cap provided inadequate sun protection for Southeast Asian deployment. The first official issue boonie was the "Hat, Jungle, with Insect Net" — a cotton and wind-resistant poplin construction with a fold-out mosquito net stowed inside the crown, issued in olive drab, Tiger Stripe, and ERDL (Engineer Research and Development Laboratory) pattern. That 1967 specification has changed remarkably little in the decades since: modern boonies add ripstop reinforcement, Multicam-era camouflage, and improved sweatbands, but the core form factor — wide floppy brim, crown with ventilation grommets, chin strap, and branch loops for camouflage foliage — is essentially the hat Natick designed in 1966.
Our Tru-Spec Multicam RipStop Boonie, Multicam Black RipStop Boonie, and Multicam Tropic RipStop Boonie cover the modern US SOCOM camouflage family. Multicam is the seven-color pattern developed by Crye Precision and adopted by US Special Operations Command beginning in 2002, later adopted (in modified form as OCP/Operational Camouflage Pattern) as the US Army's standard uniform pattern in 2015. Multicam Black is the restricted- distribution law-enforcement and special-use variant developed for urban tactical contexts. Multicam Tropic is Crye's dedicated jungle-and-tropical variant with more green and less tan, optimized for the same Southeast-Asian-style environments that originally drove the boonie's 1967 adoption. The Tru-Spec Gen-2 Adjustable Boonie in OCP Scorpion is the current US Army-issue pattern, and the Gen-II Adjustable in Desert Digital Camo is the Iraq/Afghanistan-era MARPAT- adjacent desert pattern. Tru-Spec also makes the Tru-Spec Black RipStop Boonie for solid- color uniform contexts. Every Tru-Spec boonie is 100% cotton ripstop construction, hemmed brim, four-row stitched bill reinforcement, screen-vented crown, and drawstring chin retention.
For Vietnam-era and Cold War historical patterns we carry the Rothco Olive Drab Vintage Vietnam Style Boonie, the Tiger Stripe Camo Vintage Vietnam Style Boonie, the standard Tiger Stripe Camo Boonie, the Vintage Woodland Camo Boonie (matched to the 1981 US M81 BDU pattern), the standard Woodland Camo Boonie, the 6 Color Desert Camo Boonie (the Gulf War "chocolate chip" pattern issued to US troops in Desert Storm), and the City Camo Boonie in urban grayscale. These patterns are correct for period-accurate Vietnam, Cold War, and Gulf War reenactment or collector display. Our Rothco-branded Vintage Vietnam boonies are part of Rothco's broader Vietnam heritage line — see our full Rothco brand page for related vintage reproductions.
For German military heritage we carry four Flecktarn boonie variants: the Flecktarn Cotton RipStop Boonie, the Flecktarn Camo Wet Weather Boonie, the German Flecktarn Camo Bush Hat, and the US Style Flecktarn Camo Boonie. All four use the five-color Bundeswehr Flecktarn pattern officially adopted by the German Army in 1991 and still issued today. For more of our Bundeswehr inventory including Flecktarn field shirts, pants, parkas, and rucksacks, see our dedicated German Army Surplus category. The Phantomleaf WASP Z1B Wet Weather Boonie and the Wasp I Z1B RipStop Boonie use the Phantomleaf WASP pattern — a modern German proprietary disruptive-pattern design used by European special-operations units and increasingly popular with civilian operator-aesthetic shooters.
Construction options explained: Cotton ripstop construction (Tru-Spec, most of our standard boonies) is the workhorse choice — lightweight, breathable, fast-drying when wet, with the reinforced ripstop grid weave preventing tears from spreading. Wet Weather construction (our Wet Weather variants) uses a heavier DWR-treated fabric that sheds rain more aggressively — correct for wet-season field use but runs warmer and takes longer to dry once saturated. Adjustable-crown boonies (Tru-Spec Gen-2, Gen-II) use an interior drawcord at the crown band for custom head-size fit, letting a single hat work across different users or across helmet-over / helmet-under wear configurations.
Keep Shooting ships all boonie hats from our Pennsylvania warehouse with free shipping on orders over $49.95 and hassle-free returns. Whether you are outfitting a deployed unit, a hunting group, a historical reenactment, a Cold War or Vietnam War collector display, or just looking for the single most all-purpose field hat ever made by the US military, every boonie in our catalog is genuine tactical apparel from established manufacturers — Tru-Spec, Rothco, Phantomleaf, and commercial imports of authentic military pattern construction.
Frequently Asked Questions — Boonie Hats
Keep Shooting carries a wide selection of Boonie Hats products from trusted brands. Browse our catalog to see the full range, and use the filters on the left to narrow by brand, price, or product type.
Yes! All orders over $49.95 qualify for free shipping, including Boonie Hats products. Orders typically ship within 1–2 business days.
Keep Shooting offers hassle-free returns on Boonie Hats products. If you're not completely satisfied, contact our customer service team for a return authorization. All products must be in original, unused condition.
If you need help choosing the right Boonie Hats product, our team is available to assist. Check individual product descriptions for detailed specifications, or contact us directly and we'll help you find the best fit for your needs.