The dust, the wind, and the high mountains air, which can suck the moisture from the bread of your midday sandwich in five minutes, have your eyes hurting. On top of that you have strained your eyes looking at the landscape for hours/days on end in seach of that trophy buck.

Whether you have been riding in the back of a pickup truck or on the seat of your ATV, those dust-choking roads oftentimes have you covered with dust and blinking like crazy to clear your eyes. Then consider the tears streaming horizontally across your cheeks as you race your ATV to get to your hunting spot before sunrise or it gets too late in the afternoon for hunting. Worst yet is coming back to camp on your ATV in the evening when a bug decides to try a sucide block by landing in your eye.

Does any of this sound familiar? Well, for a lot of hunters it's too familiar.

This year I have had an opportunity to field test a product that is made to help a lot of the conditions we hunters put our eyes through each hunting season. The product is Panoptx's Windless Eyewear.

Panoptx is the pioneer in Windless Eyewear and the only sunglass company that manufactures in the U.S.A. Panoptx is located in Pleasanton, California.

All Panoptx products are equipped with the Ocular Surround System (OSS). This system comes with filtered vents, anti-fog lenses and a patented Orbital Seal featuring micro-fiber fleece to keep sweat and water away from the face. The lenses all provide 100% UV protection and feature hydophli, anti-fog, scratch-resistant coatings on the inner surface and harder coatings on the front surface.

According to a report detailing the effects of wind on the eye, it concludes that the simultaneous exposure to UV and wind develops cancerous tumors on the eye more rapidly than UV alone. Wind significantly contributes to discomfort for sufferers of dry eye, causes windburn, increases the risk of pingueculae and ptergia (lesions formed on the white of the eye), increases blinking and causes a loss of visual information by over 35 percent. Wind also dries and displaces contact lenses, causing pain and increasing the number of allergens that can reach the eye, thereby causing discomfort for suffers.

I tested two models from Panoptx, the Cyclone Camo with Single Shooter Yellow lenses (pictured at the top, without yellow lenses) and the Convertible Tortoise with Primate Grey lenses (below).

After reading the instructions which came with the glasses, I found it easy to pop out the OSS in the Convertible model, leaving me with a great-looking pair of sunglasses when I wasn't riding my ATV. In fact, they are now my sunglasses of choice, on my ATV or not.

The OSS means I don't have to use goggles when I ride. Using the Panoptx product I can ride my ATV without the dust, wind, tears and debris bothering my eyes. The OSS fits snug around my eyes and is comfortable, too.

Panoptx glasses also have prescription options.

The Cyclone Camo glasses I tried came with Single Shooter Yellow lenses. This model is available in Primate lenses (see photo at the beginning of article). While the Yellow lenses are good for upland game bird shooting, I found them useful while scouting for deer on my ATV. The bright lenses made the dark areas of the the woods brighter, enabling me to better pick out deer standing or lying in cover. Also, they increased the depth perception in all light conditions.

Using these glasses while riding my ATV, I found I could continuously watch for game because I didn't have to be concerned about dust and debris flying into my eyes, or spend time wiping away the wind-produced tears.

You can now take those bulky goggles with the straps that go around your head — you know the ones you use when riding motorcycles, ATVs or even when snow skiing — and pitch them in the Salvation Army bin. With the Panoptx products you can replace those goggles and as a bonus have a great pair of sunglasses at the same time.

Now as I switch from scouting to hunting, I can't wait to put this product to the test under real hunting conditions in the next week during archery season and in the upcoming months of rifle season.

For more information or to order Panoptx products, visit their web site at www.panoptx.com.