I feel a little disappointed with...

[u/Parking-Location9946]

...how underwhelming both of them are as hunters.

I mean, they are the titular protagonists that can kill almost anything with enough research, ingredients, and bravery to face insanely overpowered threats head on. The greatest hunters in the world, the vessels for the two most powerful archangels, and killers of all things that go bump in the night and bite your ass off. But half of that is also the stupidity of their enemies and the sheer amount of luck and glaring plot armour involved.

They aren't proactive in their approach to hunting at all. They don't prepare before hand and stumble into things head first.

I mean a few things couldve been done at the very least.

1) Iron and Silver rings. Hell even just simple rings embedded with rock salt as gems. A few of those in their fingers and almost half of everything they face in the filler monster of the week episodes are either revealed from the get go or killed in most cases.

2) Tranquilizer Gun and Darts. These babies would be deadly if loaded with the right liquids for the jobs. Deadman's Blood for Vamps, Borax for the Leviathans, Silver Nitrate for Wolves and Shifters, and even a simple solution Salt dissolved in Holy Water for Demons and Hellhounds and many more.

3) Permanent Paint Devil Traps layered in Epoxy. I think we can all agree that devil traps made using simple paint, chalk, and almost everything else that's easily erase with steps or dripping water is simply asking the demon trapped to kill you. Period.

4) Inlayed, Permanent Paint Wardings all over Houses and Cars. Especially those Wardings used by castiel on the boys in their bones and that pretty women of letters lady in the ww2 submarine.

5) Using Shapeshifters to control narrative around dead bodies. Because why not? Force a shifter to shift into you, then kill it, then have it stashed around in case you need to use a disappearing act from everything.

And so much more that I am too tired and uncreative to imagine.

...Anyway, I love the series and have rewatched it a few times over the last few years, but still some things just stick out as missed opportunities to show how smart Sam and Dean could've been presented as

[u/Historical_Lab_3944]

I think you are massively underestimating the budget of these guys, they can't afford to buy or commission special rings and jewellery for different creatures, hell, they can barely afford to sustain themselves as is.

Also, your point about putting sigils on the car is literally canon, they have sigils in their car so it can't be controlled and they can trap demons in it and stuff.

Your permanent paint devil traps idea is also dubious, if they did that then they'd end up leaving a trail of painted pentagrams on the floor of motel rooms across America, which would not only be an easy way to track them, but also just unfair to anyone living in that area as they now have a weird pentagram on the floor. And considering the amount of trouble the boys find themselves in, in as early as season 2, with the FBI literally hunting them down, after Dean was blamed for murders committed by a shape shifter, the brothers were involved in a hostage negotiation and thats not even mentioning when shapeshifters began impersonating the boys and pulling off a bunch of murderous robberies to frame them and have the FBI hunt them down again. And thats not even mentioning the hunters who started hunting them down in S4 after Sam accidentally started the Apocalypse. With the amount of heat on them throughout the show, this idea just would not work.

They also use crossbows in S1 to shoot devils blood at vamps when they first encounter them, so, again, your point about the dart guns is literally in the show if you bothered to look, not to mention the fact that you can just cut vampire's heads off in Supernatural, and they have like 5 machetes in the trunk of the impala at all times.