Cotton has long been the go-to fabric for hunting in hot weather, and for good reason. It worked.
Far be it from me, a native of Mississippi where growing cotton has been an economic base for centuries, to dog cotton garments for every day wear or for hunting.
However, advancements in technology have produced some fantastic synthetic fabrics that work overtime to help keep hunters, cool, dry, scent controlled and comfortable.
High-tech hot-weather wear
Today’s modern hunting clothing designed to help hunters stay cool, calm and collected comes in all kinds of wild marketing trade names. Consider these, among the many, for examples: HPC (high performance cotton with polyester), EnduraSkin®, Softshell, FTX Ultra-Lite, Mayhem Magnum, Vortex, EVO, Microtex, Supertec, Silent Weave.
Of course, these product names are proprietary to the manufacturers and the name alone doesn’t mean anything to the average hunter.
When you shop for hot weather hunting clothes, be sure to read the labels end to end. You want to know the exact fabric content, the garment features, design capabilities in terms of knowing precisely what the garment says it is supposed to do for you, and the care and maintenance procedures. You definitely want something you can easily just wash and wear without any special handling tasks.
Forget fashion, let it breathe
A trend of the young hunting crowd is to see how tight they can squeeze into their hunting garments, but if you really want to stay cooler and control scent then that is definitely not the way to go.
Certainly hunting is the pursuit of wild game in the wild, not a stage for a fashion statement. You can always go back to that fitted look after the hunt back in camp or in town.
Loose fitting clothes can keep you the coolest. This is not to suggest that a slim guy that normally wears a medium t-shirt has to wear 2X, but try going up a size to provide room for air movement. Tighter-fitting hunting clothes are not only more restrictive in terms of sheer comfort, but they will sweat through faster, too.
A relaxed fit will allow air to circulate and sweat to dissipate into the fabric where scent control materials will hold onto it longer.
This is crucial to staying as cool as possible and keeping your scent from escaping out from under your hunting garments into the mainstream airflow around you.
Make these magic fabrics work for you.
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