To keep hunters warm during really cold blasts that blow through Mississippi during our annual deer season, the buzzwords have always been to “layer up.”
While that strategy has not changed much in terms of dressing for cold weather, what to wear has changed considerably.
Here are some options:
New synthetics
When you go shopping for new hunting clothes, you are likely to see insulation product names you have never heard before.
The hunting clothes insulation and materials technology is a quickly changing world, for sure.
I just cruised the pages of a national catalog to see what cold weather clothing they offered. I saw the usual insulation names of Thinsulate and, of course, the waterproofing icon Gore-Tex.
Those two have been the basic industry standards for quite a while.
However, new on the scene from last year’s hunting clothing lineup were two new names, Thermolite and Primaloft. Both are new types of insulating materials designed to offer a warming layer inside hunting garments, but even more importantly they are extremely lightweight materials.
Everybody these days are all about the weight of clothing and everything else. Expect to see more synthetics created to add warmth and waterproofing, as well as wind resistance, while maintaining an extra-lightweight advantage.
The old standby
Wool is still the wonder fabric, and I guess it always will be.
First and foremost, it is the warmest material in jackets, pants, socks, gloves and hats. I have issues with keeping warm, especially with the seasonal arctic blasts we get every deer season.
Wool does the trick for me.
It is amazing that wool will continue to provide a layer of warmth even when wet. If there is a downside to wool, it is that it is heavy —and even heavier when wet.
However, I wear wool gloves almost exclusively when it is really cold. When they get wet, I just wring them out and they go right back to insulating again. You can’t beat that.
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