Keeping Warm When the Hunt is Cold

Keeping Warm When the Hunt is Cold

By Kent Boucher

Normally you purchase one of the fair-weathered early muzzleloader tags. Historically it’s been such a good season to hunt, but this year you had an ill-timed work conference that ate up most of that choice week. Preferring the length of a muzzleloader season, you settled on hunting the late one as your next best option. So here you are, single digit cold cutting to the bone as you close the tailgate on your truck after loading your gear tote and gun case. With a numb nose and tingling fingertips, you anxiously wait for the truck to reach a comfortable temperature as you begin the pitch-black drive to your best late season stand. Parking your truck, you involuntarily give one last violent shiver and mutter to yourself, “It’s going to be a long cold morning”.

Dress For Success
Staying warm while hunting always begins with wearing the proper gear. Logically this begins with a base layer system made of fleece, which will insulate you much better than cotton, especially if it becomes wet from snow, or sweat. Working out from your base layers comes the main layer of clothing, or mid layer. For this layer mobility is just as important as warmth. I have found that “mid weight” rated hunting clothing meets both of these needs. For pants I really like the Black Ovis brand Desolation pants. The material these pants are made of is heavier fabric than regular clothing such as jeans or khakis, but still maintains the stretch and durability that performance clothing is expected to offer. For my shirt I wear a military issued wool sweater that my father-in-law gave me. This sweater is tight fitting so it keeps down on bulk and is very warm.

Finally comes the heaviest layer of insulation value, known in the hunting gear industry as the outer layer. There are different options that work well for this. The most classic option is insulated bibs with a heavy duck canvas coat. These work great for blood trails that lead through patches of multiflora rose, and under or over old barbed wire fences. The downside to these incredibly tough fabrics is the stiffness and bulkiness of the fabric which restrict mobility making ascending and descending treestand ladders a little more dangerous. Another option is to use insulated hunting pants and coats offered by premium hunting clothing brands. These options offer great warmth, mobility, and even venting features such as side zippers that prevent overheating while hiking to the stand. The drawback to these materials are the durability when encountering the aforementioned thorns and barbed wire. Regardless of which pros and cons you decide to roll with, all three of these layers should be worn if you want to last in the stand long enough to get a shot opportunity.

Heat is Energy and You Need More of It
When I was a science teacher, I used to have a discussion with my students that included a rant about how cold doesn’t exist. Only hot, and less hot exist. Of course, my argument was just a case of technical semantics I used to snag the students’ attention and the term “cold” is a perfectly appropriate word to describe the circumstance of something having less heat compared to something else. The funny thing about heat is that as long as there is something else that has less heat it will travel in that direction until equilibrium is established. This is what happens to our body heat. In Iowa, most days of the year (thankfully!) have air temperatures that are cooler than 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of this, our body heat radiates out and away from us to the surrounding cooler atmosphere, and the cooler the air temp the more rapidly we shed body heat. So, we have a few options to manage this challenging circumstance, and I just covered one in the previous section, insulate with layers of clothing. The next options require more thermal energy to be given to us. This can come in the form of hunting in a heated enclosure such as an elevated blind or ground blind with a propane heater, or packing along some hand, feet, and body warmers along with wearing coats, vests, or even socks that have built-in battery powered heating elements. Personally, I prefer the latter if I am hunting by myself because the visibility of a treestand is too good to pass up, but if I was hunting with my wife or kids, I would choose the heated blind knowing they would enjoy the hunt more and be willing to stick around longer. Either way, adding some heat to your hunt will keep you in the stand longer.

Sitting On The Hot Seat
My friend Caleb has a unique 90s era hang-on (you know, back when they called them “lock-ons”) treestand that he inherited from his father-in-law. We have dubbed it “The Butt Pillow.” The notorious BP is the cushiest treestand known to man. There is a pile of foam suitable for a La-Z-boy recliner stitched into the seat of that stand. Of course, having a giant pile of foam to sit on does have some risks such as becoming a scent sponge, but such a well-insulated seat also protects against the cold airspace directly below the seat of a treestand. I’m not suggesting you cruise every garage sale looking for your own BP stand, but packing a folded fleece blanket, or a ThermaSeat to sit on during the hunt would be a simple move that will help protect you against that wide open frigid air below your treestand.

Hunt When It Makes Sense
The above heading provides some generic words of wisdom that should be applied to every phase of deer season. But what those words of wisdom actually translate to drastically changes throughout the deer season. In October they would apply to hunting mostly cold fronts. The November translation would be to put in all-day hunts. And in the late season it means to only hunt during the hours when deer are going to be on their feet: early mornings and late afternoons. Even with the best layering systems, and the help from hand warmers, heated coats, and warm seat cushions, it’s nearly impossible to hunt an entire day without heading back to the truck to take a break in the heated cab. There is nothing wrong with doing that. Deer are much better suited for living in the frigid winter weather, but they too have to hunker down and wait to get up until the temperatures are more favorable and this break for the deer provides a break for the hunter. Use it to warm up, eat, and drink some hot coffee and return to the stand ready to handle the afternoon weather when the deer start crawling out of their sunny beds for the evening meal.

Hunting the late shift for deer season is a challenging opportunity that requires more gear, more endurance, and more ingenuity for handling these additional hurdles. For those who do, the reward of punching a late season tag is all the sweeter.