Don’t believe the hype on what kind of gear to wear

Sometimes we buy into the hype too much as hunters. You need to have a certain type of gear, or this is when you will or won’t see game.

Look at the marketing we see for hunting equipment. The ads picture a brisk temp with sunny skies. We have had a lot of sunny skies this fall, but they are coupled with some gorgeous days that frankly get too warm for the gear that most people have to hunt in.

Hunters are also told that the deer don’t move, the ducks don’t fly, and other things on bluebird days. A good example is a hunter we ran into while eating lunch last weekend.

Let’s come back to him in a bit. What about the hunters who hunt early season pronghorn or bow hunt early elk or mule deer out west? What about the hunters who hunt Arizona or New Mexico or Texas? What about the hunters chasing sharptail grouse on the first of September? How do they deal with those temps? Because they hunt well into the 80’s.

They buy gear designed for warmer temps because it’s marketed to them. Most hunters in Wisconsin have heavy blaze coats for sitting in their deer stands or stands with heaters in them, because a lot of the time it’s cold by our standards, not by a hunter’s in Texas.

We are also told warm weather shuts down the rut, deer don’t move when it gets too warm. Magazine articles and hunting shows have been telling hunters this for years.

This hunter told us all of those things. He was born and raised in Central Wisconsin and was now living in Cloquet, Minn. We were eating lunch by a very small scenic flowage.

He was dressed like a trapper or maybe a duck hunter and had a skiff on a homemade wood rack on his truck. But he told us he was bow hunting and was driving around since the rut was shut down and the deer weren’t moving. We had seen several deer already crossing the roads that morning.

He said he felt for his friends hunting deer on opening weekend of gun deer season in Minnesota that day. He didn’t know how they were handling the “hot” conditions. It was 62 degrees at the time. Some guy in Arizona would have been glad to have 62 degrees when he headed out to hunt that morning. He told us we was sweating just sitting in his stand. And here lies the rub. He had top quality gear for hunting the rut. Temperatures this time of year normally start in the high 20’s or low 30’s and normally top out at mid 40’s. So I’m sure he was uncomfortable. He should have been wearing a lighter shirt and light pants at that time of day. He felt it was too hot for the deer to move, but we had seen one 30 minutes prior. Walk into any hunting clothing retailer in our area and try find a light button up cammo shirt or hoody for conditions in the 60’s or higher. The hype tells us we always need a cammo jacket that is wind proof, water proof, scent controlling, designed for temps in the 40’s or lower, and costs well over a hundred bucks. Same with the pants and boots. They have to be the knee high rubber boots that cost $150. That stuff is nice when the temps are right, but when temps get hotter or colder things start to unravel.

When we left the lunch area we saw a doe cross the road within 200 yards of the two track. A half-mile or later, we came upon an area of hardwoods on the left and thick lowland brush on the right. The cover was about 600 yards long and on the other end was a hunter with a nice seven-point buck he had just loaded on his truck. He shot it at noon.

He was wearing old woodland cammo fatigue pants, a black T-shirt, and had a pack with an old woodland cammo field coat sticking out. He was wearing a pair of Fleet Farm day hikers.

My friend was asked if he hunted in bad conditions. He told the guy if he didn’t he wouldn’t get to hunt much.

Don’t believe the hype, stay flexible – hunting season is a fluid situation, you can’t shoot them from the couch.

THROUGH A

DECOY’S

E

YE

K OLAR LOCAL OUTDOORSMAN