It's entirely possible to remain warm and comfortable while waiting for deer on stand in the Midwest. Here's how: hunt in early October, as I did after drawing a tag for a special muzzleloader season last fall. Temperatures were balmy--in the 60s--and the autumn colors were beautiful. I even slapped at a mosquito one day.
Notice I didn't say you can stay warm and actually tag a whitetail. In early fall deer will be lolling around the cornfields for days at a time, nibbling on ripe ears, enjoying the mild weather. The farm country whitetail's world changes dramatically when the corn comes out in late October, removing about 90 percent of the available cover.
Then, with the coming of cold temperatures, the twin imperatives of breeding and survival bring heightened urgency to the deer's movements. Face it, freezing cold and midwestern deer hunting go together, hand in glove. Let's make that hand in mitten.
Here's how you'll find me dressed to wait on stand: first, a layer of wool/polypropylene long underwear and socks. Polypro is one miracle fiber that really works--just don't try to dry the socks on the woodstove or they'll melt, like mine did. Over the underwear, a turtleneck sweater and hooded sweatshirt. Wool/Polypro watch cap over silk balaclava. A set of quilted down long underwear. Bark patterned fleece or cotton overalls and coat on top for quiet and concealment. Blaze vest for gun season. Sorel packs. A mismatched pair of gloves: wool glove on my shooting hand, heavy Thinsulate insulated glove or mitten on the other.
As you assemble your cold weather deer outfit, don't make the mistake of wearing so many socks that your boots fit too tightly and impair circulation in your feet, which will only make them colder.
Also, try a scarf; most hunting clothes, especially those intended for bowhunting, seem to be designed by southerners who know a great deal about deer hunting but have only the vaguest concept of life below 32F. Virtually all the "cold weather" deer hunting coats I've seen lack adequate insulation around the throat, so they serve very effectively to vent warmth from your upper body into the frigid atmosphere where it does you no good at all.
Remove as many layers as possible for the walk to your stand; although the polypro really does wick away perspiration as advertised, you don't want to take any chance of getting lathered up before sitting still on a cold day. Besides, if you can wear all your warm clothes at once and not break a sweat while walking to your stand, you're not wearing enough layers to stay warm once you get there.
Deer, it must be noted, are very well dressed for the cold in coats of hollow-cored insulating fur. Nevertheless, they don't like bad weather any more than we do. On a bitter windy day, the kind that makes your tree sway back and forth alarmingly while you shiver numbly inside your coveralls, whitetails will be doing the deer equivalent of staying home and watching TV. Then, warm yourself up by stalking among evergreens or on the lee side of hills. Try short drives with a partner, so that the two of you can alternate walking and freezing.
Stalking and driving aside, deer hunting means a long vigil on stand to most people nowadays, where the deer aren't alerted by our blundering through the woods, and sometimes blunder past us, instead. There are, you'll soon learn, very, very few places to sit colder than halfway up a tree in winter.
Is there an alternative? Sure. Consider the million or so gun hunters in Michigan who are prohibited by law from hunting out of elevated stands. They build cozy blinds and shoot deer at ground level as if it were no handicap at all.
The rest of us might ponder the advantage of climbing down out of the trees to join them. If you pay close attention to the wind deer will walk to within a few feet of you on the ground; why freeze in a stand 15 feet in the air when you can build a blind with walls, even a roof, to shelter you from the elements?
Some hunters bring portable propane heaters, which is a little noisy but fine, so long as the blind is well ventilated in a number of places. Otherwise, a powerful heater can burn up the oxygen inside a tightly enclosed space, bringing new meaning to the term "coffin blind."
In a proper ground blind there's even room to shuffle your feet and rub your hands together without attracting undue attention. Ultimately, being there and putting in your hours as best you can counts for more than waiting in a tree, stone still and frozen.
Copyright (c) 1996 Philip Bourjaily. All rights reserved.
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