If your trip consists of days like those above, with mornings in the 30's and afternoons in the 50's, any old bird hunting outfit will do. Filson, Orvis, etc will gladly sell you some topnotch stuff. A nice wool sweater over a t-shirt, all under a nice jacket coupled with brier pants or jeans and chaps and some comfortable boots will do the job. This trip to Oklahoma was just such weather. The habitat was perfect and the birds were there. (In the picture above, just up the gully to the right, was a huge covey of Bobwhites that we took a few out of.)
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| Shack and some of the 4 coveys he pointed. |
I hunted the puppies, Shack and Pearl, a lot. It was pretty benign territory with the only downside being the sand spurs. When they got thick, I booted the dogs and we were good to go! They got a lot of work on big coveys of Bobs and made some really nice points and retrieves.
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Pearl and her first wild Bob.
They both matured a lot in those few days. Mainly, they biggest challenge for me was keeping them hydrated! The WMA's in OK have plenty of water scattered around for the dogs.
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| Cap on a nice covey of Bobs |
But, then, we moved to Nebraska for a little pheasant hunting. As we crossed Kansas, we drove in to an arctic front swinging down from Canada. The wind shifted, the temp dropped and I began to wonder if I carried enough cold weather clothing!
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| Pearl with her first pheasant retrieve. |
The next morning, near Norfolk, NE, the temperature was 7 deg. and the wind was howling. The windchill was well below zero. It was colder than a well-diggers hind end and I was scrambling for clothes. A cotton shirt under a wool shirt under a wool sweater under a windproof coat, was the order of the day. An Elmer Fudd wool hat and two layers of gloves, windproof/waterproof pants from LLBean, wool socks, good boots and gaiters to keep the snow out of my boots rounded out the ensemble. And still I was cold!
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| Pearl and her limit of pheasant! |
My biggest problem was my hands. I wore silk liners under deerskin leather shooting gloves. My hands would just not warm up! The first pointed rooster I shot at laughed all the way to the treeline as I pulled the gun up and, with the gun mismounted due to all the clothing, shot three times. My dog, Ace, an old hand at this, was not amused at all! But, my hands did warm up and I did adjust my gun mount to clothing and we did manage to take our limit. My recommendation for cold hands is to buy the chemical heating pads that are commercially available and insert them in the glove. I tried putting them in my palm and that worked fine. Then I put them on the top of my hand, between the layers of gloves, resting just behind the knuckles. That location seemed to work best for me. You get 10 hours of heat out of them and they should help cure the cold hands syndrome.
Another thing I learned is this: don't leave home without warm hunting gear, regardless of the weather where you live! I really was lucky in that I keep appropriate gear stowed in The Beast for just such an eventuality. It sure beats an emergency trip to Wally World!
