Hunting in late season requires patience, because deer don’t move as they do during the rut. Deer will often bed near a food source to conserve energy, and bucks may be recovering from the exhaustion of the breeding. Patience on a stand in warm weather is a mental exercise, yet when the snow falls and temperatures plummet, sticking out a morning or evening sit can be challenging. Here’s how one avid archer beats the cold weather, with tips straight from the QDMA vault.
Keeping your socks and base layers dry is critical to fighting cold temperatures.
Hunting is unpredictable, but that’s what we love about it. You can go from being bummed and not seeing a thing one minute, to harvesting your biggest buck ever the next! Unfortunately, weather can be just as unpredictable, and sometimes half the challenge is just being able to stay out in the field.
As a typical woman, I am always cold. I’m also a bowhunter, so staying warm while still being able to draw a bow is yet another challenge. Over the years hunting in my home state of Iowa, I have had to learn from trial and error what works to keep me warm enough to stay in the game, especially in the late season. The main thing I have learned during cold hunts is that you must have a complete system. One simple thing forgotten, whether it is a major or minor component to your system, can leave you too cold to function, enjoy the hunt, and properly concentrate on the tasks at hand.
Face protection makes sitting in the cold more tolerable.
Layers/Staying Dry
Starting out as a bowhunter, it didn’t take me long to learn that bulk was my enemy. A slap of the bowstring on the arm of your coat is enough to warn a deer enough to react to your arrow or to affect the accuracy of your shot. How do you stay warm without the bulk? When preparing for cold-weather hunting, there are two main points to remember: wearing layers and staying dry. These go hand-in-hand… [continued]
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