Key Lessons in Cold Weather Hunting

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Honestly, I was a bit shook.

I knew that Ashely and I would be sitting for about three hours, but when I stopped to think about what that might do to my body, I realized I wasn’t prepared. I had solved one problem — the discomfort of sitting in a collapsable chair for an extended time — but I hadn’t adequately addressed the warmth issue.

I had a reliable base layer that I knew worked, two good pairs of socks, gloves, and mittens, and a warm and rugged jacket. What I didn’t have, or know that I had, were a pair of two warmers that I knew worked.

Staying warm in the cold is all about the extremities. Your fingers and toes freeze fastest, and up until hoping in Ashley’s truck, I had never had an experience in the cold where my toes stayed warm enough to not bother me outside of me physically moving through the cold. Staying warm while you’re hiking or walking is relatively easy—especially when you have footwear that allows for movement—but staying warm while you’re stationary is a serious challenge.

So, I didn’t know how this would go despite my layers. I knew I could last an hour, maybe two, but what condition would I be in after three hours? Would I need to leave and head back to the truck halfway through, ruining Ashley’s chance at getting her first deer? I didn’t want to do that, but I didn’t know if I’d be able to sit there as my toes went numb, visions of blackened and dead pinkies greeting me as I pulled off my socks.

I kept falling asleep.

One of the things that stuck with me during my time in the Boy Scouts was the dangers of hypothermia. More specifically, one of the danger signs of being hypothermic, one of the last signs a person experiences before they die, is sudden drowsiness. The body is too cold to remain conscious, so the person falls asleep and, if not placed in a warmer environment, dies of the cold.

About ninety minutes into our hunt, I found myself nodding off. Uh Oh!

By this time, my toes were cold but not frozen, and my hands were plenty warm inside my mittens with hand warmers, but I had a shiver in my torso that I just couldn’t get rid of.

Uh, Oh!

I’d never had this kind of cold before, and suddenly, I wished that I had put on my vest. I couldn’t risk making the kind of noise it would take to put the vest on, and doing so would almost certainly make me colder before I got warmer. We were still on a hunt, and a shivering body makes for an incredibly unreliable shooter.

When I reached down to grab a lozenge, I noticed another worrisome sign that I was getting dangerously cold: my knees were numb.

Uh Oh!

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I kept falling asleep, continued…

This was another first for me, but the fact that I couldn’t feel my knees made perfect sense when I thought about it. I had been sitting for two hours in a chair where the skin and layers of fabric covering my knees were stretched to their thinnest. Our blind was not windproof, so every Arctic breeze that whipped through was carrying away and devouring my body heat like Carolyn Fry in Pitch Black (if you know, you know).

Now I was worried. But also, now I was awake.

We ended the hunt without having a shot at a deer. Indeed, the only deer we saw that day were grazing in the next field and never came over to our space. Walking back to the car was excruciating. The ground was frozen solid, and the experience was like walking on volcanic rock, except I wasn’t getting much feedback from my feet, which were 40% numb. I still couldn’t feel my knees, and I was slurring my speech a bit.

I gobbled down dinner at home and immediately climbed into the shower. Thirty minutes later, it was clean, and the shiver in my torso was gone, but my toes and knees were beginning to tingle with feeling. By the following day, I was finally fully warmed up.

What I learned

First and foremost, I learned that testing your gear before a pressure situation is key. I knew all of my equipment worked except my toe warmers. Days before the hunt, I even thought about testing out the warmers so that I knew they were what I needed. But I didn’t, and I was worse off for it.

Second, I learned that hunting in 20-degree weather is not something I enjoy. Had we gotten a deer, that would have certainly kept me warm, but I now know that this kind of cold-weather hunting is probably not for me. On the other hand, Nordic folks often say, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.” Perhaps this experience is a learning opportunity for acquiring gear that performs better in the cold. I see furriery in my future.

Third, and probably most importantly, I developed a healthier respect for human ingenuity and the survival capabilities of other animal relatives. As we were walking back to the truck, I thought about what it would mean for my prospects of getting warm if Ashley’s truck broke down and we had to walk home. We weren’t in a remote area, but ain’t no way I was going to go knocking on some almost certainly white person’s door after dark with hunting gear asking if I could come in and use their phone.

Could I make a fire? How long would it take me to walk to warm up? How long would I last if no one could find me until morning?

And this is why I love hunting and wild food. These types of lessons regularly come when you put your body in spaces and situations directly tied to your subsistence. I’m not thinking about my ability to weather the elements to feed my family when I go to Kroger. I’m not deepening my respect for the animal relatives I consume when their parts come pre-packaged for me. When I hunt, I’m out there with the relatives I hope to harvest, subject to the same conditions, playing out a high-stakes life-or-death relationship that’s billions of years old.

There are few things more honest than that, and while I plan to have most of my deer hunting wrapped up by early December, I’m glad I was out there to test myself and learn.

Gratitude. Always.

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Interested in Hunting in 2025?

This video is a bit unconventional. Rather than discussing the technical details of becoming a hunter, I focus on the philosophical foundations of why and how I think would-be adult-onset hunters should approach the practice.

The discussion is based on three essential questions every hunter should ask themselves, and I provide a starting point for answering these questions. I also give recommendations for essential hunting gear like my choice for hunting boots.

Thanks for reading!

-Jonathan