Cotton and fleece in whitetail woods
Whitetail Deer
I know that these high performance fabrics are all the rage in hunting today. I myself have them and use them when elk hunting or any other spot and stalk type hunt. While hiking the mountains of KY with my bow this weekend chasing elk, I have a cow archery tag, I realized just how delicate my Firstlite stuff is compared to plain old cotton or fleece. Greenbriars unknowingly had made a couple of rips in my llano shirt. It's not a knock on Firstlite by any means, as it is as good as it gets with respect to merino. It is just the nature of the beast in that merino can be a little more delicate than other fabrics.
Fast forward a day and I am wearing some old baselayers, 10+ year old cotton predator camo pants and 10+ year old Day One fleece bibs and jacket. It is not as sexy as the high dollar stuff and for spot and stalk it has its drawbacks but cotton and fleece are hard to beat for treestand hunting when you consider longevity and cost. Warmth is great too assuming you have a wind stopping layer. I am not trying to say it is anywhere near as good as Sitka's whitetail stuff (I have no experience with this stuff but hear it is tremendous) but I am saying that cotton and fleece are not going anywhere and I feel they will always have a place in hunting.
I have quite a bit of fleece stuff, Cabelas and Nat Gear. I like it a lot, until I run into burs. Then I hate it. But it is durable, warm and the midweight stuff isn't too heavy. The Berber Fleece is pretty heavy stuff.
The fleece stuff is definitely a burr magnet, but it sure is quiet.
Congrats on the elk tag! Any luck yet?
No doubt 12yards. Fleece absolutely sucks for burs.
The elk tag has been tough. I have seen one elk and it was a mature bull (of course). I am hoping to relocate to another spot for the last few weeks of season. Also....some cold weather would help to put these elk out into the reclaimed strips for the bigger part of the day so you could more easily locate them.
I certainly don't mind fleece. My only problem with it is it's bulky and generally not too wind resistant. But it can make a good mid-layer.
I threw on some brown pants and brown fleece last night to set up a couple late season blinds. I felt invisible in that brown :) Might have to use that combo to hunt in sometime
As for cotton, I must disagree. I just feel like there is better stuff out there.
Fleece is good. Cotton is fine if using it as an outer layer. I used to wear cotton next-to-skin all the time when I didn't have any money or know any better, and let's just say I won't be going back. Now, if one is riding their badboy buggy right to their heated stand, heck silk pajamas would probably work.
What I find interesting about the merino I have, is that it is easy to put holes in it, but they don't seem to expand all that easy. Anecdotal for sure.
For those of you running fleece in colder temps, I’ve always wondered if you still have warmth if you run the wind stopping layer under the fleece so you keep the fleece on the exterior for noise reduction? Love my finatic but find it still a little noisy after about 5 years
I have a Cabela's thin, stretchy fleece that runs a little large that I wear over my gray KUIU puffy in the earlier season. Works great and super quiet. Plus I love that outfitter camo.
I’m similar to Midwest’s set up. Kuiu puffy, then some of the Cabelas polar fleece over it. Quiets things way down.
That's a good idea guys on the puffy.
There were some guys that wore cotton elk hunting, but they all died first time out so they don't post on here anymore. I'm going to wear some cotton in the 'elk woods' someday just to test it out. I will have my son in the truck with a rope tied around my waist. That way if I fall over he can pull me back to the truck, hopefully before I pass away.
Cotton rules in the deer, turkey, and elk woods!
My father was giving me a hard time about this last year.
" you walk around hunting grouse all day in cotton, but you need special underwear to sit in a deer stand for 2 hours?"
He then went into the typical "back in my day" rant, and I left the room to change into my merino wool.
No fleece for me...dont like that. Wool of various types and thicknesses. I like cotton too
I really like Cabelas Microtex (If I'm remembering the name correctly). Its not cotton so it dries quickly. Burrs are easily removed...its nothing like the misery of burrs in fleece or even wool, and microtex wears like iron and is super quiet. My pants are many years old have been thru nasty stuff like multi flora rose. Can't go wrong with Microtex.
Nick,
Pat is jealous of that 'stache.
Cotton feels good next to bare skin. About the only good thing I can say about it. Does not dry out quickly when wet. Does not keep you warm when wet. Camo patterns on cotton fade quicker than just about any other material after washing.
I see Nick's throwback photos and raise him a woodgrain station wagon :)
That is a sweet pic Will. We had a Volare panel wagon when I was a kid. LOL!
I buy polyester fleece. Not cotton fleece.
I too agree that cotton is good if you are hunting areas that don’t require you getting sweaty in cold weather in order to hunt. I still wear quite a bit of it spring hunting and September elk hunting.
What I’m finding out is blends are great. Polyester and merino do really well together for a lightweight, warm, quick drying, packable garment.
Damn...I can't top that, Will. Classic!
I eventually started to progress towards polypropolene base layers and Goodwill wool shirts. lol
The Cabelas fleece I have has Windshear and the Nat Gear is Winterceptor and both work good in up to moderate winds. Strong cold winds not so great. The Winterceptor is better than the Windshear but is a little noisier I think.
The only thing missing in that pic is a “Jones style” hat, Nick!
Oops! I stand corrected. I see you’re sporting one in the other pic! That was my “go to” hat back in high school. Woodland camo too!
Will - you were stylin’ back in the day for sure. We had a wood grain dark blue Caprice Classic with a 350 diesel in it - nicknamed “Big Bertha”
-Mitch
I have pictures of me mooning a train when I was a kid. Wasn't a good idea then or now, but I have the pictures. Just because you have pictures of you doing something, doesn't make it somehow more legitimate.
Synthetic/wool are just flat out better than cotton for hunting. 99.99% of the time it's not going to be a matter of life and death. Yes, it'd be foolish to climb to the top of Mt Everest with cotton and yes, you can hunt just fine with cotton. The more extreme the conditions, the more superior products shine. When you get wet in cotton and then it gets cold, you will be colder in cotton than you will in synthetic or wool and synthetic dries much quicker than wool or cotton.
Matt, I have a set of fleece and wind-breaker layers up here in AK that I use just for buzzing around town in the winter on my ATV and I've worn them both ways and I'll tell you, it's night-and-day warmer with the wind breaker layer on the outside and the fleece on the inside than visa versa.
You have any pictures of the hot weather gear you were wearing/not wearing on the AZ strip, Ike? Or did the game warden confiscate those? :):):)
I wouldn't dare to walk in the weeds with fleece up in Iowa. Them darn "Chinese fleas" will cover your pants to a point you throw them away.
I'm pretty sure he was pretty relieved that he didn't have to confiscate anything from me...
I spend money on good base layers and a fair amount on camo. I do not and will not blow $200 on a pair of hunting pants and $400 on a hunting jacket. I have been to all the places that many say "you need these clothes" to hunt with....without them.
I still wear cotton boxers many days hunting from home. Not on multi day type hunts. Feel comfortable and never noticed being any colder. Other base layers I am all in on merino. It is awesome stuff. It is of course easily destroyed by jaggers. Nylon soft shells are good jagger protection.
Fleece is great. I went back to using it pretty much exclusively as a midlayer treestand hunting. Bought into the puffy craze for awhile. They have their time and place, both synth and down, but in general are vastly overrated. Especially down. Fleece gives up some packability but is so much more versatile for mountain whitetail hunting.
You can't kill anything unless you are in Sitka or Kuiu.... Everyone knows that. Cmon man!
For average weather, absolutely. No problem with any fabrics.It's the stuff on the outside edges of the bell curve that make a guy spend his life's savings.
It was a way's back up, but if you wear a wind layer - it's better over fleece/wool than under. Wind cuts through those insulation layers taking your body heat they are trying to trap with it... A wind blocker fleece/synthetic top layer prevents that.
Ill admit, I still wear cotton now and then while hunting, mostly early/mid season. But synthetics have taken over... Occasionally merino or wool.
You don't have to spend big money on synthetics for warm weather baselayers. Kohls, target, etc have $5 polyester shirts that....newsflash...are the exact same fabric as that underarmour/sitka stuff you pay $50 for. And you don't feel too bad when you shred one walking through multiflora rose.
"I see Nick's throwback photos and raise him a woodgrain station wagon :) "
That made me laugh, bravo.
Will’s photo may have been the inspiration for the movie “National Lampoons Vacation”
At least one scene in the movie, anyway!
These plus fleece = a nightmare. I have some of these that will never come out of my Berber Fleece. LOL.
I've battled them too 12yards, but get yourself a little flea comb at the pet store and they come out pretty good.
Preacher’s Lice, also called Beggar’s Lice. Biggest PIA here in Iowa on clothes. Surprisingly, there were very few of them here this year, compared to normal years. Not sure why. It was an extremely wet year, but not sure that had any bearing on the low numbers.
I noticed the same thing here in MN this year t-roy.
JuPassin, I will try that, but man, if you don't know they're there and you press them into your clothes they are really embedded in there. I've literally made my fingertips raw trying to pull them out of my fleece.
Gives me something to do when I'm in the tree.
And then again on the way home. :-/
Fleece is the only way to fly.. I wear nothing but for the fact that it's cheap and makes ZERO SOUND!!
You all should do the exact same as I do.
I was surprised how few I saw in Iowa this year, didn't have a single one till like day 10 of the hunt. Based on the past few years in Nebraska where it seemed like they were everywhere.
If I owned land in the midwest, I would spend some serious time out there in the spring/summer with a weed whacker to rid my property of these things for the upcoming fall.
I just bought a pair of cabelas wooltimate,best stuff I have bought.Soon it will be gone by way of a discount store called Bass Pro
Fleece is the only way to fly.. I wear nothing but for the fact that it's cheap and makes ZERO SOUND!!
You all should do the exact same as I do.
cotton is warm until its wet then it will kill you! wool for me, two layers and then waterproof shell in the great PNW MikeC
Cotton = C = Cold; Wool = W = Warm (even when wet)
Best combo is wool and fleece.
Burrs come off later.
The burrs will come out when washing the clothing.
Then reattach to the inside of the garment, only to be found approximately 30 minutes into the next set in the tree stand, usually in the most difficult and irritating locations :-(
Cotton isn't as bad as it's being made out to be. I had a cheap set of insulated cotton bibs/parka and a pair of insulated cotton blend coveralls that were extremely quiet and warm that I loved wearing 75% of the time I was hunting. If it's raining or snowing, no, it isn't very good. But that doesn't make up a huge amount of the time I'm hunting. On those cold crisp October or November days it was great with the proper base layers. I still wear the bibs sometimes when it's cold.
I really like fleece as a mid layer. I agree with the cotton being decent on non rainy/non snowy days, but I would add wind. Seems that is blowing the majority of the time I hunt, and bites through cotton pretty easy.
"It's the stuff on the outside edges of the bell curve that make a guy spend his life's savings"
100% agree. Might even make a Montanan run to the nearest hunting store in Winnipeg and buy some First Lite bibs;)
Love fleece and wool,eventually the garment saturates and for every new “hitchhiker”displaces an old one.I just never worry about them I guess.
Ha. Beggars lice are a pain. However a guy I worked with told me that the seeds are good to eat. So like Midwest I pick them off on stand then shell and eat them. Make lemonade out of lemons. Greg
FINALLY!....A diet I can buy into so I can get in “whitetail” shape! Thanks Greg! ;-)
All fleece & wool All the time
Old school. I also have the Berber Cabelas sells and some warm weather predator.
