When does it get too cold to hunt?
By By Otha Barham / outdoors editor
Jan. 9, 2004
Perhaps the leading reply from those who I suggest make a deer hunt is, "I get too cold." Most who admit this are women of course, because few men are willing to risk their perceived invincibility and divulge that cold weather actually hurts. But the truth is that the very cold weather of the last days of deer season hurts, and for good reason. The pain is nature's way of telling us something is wrong and needs to be tended to.
One might argue that, yes, everyone gets cold on Mississippi and Alabama winter deer hunts but nobody actually dies from it and we get over it when we get back home or to camp or into the truck. Right. And I submit that that is what saves many of us from more serious consequences; the fact that our proximity to deer here is up close, and if we get too cold, our warm places are handy. It has always been my contention that if the humidity we have here in the Deep South existed in the expansive plains and mountains of other parts of the country, cold temperatures would kill a lot of winter hunters, anglers, campers, hikers, snowmobilers and other outdoorsmen and women.
Hypothermia is the culprit. Abnormally low body temperature. In its advanced stage it will kill you. Shivering uncontrollably is one of the stages of hypothermia that warns us that we are getting closer to the low temperature limit that our living bodies can take. When we can't stop our shivering, most of us get out of the deer stand and go find warmth. Even walking helps temporarily, but we get to some artificial heat a campfire, heater or warm soup or food and we beat hypothermia handily.
But what if we fall and break a leg on the way to camp or take a spill from our boat into a stream? If help is far away and we are immobile, we are in trouble. The body can only take so much loss of body heat.
A big difference
These instances are rare, you might rightly say. Yes. But there is a key condition that we have here that a hypothermia victim in Nebraska or Wyoming does not face. We have one strike already against us before and after we step outside in winter. The condition is high humidity.
The difference in humidity is one reason why a grouse hunter in Montana can be shivering on its eastern plains and easily make it back to the truck that is four miles distant. Can you imagine trying to travel through our January flooded swamps for four miles when you are face to face with hypothermia? The Montana hunter would be endangered by the wind, but so would we in the swamp where it is a lot wetter.
Experienced Southern hunters know this and we take the necessary precautions. But taking a look at humidity, our Southern nemesis, will help us all to respect the dangers of the cold we have down South.
That first strike against us begins right in our closets. Our hunting clothes underwear, socks, shirts, pants, coats, hats and gloves all are loaded with humidity even before we put them on! Central heated homes with dehumidifiers will have the driest clothing in its closets, but high humidity in our hunting clothes is an accurate generalization here. So we take one step toward hypothermia on the way to the woods. Moisture in our clothes saps body heat, transporting it more quickly to the surrounding air than dry clothes do.
That is the purpose for this commentary. That because of our always high humidity, we are already "in the hole" in preventing hypothermia in this area when the temperature drops. Therefore the steps we take to stay warm take on more importance , fully as much importance as for a mountain hunter who faces sub zero temperatures.
A comparison
Here is a personal example. When I was in my late teens, I hunted deer in Mississippi by standing or sitting along an expected escape route while the deer dogs chased deer. One hunt would last all morning and I remember days that were around 10 or 12 degrees. I walked to stands that were over a mile distant. I wore cotton shirts and a wool or canvas coat. My long johns were cotton.
I remember that several times I had blue fingers, I shivered violently often and my mind became confused. I was suffering with advanced stages of hypothermia, but had never heard of the malady. My youth and good health prevailed.
Later in life I hunted in northern New Mexico in winter when we got 60 inches of snow the week we were there, on top of a hundred earlier inches. The thermometer reached 20 below zero in town each night and we were hunting a thousand feet above town where it was much colder. Daytime temperatures never reached the freezing mark.
I was never even uncomfortable during the hunt, except for a little while when my coat and gloves had to come off to skin an elk and I got my hands damp with blood. Yes, I had adequate clothes fishnet underwear, wool and goose down. But not the wicking under layers and insulating outerwear we have today. The low humidity that is typical there wicked the moisture from my sweating body, from my clothes and even from the falling snow, causing it to lay in fluffy layers day after day.
Here the story is different. So bundle up, remembering that hypothermia is dangerous once the temperature drops, even into the 40s. Watch young (thus small) people carefully. They don't have as much body heat to protect them. When shivering or confused thinking occurs, go find some warmth.
