Wool….and other things your Grandpa was right about.
I was in a white leather seat slipping and sliding down a dirt road, my wool pants couldn’t grab traction in that Lincoln Town Car. My grandfather, two weeks fresh off being splayed open and having a widow maker aneurysm removed from his abdomen, had decided that the opening day of NY deer season was no time to take “bed rest” as a serious notion from the doctors that performed the surgery. I was young, my dad had to work but sent me as the legal guardian of my grandfather and told me not to let him touch a deer. We were both stuffed into wool head to toe, wool and cigarette smoke because my grandfather practiced strict scent control.
This was my first introduction into wool hunting clothing. It wouldn’t be my last sit in those woods or those pants, but as the years went on my ideas about deer hunting terrain features changed and so did my ideas of what wool pieces worked. This is a quick run through that journey to this point.
The next impression about wool left on my buckskin story blanket of hunting came just a few short years later after reading all about the Benoits. I read the original How To Bag The Biggest Buck of Your Life and decided I would become a deer tracker. Larry Benoit expounded on the benefits of wool in that book. He wrote of its warmth, stealth and ability to insulate when wet. All of these are true, so with that in mind I bought my first set of brand new dedicated hunting clothes. Decked in my Columbia Gallatin Wool Jacket and Pants and a set of Lacrosse boots I tracked a 3 pt (in the eastern sense, spike and crotch) in the snow and shot him at 15 yards with a borrowed Browning Safari .308. It happened so close and so fast I remember essentially only using the front sight to place the shot. I was sold, wool was it for me.
My bowhunting career started in earnest the following year, and although I loved how quiet my wool set was, the wind seemingly cut through it like a Morakaniv knife through my finger (ouch!). So, I decided wool wasn’t where it was at and bought synthetics for years. I have owned every single synthetic fabric I can think of in every layer for which they would be practical. They have their place, and I now use them in conjunction with wool.
Many hundreds of hunts later and many articles of hunting clothing gone by I have come full circle. I currently run all wool as next to skin layers. I wear wool socks daily not just during hunting season and there is still nothing as quiet or warm when wet. My base layers can be stretched to multiple days of use because wool naturally holds no odors. I use the Black Ovis NWT merino wool base layers. They are awesome. I have three sets and rotate them throughout hunting. They have held up well and come in different colors and weights. I tend to lean heavily on the 250 weight. I also use First Lite Corrugate Guide Pants and a First Lite Brimmed Beanie. I mix in fleece and wind blocking layers and some insulating layers with those pieces but wool makes up the majority of my system.
If you go far and hard you work up a sweat even if you’re trying not to. Wool will help you keep that funk down and stay warm even after you saturate it. I think that if people take from my mistakes and go with these pieces early on they can save themselves a lot of money, aggravation and be more comfortable in the woods. We are out there to have fun. Speaking of funk grandpa’s scent control regime wasn’t far off. Carry milkweed, hunt terrain and learn to play the wind...smoking not encouraged.