FOREST AND STREAM 
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Something About Cold Weather Clothing 
Showing That the Shortest Road to Comfort May Be to Take ’Em Off and Explaining How a Man May 
Dress Too Warmly to be Warm 
WAS so warmly dressed that 
he “durn near” froze to death. 
He had been urgently advised 
to procure a mackinaw coat and 
strongly warned against buying 
one lined with sheep skin. But 
he knew better.The month was 
December and the camp which 
he was to visit was about as far north as it could 
be and not be located in Canada. He was going 
to be comfortable. So he got him a sheep-lined 
coat which hung nigh to his knees and had a 
wombat fur collar which turned up almost to the 
crown of his head. Also he accumulated diverse 
flannel shirts and sweater vests. 
And to this day he shiveringly reminds me of 
the night he huddled over my red-hot air-tight 
heater clad in all his armor and inbibed hot tod¬ 
dies between his chattering teeth in the intervals 
of spasms of sneezing while I sat in the outer cold 
with most of my clothes off and read him “The 
Cremation of Sam McGee.” 
He's still undecided whether I’m abnormally 
warm-blooded or of that cold-blooded tribe which 
can freeze without discomfort. 
Should this plain statement of the actual facts 
happen to come to his eye, he will never believe 
it. But its the truth, none the less, for I still 
own and use to bed down friend dog a coat lined 
with sheep skin in which I once suffered with 
cold just as he did last winter and will again this 
fall if he ventures to go deer hunting in northern 
Minnesota. 
Not that a sheep-lined coat isn’t warm. The 
men who drive the tote teams for the lumber 
camps, riding all day long through an atmosphere 
chilled below the zero mark, find it the warmest 
thing, at the price, the market affords. 
But you can bet your bottom dollar that the 
men who fell the pines and saw them into logs 
under the same weather conditions don’t wear 
any fur and leather garments. 
There is, as estimated at the beginning, such a 
thing as being too warmly dressed. A man will 
find a fur-lined coat a mighty fine thing for sit¬ 
ting all day in a duck blind, waiting for his game 
to come to him. 
But when he attempts to tramp eight or ten 
miles, actual distance (usually reported as twenty- 
five or thirty miles by the tramper), through the 
woods in quest of the elusive white-tail in the 
same garment, he’ll almost perish with cold. 
First, thanks to the weight of the thing and 
the impervious nature of its lining, he’ll work up 
a fine lather of perspiration. When he halts to 
rest or look about bis pores stand wide open to 
the cold. The end of the day so spent in sub¬ 
zero weather will find him enervated as by a 
sultry day in August. 
When he resumes his “warm” coat for the next 
day’s hunting the dank, sodden fleece is anything 
By C. L. Gilman. 
but warm. He must give up a lot of the 
body heat, which is the essence of his vitality, to 
warm it up. Whereupon it will proceed to treat 
him to a second all-day Turkish bath. 
By night the unfortunate victim is usually so 
far drained of strength that he can’t react to the 
cold; he spends the evening huddled close to the 
fire and completes his downfall by sleeping in his 
clammy, saturated garments in a vain effort to 
keep warm. 
He might better roll naked in a snowbank. 
Dressed so Warm He Durn Near Froze. 
From this point to his disgusted, coughing, 
exit from the woods the progress is brief, pain¬ 
ful and certain. As certain as that he will spend 
the rest of his natural life inveighing against the 
foolishness of folks who will freeze themselves 
to death hunting deer or moose in the far north. 
I have drawn my indictment against sheep¬ 
skin. It would be as true a bill were any imper¬ 
vious material, whether of leather, rubber or 
water-proofed fabric named as the culprit. 
For the sedentary outer, be he the teamster on 
his sleigh seat, the duck hunter in his blind or 
the tenderfoot waiting on the runway where his 
guide has posted him. sheepskin, ct al, are fine 
materials. 
But the axman more nearly approximates the 
activities of the big game hunter than does the 
teamster. He. likewise, dressed to keep warm 
in the coldest of weather. You’ll see him striding 
along the logging road to the cook shanty at sun¬ 
down with the sweat of honest toil frozen solid 
on the surface of his garments. 
Frozen on the outside—inside things are dry 
and comfy. 
In general, the chopper’s garments are of per¬ 
vious material. 
Specifically, they are mackinaw. 
That heavy, blanket-like cloth, all-wool and 
weighing two pounds to the yard, which has 
served the lumberman for generations and is now 
coming to be appreciated by the sportsman as 
well. 
I don’t mean the gaudy, Norfolked, box-pleated 
and belted mackinaw in which the college youth 
of yester-year dazzled our eyes. That stuff is 
mostly cotton, made up to sell cheap. The mack¬ 
inaw of the woodsman is of more somber shades 
and cut with severe plainness. You may know it 
by the fact that it is all wool and, if you lack 
surety in judging this, by the fact that a coat 
made of its costs just about double the price of 
the more showy “college” styles from any rep¬ 
utable dealer. 
For actual “still hunting.” when the hunter is 
anything but stationary, even the mackinaw coat 
is too warm. In northern Minnesota, and the 
same probably will hold true for Wisconsin, and 
Michigan, Maine, and southern Canada, the days 
of the big game season when it can be worn with 
comfort are few. It is a fine thing to have in 
camp to slip on when one rises in the cold of 
early morning or when one comes in, tired, at 
sundown. It is admirable for sitting on a run¬ 
way while someone “plays dog.” 
But for the actual work of the trail a still 
lighter mackinaw garment will generally be 
found sufficient. This is the “overshirt” or “stag- 
ged shirt.” You can compare this to a middy 
blouse if you wish. In actuality it is a shirt of 
medium weight mackinaw with the tails cut off 
and worn hanging outside the pants after the 
style of the Chinese. 
Such a garment gives freedom to the arms and 
shoulders, impossible in a coat; itself a factor for 
warmth, will keep out the wind and turn rain. 
Worn over a woolen undershirt and a flannel 
shirt of army grade it gives all the warmth need¬ 
ed by any active man on an average day in the 
hunting season. Increased protection can be 
built up with an extra flannel shirt, a sweater vest 
or both. Unlike the last named garment, it will 
let through neither wind nor rain, hence should 
be the outermost thing worn. For bucking into 
a stiff, cold wind in open country or across the 
ice, a newspaper pinned beneath the overshirt 
where it will shield chest and abdomen is unsur¬ 
passed. 
So it is that you. with fewer, lighter clothes, 
may come through warm and sound where our 
friend of the sheep skin nearly perishes with 
cold. 
In practical experience it will develop that a 
