The Little Things

Here’s a sampling from my current kit…some is gear or clothing related, a couple deal with food, and others are simply good hacks. None of these represent costly outlays or premium equipment yet they add more than their share of simple value to a hunt.

WINDSHELL

Overseas hunters call it a windshirt but we’d probably term it a windbreaker or windcheater.

Essentially this is a featherlight nylon packaway that you throw on to shield you from cool winds or light precipitation.

At under 80 grams, I reckon my windshell is gram-for-gram the most valuable piece of clothing I carry. It simply adds performance to my layering system, where the real value is not in how much warmth it adds, but in how much warmth it prevents the wind from stealing away. Research has found that you can retain 2-4 degrees of warmth with a simple piece of equipment like this. The researchers used thermal imaging of a person in a down jacket and recorded heat loss through gaps between the baffles, including at the stitching, and compared that to results when a windshirt was worn.

Also, because it is simple in construction