I like to walk and stand when I hunt. This change of pace can be good and bad. Good because if I move slowly and stand enough, I have a good chance of staying reasonably warm and a good chance of seeing game animals before they see me.
The potentially bad part? I have Type II diabetes, as do more and more people. Diabetic feet lose their sensitivity, are no fun in any weather, and in cold weather may cause serious problems – frostbite or freezing without knowing it. What we don’t feel can seriously hurt us, taking away most or all of the enjoyment of being active outdoors in cold weather.
There’s also a thing called pre-diabetes. That means our body is getting ready to have full-blown diabetes, sometimes as much as 15 years before we actually get diabetes.
How widespread is diabetes? This information is from the 2020 National Diabetes Statistics Report, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among the U.S. population, crude estimates for 2018 (latest figures available) were:
• people of all ages, or 10.5 percent of the U.S. population, had diabetes.• adults aged 18 years or older (13.0 percent of the U.S. population) had diabetes.• adults aged 18 years or older who met laboratory criteria for diabetes were not aware of or did not report having diabetes. This number represents 2.8 percent of• of adults with diabetes increases with age, reaching 26.8 percent --more than one-quarter of people --aged 65 years or older. Type II usually starts in middle-aged or elderly adults but is increasingly seen in children and young adults.• some 2020 hunter numbers from the National Shooting Sports Foundation:• 19,621,000 hunters, of whom 77.3 percent were male and 22.7 percent female.• hunters, 14.5 percent were age 7-17, 72.4 percent were ages 18-64 and 13.2 percent were age 65 or older (All those 18 or older totaled 85.6 percent.)
