Tell me your favorites for those cold days. I have figured out how to stay warm everywhere except for my fingers!
I use gloves similar to these:
http://www.schnees.com/product/1389/hats-gloves-rags
But I get 'em at my local feed store for more like $15 to $20 (I think they are normally around $30 but I wait for the sales!).
Handwarmers.
I buy 3 or 4 boxes in the fall, from Costco.
http://reviews.costco.com/2070/11315737/little-hotties-little-hotties-hand-warmers-single-case-reviews/reviews.htm
I guess sometimes you can get a bad batch, but I’ve never had ones from Costco that didn’t get warm enough. I’ve had ones from other makers that didn’t, and that made your hands black. But Costco’s customer service is good, if you get a bad batch you can return them.
You can slip them into stretchy gloves, and you can’t see them.
Anyway, unless it’s 5 degrees and windy, you can use non-lined, ‘regular’ gloves to ride in.
If it IS 5 degrees or less, I put a pair of fingerless wool gloves (a nice thick cuff helps a lot) over the top of my deerskin riding gloves. Put the handwarmers between ‘liner’ and ‘outer’ glove.
Otherwise, to keep my hands warm, I’d have to be wearing ski mitts so fat I wouldn’t be able to hold reins at all.
I don’t hunt but I do sometimes have to ride all day in miserable winter weather. It does help to have a horse that won’t pull the reins out of your hands, as I often wear simple cotton ‘string’ gloves, $1 per pair at the feed store and they do NOT grip reins well.
I use the SSS winter ranchers which I really like and they look traditional. I wish they were a bit darker but they work. A bunch of places sell them but the best price I have ever seen is from Bartville harness - I think 32 there.
Ditto for hand warmers
I buy them in bulk from a sporting goods store. They are great in any glove. If it is 40 or above they are too warm to wear in a winter glove. When it is super cold I wear the leather SSG gloves that have a thinsulate lining and along with the hand warmers my hands stay toasty!
SSG 10 belows are great gloves.
Ditto the10 below gloves. Plus my new ones have a little elastic wrist piece so you can take them off and they just dangle from your wrist instead of dropping them accidentally and losing them!
About the only thing I like about winter is my SSG winter ranchers! Then do come in black also, but not every place carries them. Fine for trail, a little bulky when I’m schooling, for that I use SSG all weather with some additional liners or SSG wind chasers.
I have both the SSG 10 belows for regular riding and SSG winter ranchers for hunting.
Up here where it is not so cold as it is wet, I used to use deer skin gloves.
For some reason, they could be soaking wet and my hands stayed warm and they were non slip. I remember times when it was so cold I’d be almost crying and my hands wrapped around the reins because I couldn’t hold them in my fingers, and then my hands were cold. I always carried spares tucked into my waistband.
