Cold Weather Shooting Gloves?

I use lined leather gloves, often with a white cotton cheapy liner that I can work with and get messy, than put in my pockets when wet or bloody, gassy, greasy.
However, shooting a high power rifle with the liner is a challenge, because you cannot get a good grip on wood or composite with the cottons on. The gun often recoils in odd ways when shooting 'slick handed' like that.
a .22lr or a shotgun are OK, as the .22lr's recoil is negligible and when shooting a shot gun, Im firmly holding the fore arm while shooting as opposed to resting a rifles forend apon my open palm.

So I pull the trigger bare handed if I have a chance.

Some guys like 'Mechanix' gloves, they have a good grip and while working on snowgos, the steel parts dont get to freeze to your hands and fingers.

For temps that low I would look for a set of gloves. A thin insulating liner glove that will give you fairly good dexterity with a heavy over glove that you wear most of the time. As long as you can shoot with the heavy gloves you can remove those for the reload. It's a warm strategy but not the most convenient. Putting the heavy gloves on a lanyard helps.

Mechanix gloves were pretty popular in my unit for shooting gloves in cooler temperatures.

http://www.mechanix.com/cold-weather/the-original-insulated-winter-gloves

I prefer golf or racquetball gloves for cold weather shooting. Trigger feel is impacted, but dexterity and grip are preserved pretty well.

herrwalther said:

Mechanix gloves were pretty popular in my unit for shooting gloves in cooler temperatures.

http://www.mechanix.com/cold-weather/the-original-insulated-winter-gloves

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I use an off brand uninsulated version of these for hunting/shooting. Plus pockets with warmers if its real cold (below zero).

Not the warmest but years in AK toughened my hands (or deadened, potato potahhtoe) to cold.

Cheap yellow work gloves.
Hand warmers on the wrist or back of hand for days like today, -5 right now.

drunkenpoacher said:

Cheap yellow work gloves.
Hand warmers on the wrist or back of hand for days like today, -5 right now.

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Lucky! I was planning on hitting the outdoor range tomorrow but its projected to be -14 again, and windy so probably around -30 in the wind.

Might still shoot some pistol, but not gonna do any riflework in that.

Might even more likely hit the local indoor range and rent the Hudson H9 I have been interested in for a good while

Do what we do up in WI: take the gloves off, jam them in your coat pockets,and do what you need to do. Put the gloves back on as soon as you can. Or flip-up glove-mitts. It's -10 today, and I wore the flip-up's to the store a bit ago.

I have hunting gloves that cover just past the knuckles leaving the end of the fingers and thumb bare. They work well for handling individual cartridges and for trigger control. However with bare skin they are for only short term exposure in extreme cold.

My favorite extreme cold gloves are a glove/mitten design. The glove is designed the same as the above hunting glove that leaves the end of the fingers bare. However there is a mitten sewed to the top of glove that folds over the fingers protecting them. When you need to use your fingers you fold the mitten part back and it is held it place by Velcro tabs. The glove is made of thinsulate and knitted. My pair is badly worn but I have not been able to find who sales them.

I have a pair of leather driving gloves with Thinsulate lining in them. Just the right thickness and quite capable of picking up a dime off the ground but the trade-off is they're not all that warm below 20* F.

A couple of options for doing this. Most hunting gloves are designed to ballance the trade-off of warmth and dexterity. You could also use "not so warm gloves" and when you are not actually shooting, keep your hands in your jacket pockets or in one of those poly pro insulated hand warming tubes that you can fit on the front of your belt (very common in matches). To test gloves, see if you can maybe bring in a brightly colored (unloaded) water pistol into the store to get an idea what triggers will feel like- may want to check with the store though. At a store where I shopped, they actually kept a couple of these in the glove area.

I picked up a pair of gloves from Dollar Tree the other day that allow you to be able to do touch to type on your phone and they seem to be working pretty good for lightweight shooting gloves

entropy said:

Do what we do up in WI: take the gloves off, jam them in your coat pockets,and do what you need to do. Put the gloves back on as soon as you can. Or flip-up glove-mitts. It's -10 today, and I wore the flip-up's to the store a bit ago.

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At the temperatures I use to train in, taking gloves off put you in a world of hurt. When cold enough, just 5 minutes of exposure is enough for frostbite. That time is virtually cut in half if you are handling cold metal without a contact glove. So the punishment for us was pretty severe and it was worth learning how to do dexterity driven tasks wearing gloves. I even got used to tying shoes and knots while wearing gloves.

The best gloves I ever had were Army issue. They were a multi layer/modular system made by Outdoor Research. The outer gloves were too bulky to fit inside any trigger guard but the liners combined with an intermediate glove worked fine. They were by far the best gloves when spending days in the field when it was -40 or worse.

http://soldiersystems.net/2008/11/10/outdoor-research-modular-glove-system/

Riding (horseback) gloves? They come in a variety of insulation thicknesses and if the reinforcements between fingers/knuckles don't bother you, they work like a charm for cold weather shooting.

These work well: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Firm-Grip-Medium-General-Purpose-Gloves-2001M/100239718

D.B. Cooper said:

Awesome, but how does a civilian buy them?

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Haven't found any place that carries them for civilian purchase. From what I can see, most of the layers can be bought individually.

Here is the outer mitten
https://www.outdoorresearch.com/gov/us/en/tactical/firebrand-mitts/p/2432740014010

At $320 for just the outer mittens, the whole system would cost a pretty penny.

what about surplus shooters mittens?
https://www.amazon.com/Official-US-Military-Surplus-Mittens/dp/B0036ZTDYA

herrwalther said:

At the temperatures I use to train in, taking gloves off put you in a world of hurt. When cold enough, just 5 minutes of exposure is enough for frostbite. That time is virtually cut in half if you are handling cold metal without a contact glove. So the punishment for us was pretty severe and it was worth learning how to do dexterity driven tasks wearing gloves. I even got used to tying shoes and knots while wearing gloves.

The best gloves I ever had were Army issue. They were a multi layer/modular system made by Outdoor Research. The outer gloves were too bulky to fit inside any trigger guard but the liners combined with an intermediate glove worked fine. They were by far the best gloves when spending days in the field when it was -40 or worse.

http://soldiersystems.net/2008/11/10/outdoor-research-modular-glove-system/

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Looks like Sportsman's guide has at least some of them for sale.

I meant seconds, not minutes. I usually use the wool trigger finger glove liners to about 10 degrees, Put the gloves on top of 'em at 10, swap the trigger finger outer gloves for the USAF mitts, at 15 below, and jam the whole glove and liner inside the USAF mitt colder than that. (Yes, they fit) At that point I also have the M1951 parka on, and either Austrian bibs, hunting (camo) ones (for coyotes) or Carhartt bibs.

Can't wait till the OR gloves come out as surplus.....looks like a nice system.

sean m said:

what about surplus shooters mittens?
https://www.amazon.com/Official-US-Military-Surplus-Mittens/dp/B0036ZTDYA

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sean m, that's what I use, plus these for really cold weather; https://www.sportsmansguide.com/product/index/us-military-surplus-ecws-mitts-new?a=1787345 The trigger finger gloves will fit inside these, with or without the liners.

It's hard to get both good insulation and dexterity at the same time.

I use Mechanix Gloves (or 3rd party equivalent) and disposable hand warmers.

When your fingers get cold, it's hard to get them warm again. The hand warmers in your pockets will do that. Once your fingers are warmed up, the gloves will keep them warm for 30 minutes or so.

The Mechanix gloves give you the dexterity to do things like field strip your weapon, clear a jammed cartridge or load a 9mm magazine.