Editor’s Note: Matt Morrett of Pennsylvania has realized every young man’s dream. In 1987, when he was 16-years old, he won the World Turkey Calling Championship in the Friction Call Division, which included slate calls, glass calls, box calls and any type of turkey-calling device that wasn’t used in your mouth. In 1987, Morrett began to work with Hunter’s Specialties. He appeared in 30 to 40 of the company’s videos and many of their TV shows. He started on TV with Tom Miranda on ESPN and has appeared on television for 15-20 years. He recently joined the PSE and the Mossy Oak Pro Staffs.
I wear Mossy Oak as my base layer, Mossy Oak fleece as my second layer and a Mossy Oak jacket and bibs as my outer layer. I go two steps further by using a Mossy Oak net or mesh mask and Mossy Oak gloves. If I could get Mossy Oak contact lenses for my eyes, I’d wear them. My eyeballs are the only thing on my body not covered by Mossy Oak. I wear a fleece Mossy Oak hat, but I prefer a mesh face mask or half mask in the late season. I know a lot of hunters prefer a fleece balaclava (full head and face mask with eye and nose holes), but I’ve found I get too warm with my entire head wrapped up in fleece. I wear medium-weight gloves. I put my hands in a Mossy Oak-covered muff with a HotHands body warmer inside it. This way, my hands stay warm until the time arrives for me to pick-up the bow and make the draw. The short time required to pick-up the bow and make the draw doesn’t allow my hands to get very cold, before I release the arrow or squeeze a rifle’s trigger.
I like to bowhunt during the late season. If you wear thick gloves, you change the way your bow shoots. But with medium-weight gloves, your bow will shoot as accurately as when you don’t wear any gloves at all. One of the critical keys to successful bowhunting in the late season is to practice with your gloves, your mask and the clothes you’ll wear when you’re actually hunting. Then you can make sure your point of aim and point of impact doesn’t change due to the additional clothes. Although many bowhunters cut-off the index fingers of their gloves, so their naked fingers touch the mechanical release, I don’t do that. I still can feel my bow release in a medium-weight glove. I like to bowhunt the late season, because most-other hunters have stopped hunting then, and hunting pressure is practically nonexistent. You can go on public-hunting areas during Pennsylvania’s late-season bow deer season and never see another pickup truck. Another advantage of hunting the late season is that the deer have to move more during daylight hours to find food and stay warm than they do earlier in the year.
Tomorrow: Mossy Oak’s Matt Morrett: Cool Down to Stay Warm for Late Season Deer Hunting
