Thought I would pass along a little info for anyone who's been thinking about buying heated gear. As I get old, I'm finding that I need a bit more help that I used to in order to stay in the tree longer. I fought it valiantly, but finally gave up last fall and tried a heated vest. My buddies convinced me to Pnuma, which they love. I broke down and purchased the Pnuma Core heated vest. HOLY CRAP, this thing is so much better. Its super thin, compression fitting and wicks very well. It also supposedly has some anti microbial to help keep stink at bay. These vests are 7V and the heat output is significantly better than 5V heated clothing. I really like the fact that I can, if I choose, wear this next to skin, then layer up over it however I want to. I prefer to wear silk merino next to skin for wicking purposes, then the heated vest, then my expedition weight merino over it. Then I can add any other layers I want if I need to. You don't ever realize the vest is there... until you hit the magical button to fire it up. It goes into preheat mode first, which is high heat and its borderline too hot in many cases. It will then cycle to medium and stay there. I have found that I can wear less heavy layers with this vest for most of the season. The best thing is you can layer up as much as you want and trap the heat even more with this vest. It gets the heat as close to skin as possible, not in some puffy vest you may wear . The heating elements are exactly where you would want them. One large one on the chest, one across the upper back and one across your kidneys in your lower back. The only draw back is the batteries. They're small and don't last all that long. They're simple to change, but its one thing I wish they would come out with an upgraded size. On medium heat, I get about 3 hours on one. I opted to purchase two additional batteries to get me through an entire day. I usually don't turn it on until 8-9am on cold mornings. I'll kill a battery by lunchtime and I will turn the vest back on late afternoon till dark. I figured having a third battery for very cold weather can't hurt. All in all, the vest, in my opinion, is the best out there. I wore it all season, even early season and found it was really nice to heat up the old muscles and back about an hour before dark. I love the thing. The second item I used all fall when it started to get cold enough was an Ocoopa rechargeable handwarmer. I used a ton of the disposable chemical handwarmers in the past and really wanted to get away from them. This thing worked flawlessly all year. Its 10,000mah and puts out a ridiculous amount of heat. They're the size of a computer mouse and have three heat settings, low, medium and high. I ran it mostly in medium, which its reported to last 11 hours max. Truthfully, medium is almost too hot and darn near burns your hands at times. I found that in my Kangaroo pocket on my Sitka Fanatic jacket, it kept my hands more than warm enough and I believe saved battery life in the enclosed area. For $25 on Amazon, it payed for itself already compared to the chemical warmers. Overall, i'm very happy with my choices in these two products. I might even grab the Pnuma heated core pants to take the chill off of my legs and avoid heavy bibs, etc.
Are you able to use a third party battery? I have just a cheap vest from Amazon and it works absolutely great! I've always been interested in the pneuma because of the compression fit but I didn't like the supplied battery and the inability to use an outside battery. Heated clothing is definitely worth it! Sent from my SM-N975U1 using Tapatalk
I found this one on Amazon and it's been working good for me so far - https://a.co/d/6BGOmep It's tough to find external 7v batteries with the right plug.
Dude... are you telling me that battery works with the Pnuma? Ive been looking and looking and wasn't sure what would actually work. I love you Justin Zarr.... you're getting a christmas card this year...
Make fun all you want boys, a 10K mah battery for the pnuma vest makes my socks go up and down... lol.
glad to see the main article about heated items for hunting ... Ive looked at various socks, most have some or are all cotton, cotton is the worst you can wear when cold as it holds any and all moisture....I read about the FieldSheer MERINO socks in the article... I'm getting a pair... all my hunting socks are merino wool as it is, I do wear a liner sock with them... Ive always used the chem toe warmers or full sole pads, which work, but not long enough for my liking .....as for my body, never a problem, for my hands I use a muff + the large Heat Factory warmers .... one other thing, your SALT intake, it screws with your circulation, esp. in the extremities/feet esp. ... cut back on that damn salt, and cutting back on sugar helps some also ...
0317, my feet used to never get cold, but the older I get, I'm beginning to notice things changing. I'm saddle hunting exclusively these days and footwear is a bit of an issue for me doing that. I have a good pair of 800gm Irish setters, that combined with a pair or sometimes even two, of high quality merino socks, I rarely had cold feet all the way down to the teens. But they're big and bulky in the saddle. I'm experimenting right now with a set of Arctic Sheild boot covers. Wearing my uninsulated Crispi Nevada boots and putting those on when I get situated in the tree, I have been good so far in the 20's. I love those boots for walking long distances and they're excellent for saddle hunting. I haven't been in the saddle with the boot covers yet, so time will tell. But if the heated socks work well, that may get me a longer ways into the colder months of fall without the arctic shields. Win win for me. I used to go through a case and and a half of the large hand warmers each season. Two in my hand warmer pocket, and when it was really cold, I used a kidney wrap that took two of those warmers too. Just got tired of buying them and throwing them away every day. All this new rechargeable heated gear is.. dare I say... game changing.
Heated clothing is really nice in cold weather. I have heated socks and a heated vest, both definitely help me to stay on stand longer, especially the socks. The socks are Amazon specials, couldn't say the brand, but I've had them for 3 years and they still work great. They have bluetooth and I can control them from an app on my phone, I really like that feature. The vest is an Ororo, I've had no issues with it either. I used throw away hand warmers for a lot of years too. Last year I bought some electric hand warmers, they work ok but were only heated on one side and that was annoying. Had to keep flipping them over in my pocket to try to keep whole hand warm. I bought the Ocoopa 10k mah warmers this year too, they are a huge upgrade over the first set I bought. Heat on both sides, battery range is really good, and they get very hot. Mine have 4 settings, 1 is not quite enough, 2 is perfect, 3 might be needed in really cold temps, 4 is crazy hot. The socks have been the most useful for me to stay on stand longer. My feet are the first thing to get really cold the last few years, they were making me get out of the stand early quite a bit before I got the heated socks.
