I use several hats for winter hunting, but for most average fall/winter weather, I prefer to simply wear a wool or wool blend New Era ball cap style hat in fluorescent orange, red, or camo... depending on the season. Then I can use the size adjusting band to permit me to add or remove layers, depending on my activity level, or as the weather conditions change during the day. Most often, if I need a little extra warmth or wish to keep the cold wind off my ears, I add a thin hard-hat liner that I have dyed green. It breaks the wind, but doesn't muffle any sound to speak of. I use a wool Belgian Military balaclava under my outer hat if it gets even colder, and I can also use both the balaclava and the hard-hat liner for even more warmth. Or I can use other combinations such as quilted hard-hat liners or a merino wool stocking cap. If that isn't enough when it's really cold while on stand in our January flintlock season, I can cover any or all of the above with the hood on my heavier hunting coats.
I don't like the idea of any hat that will be too warm. It takes only seconds to adjust to different temperatures or activity levels, by simply adding or removing layers. JimmyW's story about layering up with feet and body parts covered in plastic bags is the very last thing I'd want to do. I'm glad he admitted that his inner layers got drenched in sweat. Anyone who has ever experienced hypothermia after sweating and getting overheated would never take such advice. My worst case of hypothermia happened after attempting to track a deer too fast because the weather abruptly changed, and blowing snow was quickly covering the tracks. Sorry to say, that was the only deer I ever lost, but I eventually had to give up after tracks and blood were totally covered. By then, I was pretty sweated up. I stopped to eat a sandwich, and the shivering started. Then it gradually got worse and became full-on blizzard conditions. The Weather forecast was very wrong that day, and when I finally got back to my vehicle, I was so frozen and shivering uncontrollably that it took a good 10 minutes just to get my keys out of my pocket. Then my fingers barely worked to unlock the door and start the engine. To make matters worse, the diesel engine produced very little heat until you got on the road and put a load on it, and I had to slowly drive with the window down until the defroster began to thaw the windshield.
Yesterday started out breezy, clear, and cold at 10° F, but by 3:00 pm it was sunny and a balmy 37° F, so the hard-hat liner helped a lot on stand in the AM. It took seconds to remove it and stuff it in my coat pocket when I decided to move to another spot. My hat got pulled off, or nearly so, several times while moving through thick areas of hawthorn, blackberries, or multiflora rose, and I don't think the presence of buttons or flap tie strings would have changed things a bit. That's just part of hunting in brushy places.
I thought of the following statement from the Nutty Professor at one point yesterday, when I hit the brim of my hat with the eye cups on my binoculars.
But I do like a short brim which tends to help with keeping my head down on the comb - a perennial problem for me. With the average ball cap, I have a tendency to cut half the brim off. Looks like hell, but the grouse don't notice.
In my entire life, I have never seen or heard of any shooter who cut the brim off his hat because it kept him from getting his head down on the gun stock. If that happened to me, or most any normal shooter, the normal intelligent response would be to simply reposition the hat. That is also what I did when I bumped my binoculars into my hat brim yesterday. I did not feel compelled to cut off half of the hat brim. Oh, I also chuckled a bit too... thinking about an absurd response to a simple dilemma.
