Shooting Gloves

Since I mentioned shooting with gloves in the last post, I thought I would expand on that a bit. If you live in a place with seasons, you probably find shooting pistols less pleasant when it gets cold out. Extra layers make Instagram draws difficult to pull off, and numb, cold fingers make fast accurate shots seem like something only other people can do.

While nothing will make shooting in the cold quite as nice and easy as shooting in a warm environment, the right gear, especially the right gloves, can make it at least worth doing. Of course, if you shoot at an indoor range, you can disregard most of this. If you have the option to shoot inside for the colder months, that can be a good way to keep training. I’m at the point though, where I intensely dislike most indoor ranges, and having my own range a few hundred yards from my back door has made me unwilling to drive somewhere else and deal with stupid rules that were designed to deal with stupid people.

That means I have to wear gloves for some of my practice. The absolute best gloves I have ever shot in are the PIG Delta gloves. They fit me better than anything else and are very thin. They also grip without being too grippy. They don’t even cost very much, though the price for all this greatness is that they have a short life on my hands. They have no insulation, so they are best worn under an outer mitt in extreme weather, or stand alone in cool, but not frigid temperatures. For me, this means that they are good around the freezing mark, down to maybe the upper 20’s if I can warm my hands in my pockets every once in a while.

The PIG Alpha gloves are a bit more durable, a hair less dextrous, and maybe a hair warmer. Either of these gloves will allow you to load a tube-fed shotgun, something that cannot be done easily with any kind of glove prior to these.

For mid 20’s on down, the PIG Cold Weather gloves are pretty great. They are about the thickest gloves I can still run a pistol well with. The thickness comes from the layer of insulation built into them, which allows me to wear them down to around zero. Of course, these gloves are amazing if you are using a carbine or rifle instead of a pistol.

If you want a cheaper option still, and don’t really need warmth, I have found the Lamont Wells Hydrahyde gloves to work well. Better for long guns, they are still pretty useable with pistols. I can wear them into the high 20’s, like most other uninsulated gloves. They also work well as range work gloves, for moving steel and splintery wood and stuff. I DO NOT use my PIG gloves for that stuff. Depending on your size, you may be able to fit them over your PIG gloves, which works well for range chores or a bit more warmth.

As mentioned before, real cold requires real warmth, and no glove can provide that. I have some OR mittens that I slip my PIG gloves into, but obviously that will not work for EDC self defense type stuff. I use it more for extended backcountry travel, with the understanding that it will take me a second or two to extract my hands. I also have some European military mittens that have the trigger finger separated, and they work well for some applications. Kifaru also makes a great handwarmer that attaches to your ruck. It can be a very good choice for backcountry travel as well, wearing your PIGs in it. Drop a chem pack into it and when you stop or rest, you can insert your hands and warm them.

The Delta Gloves come in some urban friendly colors for EDC, but PIG also makes a nice leather version called the Executive. I don’t use them for training, but I tend to wear them as driving gloves or around town in the winter.

There is a lot more to dressing and training in the cold, but if you don’t have your hands squared away, it will be a miserable experience. Shooting with gloves on will feel weird or difficult at first. You just need to put the time in and they will soon feel much better. Back in the day when all we had were flight gloves or batting gloves, it was harder to be as good with them, but with the advent of the PIG gloves, it has never been easier. Just don’t expect it to feel the same as your bare hands.