Warmest Hunting Socks TEST | Merino, Alpaca, Electric Heated 

My great grandpa would hike in with a spare pair of wool socks tucked in his jacket then put them on at his deer stand and stuff the ones he took off in his jacket and rotate as necessary. It was a tactic used during his time in the Finnish military by snipers that he brought with him to Northern Minnesota after the war.

I think my Drake socks are merino, I love them. My DU socks are 2nd warmest, and my Browning socks are for early season.

Thank you George for doing these tests! That was a lot of work! You are amazing my friend! 👍🙏☺

I absolutely love my Warrior Alpaca socks. You can't beat their comfort either.

I've worn wool socks, sweaters and coats and pants in colder conditions. My sons being younger get after me about being " old fashioned" . Well, I my be old to a 26 and 29 year old but wool works.

I love your channel dude, it has been so helpful. I have a low tolerance to the cold and the sock series has been great for me. Despite having highly insulated boots i still feel like my socks have been the weak link. I will try out some of these and let you know how it goes!

Thanks for the video as always

Awesome video! You always have great content and I for one who has had frost bite from my military days truly appreciates this test. Thank you Sir!

Awesome George thank you for giving us a starting point so we can see what works best for us, God bless you and go get them in the marsh

Great test. I like the changes you made from last time.. I looking at some bison socks and sure would of lived to seen alpaca vs bison.

Great video as always. And timely as I’m about to start shopping for new socks and other layers.

Awesome test and video. Thanks for all the effort you go through for us George. It's almost like even on high, the heated socks tried to keep you at body temp without sweating but I'm guessing it's just a coincidence.

I left a couple of comments on your older sock test video. To continue on a theme. A couple of points about the finer points of insulation (for general public viewing/reading). The most important aspect of insulation is fiber size and how many per a give volume. The smaller the fibers you can pack, with air space between them, in a given volume, the more insulation you will get. This is why high fill power goose and Eider down are so ridiculously insulating. The fibrils that come off the shaft are ridiculously fine and there are many branches of these. The next important factor is whether or not the fibers are more solid or hollow. Alpaca fibers have these pockets of relative void/empty spaces in them, which help to boost the insulation some, especially when wet. But, if you compare say a layer of coarse alpaca verse and equally thick layer of very ultra fine merino, the merino will be more insulating, because again fiber size is more important when there is a significant difference. The next important factor is fiber shape. Perfectly round fibers will not still as much air as a shaped fiber with more surface area, whether that is trilobal like silk fibers, or fibers like the Coolmax that is round but with the side channels, or Octa fibers. A simple thought exercise is taking some cord of different shapes and packing them parallel to each other, or twisting them one over the other. The perfectly round fibers will have less void space between their surfaces than the shaped cord with more surface area. Same principle for clothing insulation but on a more micro level. Then material matters some, both the thermal conductivity, the moisture regain and how fast it dries or not. Cotton sucks because the material has high moisture regain and doesn't dry fast, while the fibers are more ribbon and flat (and tend to lay flatter the wetter they get, so more surface area of conductive material touching your skin and less trapped air pockets), and the material has higher thermal conductivity, especially when wet, than wool, alpaca, polyester, polypropylene, and acrylic (but its dry thermal conductivity is lower than nylon's). Its a perfect storm of various different factors in combo with moisture that make it a poor active and outdoor cold and/or wet insulator. (It is actually a pretty decent dry condition insulator though). On my other comments, I mentioned how I really like using a 2nd layer of thicker polypropylene sock over a thin. A good alternative to that, is a thicker thermolite sock that you treat with a silicone treatment (thin some 100% silicone caulk with naphtha in a 1 part silicone to 30 parts naphtha by volume). If the thermolite sock is made to wick, this will completely ruin the wicking, but that is ok. It will still dry faster than the non treated version (especially if you wring and/or swing the water out of it). (Btw, if you want to add some anti odor properties, mix in some very fine copper oxide particles in with the silicone naphtha slurry before treating the Thermolite socks. Hopefully some of that will get embedded more towards the surface of the silicone coating, which should cut down on microbial growth. I will be trying this with some synthetic fishnet baselayers. I have some nylon-spandex blend ones, and some acrylic ones that I want to treat with this process).

Friend of mine turned me onto Heatholders boot socks. Cabelas stocks them for $20. They’re definitely the thickest warmest socks I’ve encountered to date. If you aren’t already doubling or tripling up on some thick style socks you’ll have to buy larger footwear to wear them.

Do people not layer socks anymore? For work i wear costco merino wick away socks then put over that thicker merino wool sock. You need to keep the moisture away from your feet and allow the moisture to escspe. otherwise feet will get cold and stay cold. Once i added moisture wick away sock layer, my feet have never been cold.

Just found your channel, great stuff! I subscribed. Really nice/thorough review. I love darn tough, and will always have them, but I’m going to give those warriors a try for those really long sits on cold days.

First Lite Zero Cold Weather Sock: firstlite.pxf.io/xkgK4d Darn Tough Heavyweight Hunter: amzn.to/3hXInCT KUIU Ultra Crew: www.kuiu.com/products/ultra-merino-crew-sock-grey-green Lincoln Outfitters Big Bertha: www.ruralking.com/lincoln-outfitters-mens-big-bertha-merino-wool-sock-charcoal-l844-ch-xl-charcoal Warrior Alpaca Toasty Toes: www.warrioralpacasocks.com/alpaca-socks/sock-activity/casual-socks/toasty-toes-ultimate-alpaca-socks/ Fieldsheer Men's Premium 2.0 Merino Heated fieldsheer.com/products/premium-2-merino-heated-socks-men

I use darn tough heavy weight merino wool knee high socks!

I have been wondering about the alpaca socks. Not anymore

Great job. Thanks. I bought a pair of a Hollow Alpaca socks. Pretty good. The percentage of wool in the sock material might make a difference. I’ve seen socks listed as Marino wool with only 20%. I have Marino with 80%.

I have KUIU’s three varieties of socks, Darn tough in thinner and their thickest models and Hollow alpaca socks in thin and thicker varieties…I truly love them all, the alpaca are the softest and most comfortable by far…due to the darn tough warranty, I think I’ll hike in one of their thinner socks and use those as the workhorse sock (can replace them if they wear dow, so my feet don’t sweat, then have a thick pair of alpaca socks or the KUIU ultra merino sock for after the hike while I’m sitting and glassing

Great review. Would be good to know the different composition of materials in each sock, ie. wool and ply thickness, % of synthetic material (nylon, elastine etc) as these all contribute to warmth retention and thickness.

Most those socks are almost to heavy imo. In Illinois we'll get those -5 degree days. Problem with socks is they'll get wet from sweat so an overlay heavy sock will cause em to sweat. People should look into a hiker liner sock to pair with their heavy weights. A liner will control moisture better and keep the foot more comfortable all day. Also don't wear those heavy socks on the drive out

Well this video puts some data to my disappointment in the darn tough socks I got for Christmas. The hunter medium and heavy and neither seemed any warmer than the much cheaper merino blend socks I bought off Amazon years ago. Fine as a gift, but I’d be annoyed if I had bought them with my own money.

After your first test I tried to purchase some of the big bertha socks from Rural Kings on 12/4/23 and they never communicated with me via email about my order, never sent any tracking info, and today I received an email saying my order has been cancelled. I don’t think I’ll be doing any business with that company in the future!

Fun follow-up test(s): Take 1 or 2 (1 is probably going to be the most convenient because of the method I will propose) of the highest performing regular socks AND the Fieldsheer then throw the waterbottle into a sock, then into a pair of hunting boots, - and leave it for 3-4 hours not just 1hour. I feel the point of actively heated clothes/socks is to extend the time you can be hot and comfortable, so it would be interesting to see at what point, if at all, an actively heated sock will start to outperform. You could also just redo with the same method you used in this video (dry) and extend the time to 3-4 hours at the same time - since you have 2 of each sock anyway :)

How about a base layer test with Alpaka

i have a long pair of thin mohair socks and they are far warmer than all my thick wool socks. When they get wet they actually heat uo. They are itchy and need to be worn over very thin socks.

I would like to see you do a test of zero fit socks. They claim to create heat with the touch of your body. They say they are the warmest out there. Japanese ingenuity they say.

It looks like there may have been a discrepancy between your initial wet test data reporting with the alpaca and the later graph you made? You first said that the alpaca socks had the warmest water temp, but then later put it below another in the graph.

Hey George what first lite coat are you wearing?

where do you buy lincoln outfitters?

What's your PhD in?