Sponsored By PolorMax Scent Prevent Anti-odor, Anti-microbial Clothing.
The base science of wicking involves placing fibers against your skin so they can aid in moving moisture away from your skins surface allowing it to evaporate. But why wear a technical base layer that will wick away moisture? The answer is because moisture is both your friend and your enemy. Good hunters know how to manage this moisture issue.
As you likely know, we loose between 2-4 pints of moisture through perspiration each day. If you're working hard and pouring concrete on a 90-degree day you may loose 3-4 times this much. This is a good thing and the system allows us to regulate our body temperature. Our bodies are amazing machines able to regulate our temperature so well that we seldom vary more than .2 of a degree throughout the day. If we work hard and burn calories we produce heat and that heat is dissipated through a system based on some physics called, "the latent heat of evaporation". This system allows us to rid our bodies of heat and cool off through perspiration.
Here is the real story. You probably learned this in high school physics class…or maybe you were dreaming about bowhunting that day and you are about to learn it now! Here is the nuts and bolts science. A disproportionate amount of heat is lost when water changes states. In this case a liquid changing into a gas. A large amount of heat is required to change water into water vapor. In layman's terms, when our sweat evaporates we loose large amounts of heat. This is how we regulate our temperature and keep it within a few tenths of 98.6.
THE TECH FIBER WICKING STORY
So what about this wicking everyone's talking about? Here is the simple story on wicking. As we sweat the moisture accumulates on our skin. If you have a garment made of cotton against your skin, the cotton will absorb the moisture and capture and hold it there, resulting in wet cotton next to your skin. The cotton fibers crush together when wet, eliminating air spaces and hold moisture. The result is that you are uncomfortable and if its cold you freeze because you have a wet shirt next to your skin. Not only does your skin loose heat trying to evaporate this moisture, but the wet cotton benefits the bacteria that lives on your skin. Bacteria like moisture. This is a perfect world for making human body odor. Therefore you stink. Fabrics like cotton are called hydroscopic fabrics. They are no-tech fabrics.
NEW TECHNOLOGY PLEASE
On the other hand some tech fabrics are scientifically designed to do the opposite of cotton. These fabrics are made of microscopic fibers that are rigid enough to hold their position in the fabric and not wad up when wet. As a matter of fact these micro-fibers resist crushing and have a characteristic we call loft. It a term often used top describe a sleeping bags. Loft means the fabric maintains air spaces between the fibers and in the case of a sleeping bag…the batting maintains its thickness. This loft is important because it traps air and can keep a layer of warm air against our skin. We know this as insulation. The key is to have millions of tiny air spaces that can hold heat.
These same micro fibers lift moisture away from your skin by using a physics principal known as capillary action. It is the same principal that causes the coke inside of your straw to be at a slightly higher level than in the cup. Moisture is drawn up the wall of the straw. The same principal draws sweat up the micro fibers and allows it to evaporate…keeping you dry. Once the moisture is wicked up along the fiber the air spaces around the fiber facilitates drying and the moisture is evaporated. Presto…This leaves your skin both dry and insulated.
Trey Harris of PolarMAX and Wade Nolan look over some new tech base layers that are being made available to hunters. The PolarMAX and XGO technical base layer garments are made in the USA.
HIGH TECH FIBER TECHNOLOGY FOR THE HUNTER
Here is the key…human bacteria need to be moist to respire and stink… so stay dry. The newest and most researched tech base layer is PolarMAX and their new XGO brand that has been selected for use by our US military. The XGO has two features and two layers that will benefit you. "ACCLIMATE DRY" is a proprietary micro-fleece whose fibers wick 4X better than their closest competition. You stay dry even when pumping out sweat. And if that isn't enough the ACCLIMATE DRY is permanently coated with a topical anti-microbial that attacks body odor causing bacteria they call it "SCENT PREVENT".
Then the second layer of XGO has a new X-STATIC Silver Nylon technology that inhibits that human bacteria and the silver neutralizes odor-causing ammonia-denatured proteins. XGO is 2006 cutting edge tech clothing. Sort of like base layers on steroids.
New from PolarMAX is XGO high tech base layers for the hunt. Selected by the US Marines for our troops in the desert, this two layer system is a blend of ACCLIMATE DRY micro fleece that is 4 times more effective than the competition at wicking plus SCENT PREVENT anti-microbial treatment that lasts the life of the garment. No need to recharge it...just hunt.
This is the wicking and bacteria story in a nutshell. If you are a serious hunter it's time you retire all of that old carbon based stuff and get with the times. New technology that will do all it says it will. And that's exactly what it takes to fool the nose of a whitetail.
