Whenever I see a hunting show on one of the various outdoors or rural-oriented channels on Dish Network, I notice that the host, and the majority of the guests, have beards, often Grizzly Adams-style. The few that don’t more often than not have mustaches.
So, what’s the deal with facial hair and hunters? (Yes, being the SDMB, I fully expect to get the “My buddies and I hunt deer every day of the year, and we’re all clean shaven, and everyone I know who isn’t a hunter looks like Moses” responses.)
WAG: If you are in the field for a number of days, shaving is a real pain. Beards make that irrelevant. If you hunt/fish/hike a lot, it is often easier to just stay furry.
Your life can depend upon the leftover eggs and beans contained therein.
Seriously, it probably has something to do with the self-perception of being a rugged outdoorsman. We get these types up here all the time, dressed in their Cabela’s cammies as they get off the plane looking all grim and determined.
Exactly. I grew up with hunters in my family and my parent’s friends’ families. Almost all of them have cited that it gets COLD in the woods in Pennsylvania in November and December, and a beard keeps your face warm pretty well.
A lot of my hunting friends start growing in beards for the hunting season a month or so before it starts, so that by the middle of the season they usually have some really thick growth. Mostly it’s just tradition amongst my group of friends, their families have done it for years, their friends have done it for years et cetera.
Me and a few others who have professional careers that sort of require more strict grooming don’t participate.
I’m not sure how common growing in a beard just for the hunting season is outside of my own social circle.
I guess **silenus **WAG is not that far off. Besides being uncomfortable when in the field, shaving often requires use of cosmetics, many of them with strong odors - which might alert animals about hunter presence.
I don’t shave, but I do have an Indiana Jones-style perpetual 5 o’clock shadow, basically because I’m not fond of shaving at the best of times, and when you’re out in the field you really don’t want to be carrying a shaving kit along with your rifle, ammunition, food/drink, and outdoor gear.
I don’t actually know any hunters who go for the ZZ Top look, to be honest, but I’m aware of the stereotype and it does kinda make sense.
He probably shaves his own facial hair to make a loin cloth to hunt in.
As far as the OP, I’ll add it looks manly. Plus, might it help a wee bit from abrasions to the face via twigs and branches?
Another reason hunters may not shave is scent. You do not want to be wearing any unnatural scents. This is especially true for bow hunters. When I was a kid, a local bow hunter would store his clothes in our barn fora few weeks before bow season.
This hunter wears a beard, but I wear it year round. In fact, Mrs. Butler has never seen me without a beard (been together for 10 years now, married 8). It was she that brought the guns into the relationship (I grew up in the standard liberal MA “Guns are bad” family, though both my sister & I both married into gun/hunting familys) and as a result essentially got me into hunting.
It’s warmer, more comfortable (when cold), and as mentioned above, reduces the number of “non-nature” smells that I bring into the woods.
My beard, probably like many beard wearers, tends to be short in the warm months, and longer in the winter.
I’ve got a beard, and I cross-country ski and was recently on a winter camping trip with temps down to -35F. The beard may help a bit with warmth, but the mustache is a PITA when it gets stiff and frozen with exhaled breath and nose dribbles. I was really close to making an emergency conversion to the Amish look, or perhaps a Wolverine. It also kept me from getting sunblock on certain parts of my face, which burned right through the beard.
I initially grew the beard because my face and neck have always been irritated by shaving; I can’t really imagine going back to scraping my face every day for - what reason exactly? There was an scene in the new Battlestar Galactica a few years back with Edward Olmos shaving against the grain of his beard and it gave me the willies. My whole face started to hurt with the memory of ingrown hairs and razor burn.
Having said that, there is a definite subculture vibe to having a beard - I’ve seen it a lot in the ‘manly’ arts like hunting, orienteering, historical re-enactment, woodworking, etc, and usually on older men. It seems like beard-wearing percentages go up with age. I was at a woodworking expo once and remarked to my wife that “it looks like a beard convention in here.” I find that I can now classify most of my leisure activities as ‘beard conventions.’
