 So let's talk about mittens. Hey everyone, Dylan Schumacher, Citadel Defense. And this morning it was like one or two degrees outside and I had to go outside and snow blow. And it was windy, it was pretty cold. So I thought, you know, it'd be really good to kind of continue to test out the Army Mitten system. I don't know if it's really called that, I don't know what it's called. But basically it comes in three layers here, okay? So you have the, this is just a wool liner, right? This is a Trigger Mitten wool liner thing, right? And then the, I'm gonna call it the second layer. You'll understand why in a second here, okay? It's just these Trigger Mittens, okay? I got these all in eBay, by the way, which is where I would tell you to go find them. Or, you know, I'm sure you can find it in Army Surplus Store or whatever. But, you know, wool Trigger Mitten liner, right? Fits inside this Trigger Mitten here. And this thing's actually decently solid. You know, it's got a, this is a real leather palm, which is really nice. And then you can, you can actuate a rifle trigger with this. I've done it, right? I've gone out and run these a little bit. And not super insulated, really, you're relying on that wool liner for insulation. But, you know, it does have a decently long cuff that goes down decently well. And you can tighten up this wrist cord here, you know? And you can do that with your mitten on. It's a little bit of a pain, you know, to try to get dexterity here, but you can do it. And, you know, with these, you can definitely run down into the teens, just as is. I will say, now, full disclosure, I am trying to get, I have an order online right now, of just some thin wool gloves that I'm gonna get, like some Merino wool, just like thin glove liners, that I'm gonna try to triple layer this part of the system, right? So I'd wear, my hands get cold easy. So, you know, maybe you run hot and you don't really have this problem, but I'm a little wimp. So I want, like, glove liners. Then I would wear this mitten liner over that, right? And then I would run the trigger mitten over that, okay? So that would be my kind of preferred go-to three-layer system for me in order to keep my hands from freezing. Now, the other thing you can do is the army also has these arctic big boy mittens here. These big monster chompers things here. And these are composed of a, like this is like a M65 field jacket liner type material here, okay? And then in this big mitten. And these are, again, pretty beefy. You see, again, cuff comes down super far, okay? This is like a, some kind of, I don't know if that's a sheep's wool or what, a backer here, okay? And then again, leather palm, leather grip, all that stuff. Now, what I did when I was snow-blowing today is, first of all, I ran the glove, the wool liners, okay? And I started out with, and you can do this here, the trigger mitten liner here, okay? And then I ran this inside the huge chomper thing here. Let me loosen this up, okay? You can run this whole thing then in the mitten. Now, when you do that, dexterity just plummets, right? I mean, you're talking about like a two, level two or three dexterity on a scale of one to 10. I mean, it's pretty bad. I can get some grippy power here between my thumb and my hand, but I mean, that's really about it. Even like using my hand to try to curl in to get a grip up top here. It's iffy, okay? But your hand's gonna stay warm. Your hand is gonna stay warm. Like I said, one or two degrees outside, windy, cold, this is gonna keep your hand warm. So I think tactical application here, right? If you're out and you're patrolling and you're gonna be stopped, or again, it's just super cold and you just need to keep your hands warm. And if you have to get to a fight, yeah, you have to take your mitten off and then you can at least get to your trigger mitten. But if it's just cold, like cause cold will defeat you before the bad guys will, right? And you just need to keep your hands warm. Man, this system is gonna work. Like it is gonna keep your hands warm. Now, after a while, because of that lack of dexterity, and I could, you know, I have two dead man switches on the snow blower, right? So I could actuate that with this. Like I could get a grip on that. But after a while, it's a lot of material to fight through. So I ditched the trigger mitten exterior, right? And I just ran the liner in the big mitten. And your dexterity improves probably another one or two points here in my made-up dexterity scale. Okay, but now I can actually kind of get a grip on things a little bit. You know, again, you can tighten these way down. And like that's pretty good. Now my tips of my fingers did get a little cold. Again, my fingers get cold easy, so you might not have this problem. But, you know, by and large, I felt pretty good. I felt pretty toasted. And if I had, like I said, another individual liner over or under the mitten liner, and then under here, I think I'd be pretty solid. But that's kind of the system I've been running. And what I like about this system is that you can run them all together, right? You could, when you're out, again, moving, patrolling, and it's cold, you can always keep your liners on, okay? You can run the trigger mittens. And then when you're stopped and or it gets really cold, you could just upgrade to the big chopper mittens. Or you could just run the big chopper mittens knowing that if things get bad again, you're gonna have to ditch that mitten and you're only gonna run that wool liner in order to run your gun. You gotta decide how cold it is, how long you're gonna be out, likelihood of contact, blah, blah, blah, blah. There's all kinds of tactical considerations. But I think this system between the liners, the big Arctic mittens, which these are heavy, and they'll take up a decent amount in a pack, right? But man, they're gonna keep your fingers from getting cold, I'll tell you that. And then these trigger mittens, between these three, being able to layer and pair them together as is appropriate, I think that gives you a lot of options. And I think it's actually a pretty well done system. So it's gonna be my kind of go-to glove system for tactical operations stuff in the winter, because I think it does give you all that versatility while allowing your hands to stay mostly warm and then actually be able to do what, again, it is the endeavor you still need to do. So that's what I would recommend to you. Maybe you've had a little bit more experience in the system. I'm sure there's another, there's better mittens out there. I have no doubt there are better mittens out there. But all in, I think I paid, I'd have to go back and look now on eBay, but I bet you I paid $20 or $30 just for these, right, for these together. And then maybe another $30 for these. So 60 bucks all in, and I have a total system. Now are there better systems out there? Yeah, I'm sure there are. But is the juice worth the squeeze? Is the $200 you're gonna spend on those mittens worth it? Is it gonna have to pay off? I mean, hey, if you got the money and you got the time, whatever, knock yourself out, I'm just saying for me, this system, I think, is probably the most cost-effective system that I know of when you can find these in surplus and eBay and stuff. So I would highly recommend that you take a look at the Army Mitten system. And I think, especially for my friends north of that Mason-Dixon line, especially when it gets into that deep cold, and by that I mean, you know, subzero temperatures, windy, stuff like that, being able to throw on those Arctic mittens, man, it makes a difference. It really is helpful. Hope that gives you some ideas for layering your gloves in the winter. Do brave deeds and endure.