I got my first pair of real hunting boots in 1973 before attending Outward Bound in Northern Minnesota. They were a pair of 8”, leather-lined boots with heavy lug soles, made by Red Wing. I went through 2 or 3 pairs of these boots before they were discontinued in the 1980s and replaced with fabric-lined models. Leather-lined boots had gone extinct.

Schnee’s Beartooth Classics are the first pair of leather-lined boots I’ve had since my original Red Wings. Overall, they are the best performing and most durable boots I’ve hunted in, providing an optimum balance of agility and support—and they’re leather-lined.

Even in cold weather I prefer leather-lined boots with heavy wool socks over fabric-lined, insulated boots which are nearly impossible to dry out when water comes over the boot’s top and there’s no electricity for boot driers. Wet wool socks can be dried inside your sleeping bag at night and leather-lined boots stay warm and pliable there as well. (I typically hunt backcountry.)

For hunting in extremely cold weather I use Schnee’s Hunter II pac-boots. The insulated liners can also be removed and dried out at night inside your sleeping bag.

Joe Cavanaugh has recently worked as a big-game hunting guide in Idaho’s Frank Church Wilderness, and is currently a licensed hunting guide in New Mexico. In the off-season he works in predator control in the Desert Southwest. For nearly 50 years he has explored and hunted a wide range of terrain types including mountains, swamps, deserts, boreal forests, jungles and plains. Joe Cavanaugh is the author of The Jungle Hunter, a book based on DIY hunts in Central and South America. He considers footwear to be one of his most critical decisions in choosing hunting gear.