Hatch Winter Patrol gloves are not your everyday pair of shooting gloves. They have a specific purpose: to keep your hands warm while maintaining dexterity and control.
I find myself wearing gloves a lot, for many different reasons. In the summer, I use them to keep a good grip on my gun when my hands become sweaty. When shooting for long periods, they protect your hands from the aggressive texturing some companies like to put on their grips. I also wear them a great deal in the winter to keep my hands warm, but that requires a different type of glove.
Before I was in law enforcement, I considered a pair of winter gloves to be those big insulated bulky things. You know, the ones that kept your hands pretty warm but didn’t allow you to use them. It didn’t bother me because keeping my hands warm was more important than anything I needed to pick up or handle.
Once I became a cop, I was introduced to a whole new world of gloves. Not as much for warmth but for protecting your hands from all kinds of things.
We wore them when searching suspects, making arrests, training at the range and tactical applications like residential search warrants. But even in that world of guns and tactical toys, we can’t escape the need for warm gloves. Well, at least those of us who live in cold weather environments.
So where do find that line between warmth and practicality? Hatch found it with their Winter Patrol Glove (WPG100). They are not too bulky, but warm enough for cold weather use.
Hatch – Leather Insulated Winter Patrol Gloves
You can learn a lot about these gloves by their name. They are made of leather, they’re insulated, and they were made for patrol use. Are they super thin and easy to handle a gun with? No. But you can use a gun with them and that’s the point: a middle ground for extreme cold weather and operability.
Made of goat leather, the exterior is slick on top with a textured bottom for better gripping. These even smell like leather because you’re not getting an imitation version; it’s the real deal.
The insulation on the inside of the gloves is made from C70 Thinsulate with a Tricot inner liner. A leather cinch strap allows you to tighten them around your wrist. Along with the cinch strap is an inner elastic band to help keep the wrist area snug as you wear them.
Hatch offers size S – XXL so you can find a pair that fits your hands. I would call these a medium thickness of glove when comparing between a slim pair of shooting gloves and a thick pair of winter gloves.
Can you shoot with them?
Those who carry a concealed weapon or work in law enforcement must always decide one thing: What is practical for our mission?
If I’m carrying a concealed gun, I want to be able to draw that gun and use it for protection. A thick pair of gloves is not ideal for this. But, when it’s bitterly cold outside and I’m going to be outdoors, having numb, half-frozen hands are not practical either. In this case, I’m going to decide what is more practical in that moment and a warmer pair of gloves wins.
Drawing my weapon, firing it, reloading, and performing other tasks will be slower and harder. But that is the trade-off we make on those occasions.
There are a couple of things we can do to prepare for winter weather. First, train with winter gloves, coats, and other gear. The more you do something the better you will be at it. If the weather is cold enough to require a coat and gloves, practice with that gear on the range.
Second, don’t forget gloves can come off quickly when needed. If your firearm is small enough that you can’t safely draw and fire it with your gloves on, practice taking them off quickly. Again, this may not be ideal, but it is more of a reality in some parts of the country.
Are the Hatch Winter Patrol gloves just for police?
Here is the good thing about military and police gear; it’s been tested and used extensively. So, the answer is no, they are not just for the police. Many people drift towards military and police gear for their personal needs because they know it was made for professional use.
To determine how usable the Hatch Winter Patrol gloves are, I headed out to the range with them. AmmunitiontoGo.com provided some 115 grain 9mm Magtech ammunition for this article.
The point of the range review isn’t to just see how I can shoot with the Winter Patrol gloves, but to see what their limits are. I have several pair of gloves that fit snugly enough to load the ammunition into the magazines with them on. While I didn’t have any trouble getting to the range with the gloves on, I couldn’t load the ammo into the mags. The gloves are just a little too thick for this task.
Once the mags were loaded up, I placed the gloves back on and ran some drills.
Drawing, holstering, loading mags into the gun, and cycling the slide were all possible with the Winter Patrol gloves. Drawing the gun from my IWB holster took a little more time and attention, but after some practice, it wasn’t too bad. I was able to shoot and perform mag changes without any issue.
Just like drawing the gun from my holster, everything just took a little longer to do. I was able to get my phone out of my pocket but had to take the gloves off to use it. Overall, they work great for cold-weather applications on the range.
Summary
The good thing about gloves that are made for patrol purposes is they are made for more than shooting at the range. You can easily wear them for everyday tasks like driving and outdoor work. I wore them during some cold nights, and they kept my hands completely warm.
Like I said earlier, it’s a matter of finding that perfect mix of insulation without too much bulk. For cold weather gloves, the Hatch Winter Patrol gloves from Safariland are just right.
