Hot Stuff!

Gary Chillingworth covers the often overlooked subject of how heat affects the body whilst shooting

- Gary Chillingworth

We’re coming into the hottest part of the year, so it’s a good idea to look at how heat and dehydration can affect the body and affect the way we shoot. As we all learned at school, the human body is mainly made up from water, with a bit of carbon, calcium, hydrogen and nitrogen thrown in for good measure, although when I spoke to my doctor last week, he said is was also about 4% Spam and apparently, this is a bit too high.

When it gets very hot and we are walking around the woods in boots and camo, carrying a heavy rifle and bag, the body starts to dehydrate. The brain has a series of signals that it sends out and the first of these is a dry mouth, this is then followed by headaches and cramp. However, one of the very first things to happen to the human body is the shutting down of the tear ducts when you are getting dehydrated, and this leads to a condition called ‘dry eye’. Tears are used to lubricate the eyes and this helps the eye to focus properly and with the help of the brain enables us to judge distance.

Without the full amount of optical lubrication (calibre humour) the eyes will get tired, and eye strain will massively affect your ability to see your targets and rangefind them accurately – if you have ever had to blink a few times to focus on a target, you are becoming dehydrated.