I shower every morning and I shower every evening after work. The longest I’ve gone without a shower in the past dozen or more years is 1 day and that was after recovering from surgery. Even when I do a fly in-drop off hunt I have to bathe every day or every other day at the least.
I like being clean and I sleep better when I go to bed clean. When we do fly in drop off hunts I’ll uheat water so that I can bathe and wash up, especially when I’m up in Alaska. Being smothered in 100% Deet, covered in dead mosquitoes makes a bath one of life’s simple pleasures and a definite mood changer....for the better. 😁
Luckily my hunting partners are also into their personal hygiene which makes sharing a tent with them much easier. I couldn’t share a tent with a guy that hasn’t showered or bathed in a week. It’s easy enough to stay clean, even in the wilderness. If my partner doesn’t want to bathe during our week or two of hunting then he will be bringing and sleeping in his own tent. Either way is fine with me.
A quick story.....
My buddy and I did a fly out black bear hunt in Alaska. After our second day in camp I decided that an evening bath by the lakeside would be necessary. I heated the water, stacked my clothes and towel neatly and in the order in which I would use it. Towel on top, boxers next, tee shirt, pants, etc. I stripped naked and proceeded to take a much needed, glorious warm “bath” by the edge of the lake. I shampooed, soaped up, rinsed off and put on clean clothes....it was a wonderful feeling being clean and Deet and sweat free. My buddy saw how easy it was and how it improved my overall attitude and outlook so he decided to do the same thing. I explained my system to him and he tried to do the same thing, the same way I did it. Problem was that he didn’t really listen to me nor did he think it necessary to organize his clothes like I did. My buddy is 6’7” and not as self-assured as I am so he wasn’t “comfortable” being buck naked in the wide open but empty wilderness....still he decided to proceed. He stripped naked and in his rush to get done as fast as possible he mistook his fancy Shamwow towel for a washcloth and immediately dunked his towel into the bucket of warm water leaving him with nothing to dry off with. By now he was soaped up when suddenly and out of nowhere a Cessna on floats flies right over him maybe a hundred feet AGL. He was frantically trying to get the soap out of his eyes so he could hastily throw some clothes on. In his rush he dropped his shirt in the lake and dropped his clean pants in the mud. I was laughing so hard I was crying. Here we are in the middle of nowhere, he’s buck naked and we’re being buzzed by a Cessna. He was so flustered by our unexpected guests that his lack of preparations really bit him in the ass. His clean clothes were soaked and muddy and his once dry towel was now soaked. He had not followed my process because he always had a better way of doing things but that day, actually the entire trip, seemed to change the dynamics of our relationship and from then on he’d listen to me and do things the way I did them, at least as it pertained to fishing and hunting. 😁
