As a follow-on to my earlier post, a movie featuring Garrett Connover and and Dave and Kielyn Marrone from Lure of the North (and their traditional winter gear, in all its glory) can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJ5EmldH3ZY
Here is a paper presenting a comparison of various measures of comfort for human test subjects in cold weather conditions while wearing "military," "expedition" or "caribou" winter gear:
https://www.int-res.com/articles/cr/5/c005p083.pdf
I had this paper stashed on my disorganized detachable hard drive electronic archive, but the link above will get you your own copy.
By most metrics, the caribou outerwear is the clear winner in this paper. In a few cases, there is little difference between the treatments (e.g. bare hand skin temperature). As an aside, most of the time, a person doesn't go bare handed for very long in truly cold conditions, anyway; pop off the mittens (preferably left dangling from "sourdough strings" or wrist loops, so they can't be easily lost), do the task requiring dexterity, and get the mitts back on. If necessary, use a pair of thin leather work gloves to block the wind and conduction to metal (touching aluminum at -20 F feels like touching a hot stove - I repaired commercial doors for a while, and wintertime is hard on stuff). I usually don't switch to mitts until temps are colder than 10 F, as long it's not too windy and I will be working or walking or otherwise busy. It's sometimes a bit cold and painful for the first few minutes I'm out, until my body realizes that more blood flow is required to my hands, then I'm fine. I find that not being overdressed on one part of my body seems to work better for providing equilibrated comfort. I first learned this delivering a morning paper route as a kid - I could handle the papers and open storm doors and so on without needing to pull off my el-cheapo
Wells Lamont work gloves, and my hands would warm up and be comfortable by the time I was about halfway through my route. My hands will often get uncomfortably sweaty wearing mitts while working (I am naturally a sweaty sort, I guess - maybe I just run warm), which then makes the mitts a bit soggy and thus less insulative when I stop and sit. I will keep a pair of light mitts handy (leather "choppers" with a wool or fleece liner, preferably removable so they can be dried or the liners swapped), "just in case"; but, the mitts will remain dry until I really need them.
Caribou is pretty much the same as reindeer (as best I know, it is a single species with circumpolar distribution, but having several inter fertile sub-species, at least some of which in the western hemisphere seem to remain fairly well genetically isolated from each other due to behavioral reasons). However, unlike reindeer, caribou will never be domesticated, at least by the Ethen-eldeli ("caribou eater") Dene who are the traditionally seasonal nomadic caribou hunters of the American north, since they believe as an article of faith that if the caribou are ever owned, the caribou will leave and never return (see for instance, chapter 6 of the reference here:
https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp02/NQ32015.pdf). Since caribou traditionally provided to the Dene nearly everything necessary for life, the absence of caribou would be devastating to them; even though a lot of stuff can be purchased from the Northern Store, subsistence hunting and fishing is still very important, and the cultural loss would be huge. I have some (very limited) summertime
experience with the Sayisi Dene of Tadoule Lake, MB, about 100 miles west of Churchill on Hudson Bay and about 60 miles south of the Arctic Circle. A delivery to the village featured on Ice Road Truckers, but in the summer, it's strictly a fly-in village, though you could technically go up the Seal River from Churchill if you were tough and started early
enough in the season, since that's how the Tadoule Lake Band got there from Churchill when they first left the government ghetto (some of the men had scoped out potential relocation sites the previous winter by dog sled, and identified Tadoule Lake as the best spot, in part due to the good fishing). Thankfully, I did not open my fat yap and offer a "helpful suggestion" of domesticating caribou while I was there, though I am sure they would have graciously explained my faux pas and kindly overlooked my ignorance and cultural insensitivity.
In any case, tracking down caribou hides in the Lower 48 might not be too easy. However, for the metrics for which there was a distinct difference in comfort in the results presented in this paper, caribou was top notch, and might be worth the effort. Which makes sense, since the caribou migrate from their summer breeding grounds on the tundra to the boreal forests to winter, and subarctic weather is often as cold as or even colder than the arctic. Jimmy Clipping told me that they'd had a stretch of bad weather the winter prior to my summertime trip, with temps in the mid -50s C (near -60 F), and the snow had drifted up to his eave (8 or 9 feet, by eye). Tadoule Lake is within the wintering range of the Qamanirjuaq herd, so the caribou are naturally properly dressed for such cold conditions. It might also be possible to get reindeer hides, if you wanted to go this route. As I noted above, the differences between caribou and reindeer are slim to none, as far as I know, other than which passport they carry.
I also have some info (somewhere in my vastly extensive electronic stash of stuff) on making fish skin rain gear (an article with pretty pictures, but little in the way of technical detail, is here:
https://hakaimagazine.com/article-short/secret-language-salmon-skin-coats/). I have something which shows stitching details and such like and also for making waterproof seal skin kamiks, but I'll have to dig. All of which, together with the caribou hide outerwear, would be very HUSP-y.
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