r/foraging•
Nathaniel820

Are there any "foraging gloves" specifically made to provide heavy-duty protection against thorns while retaining (as close as possible to) full dexterity in your fingers?

Recently I discovered some large blackberry shrubs near my house with lots of berries, but of course they're full of thorns and don't give up the berries without a fight. Usually I can just deal with plant's thorns when hiking or whatever since it's just a brief annoyance, but either blackberry thorns in specific or just the extent I'm getting poked by them makes them VERY annoying, with the back of my hand and forearm being covered in little jabs that look like bug bites and burn with hot water for hours after.

Looking online everyone recommends heavy duty gloves or gauntlets for dealing with blackberries in the context of gardening, which makes sense since the thorns are so invasive that just normal fabric garden gloves wouldn't do much and/or just get caught on them nonstop. But the issue is that, since they're so heavy duty, it seems like it would get in the way of carefully picking berries that are fragile and often hidden behind vines.

So, are there any gloves out there that have heavy-duty protection for the majority of the glove, but leaves JUST the first few fingers with a thinner fabric material? Like this, where only the blue part is soft fabric.

Posted May 5, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

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