YOUR COLDEST HUNT?

[Lee Deming]

I muzzleloaded a doe at -25 here in MO about 30 years ago. Never again.
She was almost getting frozen after gutting and skinning. Cut her in to pieces and took her in to the house.

When I was younger I HAD to hunt. Now I am smart enough to know that is dangerous weather.

First thing we do after tagging the animal in cold weather is to build a big fire. That helps quite a bit but it is still miserable. I think boning out a critter might be the better way although I've never tried it in cold weather. Saw a guy on a video break down a cow elk that way. Took him ten minutes.

 

[drcarr]

1979 AZ early November hunting Muleys in HMU 6A near Mormon Mountain... myself and 3 other NAU college buddies snowed in by 3' snowfall...nightly -15° Temps kept us in our tents huddling close to our wood stoves...GW that was snowshoeing through checking for stranded hunters accepted our offer to stay the night...said we were crazy for sticking it out and left agreeing to notify our parents that we were OK...took us 6 days to get four bucks and back to civilization...one of the best memories of my life.....

 

[Zen Archery]

-20s January Doe Hunt Illinois. Biggest deer I've ever shot.

 

[Lasiter]

I went through basic at Fort Leonard Wood, Misery January - February, 1963. I crawled out my tent in the below-zero dark AM for a pancake breakfast on a stainless steel tray. My cakes froze stuck to the tray before I could leave the chow line. We were to hunt paper later that day with our M1s. I got enough frostbite to have a toenail fall off a few weeks later as I sat on the beach at Pacific Grove.

 

[Greyfox]

About 20 years ago on a deer hunt in Grand Prairie, Alberta. All day on an open tripod stand. 0F with 5-10mph winds. As cold as I have ever been….And for sure ever will be again! Stuck those Grabber foot heat pads on the back of my neck to trick my brain in thinking I was warm. Didn't see a deer all day. At dark when I walked about a half mile back to the truck I didn't have the strength to pull myself up into the cab. Not fun!!

 

[skipglo]

We supposedly hit 30 below last year in CO. Just brutal.
Ecws sleeping bag was good, but lord Ive never held a **** so long in my life.

In that weather you don't have to hold them..or wipe...you just BREAK IT OFF close to the hole!

 

[bullet man]

Deer don't like the cold either, I was hunting years ago and it got so cold I forgot about hunting and started a fire, about 10 min later I had a whole group come in they must have been cold too so I took three of them home with me.

 

[JustMe2]

On an elk hunt in CO it got down to -45F and on another time during a SD predator hunt it was probably the same temp, but we didn't look to see how cold it was. On the elk hunt, my ammo would not fire. I tried to fire 4 different rounds and all that happened was I dented the primers. After this experience, I kept my ammo inside my parka and loaded it as a single shot when needed. That worked for the second elk. The SD hunt was very memorable. We left the truck and plodded through knee high snow to the base of a haystack. Piled some snow up in front of us to break the probably 40mph winds blowing in our faces. After about 5-10 minutes of the snow blowing in our faces, my cousin and I decided this wasn't fun anymore and decided to leave. We got to our truck just to discover a flat tire. Took the spare tire from under the truck to discover the wheel was full of ice covering the stud holes and too thick to fit on the hub. We tried to hammer the ice out of the center of the spare wheel but the ice was so hard from the cold the hammer just ricocheted off the ice and hardly nicked it. So I finally took my .22 pistol, held it up to each stud hole in the wheel and blew the ice out of each hole. However, there was still ice remaining in the center of the wheel that caused the wheel to wobble while driving. So we drove a few yards, retightened the lugnuts, drove a little further, tightened again, and again, until finally the tire stopped wobbling and we were able to drive into town. We both looked at each other and concluded that was fun. LOL

 

[Montana'eer]

-36

Warmed up to -32 when we were done.

We all got a limit of Canadians and then mallards. Best hunt morning ever. Even popped a porcupine that came into the spread, lol.

 

[APDDSN0864]

I muzzleloaded a doe at -25 here in MO about 30 years ago. Never again.
She was almost getting frozen after gutting and skinning. Cut her in to pieces and took her in to the house.

When I was younger I HAD to hunt. Now I am smart enough to know that is dangerous weather.

If I may offer a slight correction, that is VERY dangerous weather.
Even temps in the +50's & +60'sF can present a hypothermia danger. Folks die from it in those temps, mainly because they don't think of it as dangerous.

What you don't know may very well kill you.

Ed

 

[SSgt G Cody]

My coldest hunt was 26 years ago hunting Wisconsin whitetail deer! Four of us spent three days in a small cabin in the northern mountains, overlooking a small lake. We all had nice tree stand locations, surrounded with lots of great deer sign. Weather was very cold, and slightly breezy! All of us were within 1/4 mi. of our cabin. We had 4 in. of fresh snow! Weather ranged from just below zero to 28 degrees! It was COLD! By the morning of the 3rd day, we all had a nice buck, all gutted and hanging outside on our pole rack! I would shake and tremble each night from the cold! As we left on Monday afternoon all four of our deer were frozen solid, in the backs of our two pickup trucks! Loved the hunt, but all 4 of us were sick for the next week, and I coughed for another month!!! I won't freeze like that ever again!

 

[aOWENc]

When I was in high-school and just got my drivers license my friend and I had the bright idea to duck hunt the river on a -3 day with 15MPH wind. The river was starting to freeze up and there were refrigerator sized ice chunks floating down stream. We ended up shooting just shy of our limits before we had to leave to go to our minimum wage job flipping pizzas. I still regret going into work that day because it was the best day of duck hunting I had ever seen.

 

[Rum Man]

Shot my Best Buck to date in Montana!
It was -24 and breezy! Not sure on the Wind Chill temp ! One of the Best days out!
Seen 19 Bucks that day !

Rum Man

 

[Dean2]

Living and hunting northern Alberta and the Territories we get a lot of cold weather. Coldest I have ever hunted was -55 F. Have hunted quite often at -25 to -35, which is chilly but not unpleasant, but you aren't going to sit in an unheated stand. Even the heater body suit requires auxiliary external heat like a little buddy heater if you are in the blind for more than 2 or 3 hours. -55 on a Skidoo meat hunting caribou north of Yellowknife was definitely pushing it. Not much runs good at that temp, and steel and rubber get quite brittle. There were 8 Skidoos on that trip to make sure we had lots of redundancy. When you are gutting Bou at that temperature you need to either keep your hands in the animal the whole time or use Gortex gloves. At -55, spit freezes in mid air, before it hits the snow, and that is not an exaggeration.

This is -35 F. At those temps you definitely want synthetic oil in the Quad. Snow is armpit deep as soon as you step out of the tire rut. The red skid plate is a heavy plastic/Nylon that goes all the way to the back, works like a toboggan to keep you from sinking into the deep snow. You can see from all the snow way up in the steering gear that u still have times where the snow is soft enough you are pushing with the front rack. The tires work like paddles.