Extreme Cold Weather Kills - let's hear about them

[RiverRat5]

Sometimes not filling your tag before the gun season gives you the ability to hunt late season when the deer get back to a routine. I like to hunt the cattail sloughs where they bed, use their trails. My first traditional whitetail was on the last day of season with the temp around zero with a 20 mph wind. I did a 1/4 mile stalk through the cattails as a group of does fed along the edge. The wind covered a lot of the movement and noise until I got close. Then the final 30 yards were slow and cold. But I eventually got a 15 yard shot on a doe. She only ran about 40 yards and bedded down. I sat there freezing until she expired and called a buddy to come help me drag it out.  someone mentioned the joy of warming up cold hands in a warm field dressing job, it was needed. That has been my favorite hunt in the past few years.

[Tsalt]

Awesome stories guys!  Here is the pic of Randy's (mnbwhtr) -7 degree doe...

 

Nice job Randy!

[FlintNSteel]

My coldest traditional bowhunt was close to 20 years ago before I added traditional muzzleloading to my arsenal and now usually spend my December time out with a flintlock.

This was mid December and the air temperature was in the low single digits.  The deer were hard to find after all the gun seasons, but I finally found good sign in a snow-covered alfalfa field.  Not a lot of sign, but it was fresh.  I backed up into a large oak deadfall that was still full of leaves and started my sit mid-afternoon.  

Around sunset, I could hear crunching in the hardened snow coming from the ridge that bordered the field.  Shortly, a small buck meandered out into the field about 75 yards away.  Light was fading and I could not wait to see if he would work my way.  I took out my call and did some very soft doe contact calls.  His head popped up, but instead of coming my way, he started to walk back out to the ridge the way he came in.  I called again and I heard him stop briefly, then I could hear his steps coming my way on a steady beat.

He had my call pinpointed so well that he actually tried forcing his way through the thick deadfall mere feet away from me. I barely even breathed for fear of being detected, he was so close to me. Fortunately, the light wind was perfect and he failed to detect me.  Finding the mass of branches too thick to work through, he walked around the downed tree and took about one step into the field looking for the doe that had called to him.  I had to hold my longbow nearly horizontal and lean way forward to get a clear view of his vitals and clear branches near me. He was a mere 6 or 7 steps away.

My finger touched anchor and release was immediate.  I could hear the arrow strike and I knew I had made a hit.  Just a second or two later I heard a crash.  The zwickey-tipped cedar arrow had done it's work well.

This cold weather hunt was one of the most exciting and rewarding I've ever experienced.  Braving the cold and getting a highly pressured buck with a longbow, my own handmade cedar arrow, and off the ground at extremely close distance is something I'll never forget.  

 

[Ulysseys]

Here's an article I wrote for TBM that ends on an extreme cold weather miss             http://www.tradbow.com/public/Reflections.cfm

[frassettor]

Chilly out today. Hunting during our first snow storm of the season
 

 

[trubltrubl]

here is one from a few years ago...in the minus 20's
with an all wood bow I made (with teaching)..a 60# bamboo backed and bamboo belly  60" shot at about 8 yards..went about 100 yards..

 

[toddster]

My Coldest hunt came about 12 years ago, a buddy and me would drive for 45 minutes to a hunting area, it was late December.  We drove over one morning and hunted from stands, we stayed on stand for 2 hours, then met back at truck, both of us half froze, not seeing anything and found out the temp. was 0 with -16 with windchill.  We went and got a hot breakfast and plenty of coffee and talked for few hours.  Both of us haven't seen anything, and he was thinking of calling it a day, but we decided to go back out.  We both carry in and pull stands each time we hunt (public land).  As we was driving to another "spot", I told him to pull over and told him, I would stalk.  He looked at me like I was crazy, "You know how cold it is?"  I smiled and said "yes, I will be fine".  I told him I will just stalk through the timber, and meet him back at vehicle from where he is hunting.  After lengthy discussion and me convincing him I would be fine, off he drove.  I walked across the corn field and entered the timber and sat, to give him some time to get in and set up.  AFter a while I began to stalk through the cold timber. To keep it shorter, I seen 18 deer and one flock of turkeys.  I ended up shooting a Doe, dressed/tagged then drug her to the closest road.  I went to the truck, (which we keep keys in a place for things like this, a good tip), I went loaded her up and went back.  I waited for an hour.  I seen him coming and got out of truck.  As he walked up, just warming up.  I asked, "what did you see".  He replied with "Not a **** thing, nothing moving in this weather".  He then stopped, dazed, as he went to put his stand in the truck bed.  He looked at me and I smiled, "Yes, there is one less moving".  A great memory for us both.

[sightsee]

I'll play along. This was a few years ago pursuing blacktails in sw Oregon November buck hunt. I was just learning how effective treestand hunting is for us stickbow hunters and I was anxious about this years hunt. I had most of the 4 week season to hunt and was going to hold out for a good mature buck since I had taken a buck the previous two seasons.
The entire season was fantastic  with several young bucks passing by my stand and had an absolute giant Booner buck cross the road early in the season and another giant 5x4 in a clearcut. The season was going great then I got what I was waiting for a slug of a buck on game camera came by my stand one evening shortly after I had got down from my evening hunt. It was 4 days later and the temps were in the 20's when I finally saw him, a majestic 4x4 with a 19" spread. I was pretty cold that evening when he came by and I had to really work at keeping my composure but I shot him perfectly. He didn't go far and is one of my favorite hunting seasons of all time.

     


   

[Mark Baker]

Cold in the Northern rockies, like in the upper Midwest, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) is the norm rather than the exception.   The good thing is that game tends to be active on really cold days for much longer...they need calories just like us, to survive.   But you need to have a way to deal with it - the cold. That is where good gear comes in as the most important thing you take to the woods, second only to common sense. Here is a number of pics of animals taken in single and below zero conditions for me over the years.   I find the cold is usually tolerable, but the wind is the thing that will keep you out of the woods.   That wind, coupled with that kind of cold, is deadly...period.  Most of these are selfbow, or woodbow kills, and there are too many to tell the stories, but suffice to say it was COLD on all of them.   One thing...the snow does make tracking easier!

 

 

 

This last buck, it was so cold we went back to camp for coffee and breakfast and let the sun come out and warm things up to single digits before going back for pics and chores.  My son Kory was hunting with me and watched the whole hunt unfold from his own stand across the field.

[Mark Baker]

Here's some more...

 

Here's a doe taken from my buddy Walt Francis' stand on the day after Christmas, I think.  Again, a cold morning....

 

This one was a couple years ago, ahead of a cold front, with strong (30mph-plus) north winds and sub-zero windchills...

 

[Mark Baker]

This doe...I had to dig to find this pic...was the coldest "kill" ever I think, for me.  We had knee-deep snow already and still falling, and north winds in the 30 - 40mph range...all on top of minus 20 temps.  With everything cold-weather trick I knew, I could only stay on stand for about a half-hour at a time.  Fortunately for me, the hunting area was only a couple miles from home, and it was November, and I was "off" from work with nothing else to do...

 

[centaur]

I think that Mark is trying to fool us. Everybody knows that there is never any wind around Livingston.

[Mark Baker]

Ha! Pat...the camera does a good job stopping the wind!  And a 30 or 40mph wind really is not a wind around here...or even around your neck of the woods!

[Manitoba Stickflinger]

 Killed this buck during a storm and if I recall it was -23. That's Celcius but still cold. Hunted a few times at -40 but I'm only good for about 4 hours.

[sightsee]

Originally posted by Manitoba Stickflinger:
   
 Killed this buck during a storm and if I recall it was -23. That's Celcius but still cold. Hunted a few times at -40 but I'm only good for about 4 hours.

That's a cool picture!!! I'm hoping to do a whitetail buck hunt up there in the next couple years. Would love to get some advice from you some day.

[Tsalt]

Thanks for contributing everyone.  This has been a lot of fun reading.  Keep's coming!

Mark - awesome pics!!  You might have the record cold weather kill with that doe!  Incredible.  

And Ryan... I've been waiting for you and your heater body suit to chime in.   Awesome buck in the snow!

[Manitoba Stickflinger]

Thanks Tim. Seriously though...guys talk about staying warm on stand. Nothing compares to a HBS.
 

[Car54]

Had to go put on a long sleeve shirt just looking at the pics, (and thanks for the great pics).

[Walt Francis]

Ryan,
That is a really nice buck.  I have been thinking about the HBS recently.  Being in front of a computer in a warm office most of the time, the body doesn't take the cold as well as when I was on in the field.

Like Mark, I hunt exclusively with a Selfbow.  It was around -20 the day Mark shot the elk.  Mark, I believe it was -23 when we left the trucks that morning with the usual 10-15 mph wind.  That stand accounted for over fifty deer, a lot of them when it was below zero.  I know Doug took a doe from that stand one morning when it was -18.

Looking back over the years, a lot of my critters were taken in temperatures below 20.  Regarding bow performance, my bows are so slow I can't tell if the cold has any affect on them.  None have failed due to being used in cold weather.  

Here are a few cold weather critters taken with selfbows:

Around 5 degrees:

   

Around zero to minus 10 with a 15 mph wind:

   

It was 10 when I shot this one:

   

It was -15 when I shot this one:

   

-20 when I found the tracks, between zero to ten when we got to the tree:

   

Around Zero

   

[knobby]

Way to tough it out guys! Those are great animals, especially when the cold is factored in.

My coldest endurance test was with a -25 wind chill. Got on stand right at first light and waited maybe a half hour before I grabbed the rattling horns. Clashed them together during a brief lull in the wind and moments later a small 10 pt waltzed (no pun intended, Walt) through a shooting lane. Hit him well enough to pull the stand and climb down immediately. In the few minutes it took to get to the blood trail, it was frozen pink. So was I. I recall the pain whenever I withdrew my hands from the warm chest cavity during field dressing.

As others here will attest, there isn't a whole lot of competition in the woods on days like that.