Duck hunting

The ER at Marshal Medical Center

Was about like this the second week of December 2013 in south-central Kansas ... brutally bitter.

Heck yeah! Was out there 3 years ago on the pheasant hunt opener. Goose hunted that friday in a 30 degree sleet. Then the next day was down to shirt sleeves walking for pheasant till this cloud with hail and wind came outta nowhere! Bout froze before we got back to the house!

December 1997 White Sulfur Springs West Virginia. Made it there at dark when they closed the freeway because of snow. Found the last motel room in town. Woke up the next morning to 32 inches of snow and 8 degrees. I followed a snow plow something like 50 miles to get to Snowshoe WV for a ski trip. Thankfully it warmed up into the 20s that week so that we could ski.

6 degrees it was cold

It's been 0 here several times. Seems like in winter of 00-01 we had 4 or 5 mornings that winter at or near 0 degrees. I had a thermometer on my back porch and it read 0 several mornings.

The coldest I've ever been in my life was on Lake Guntersville one morning around 90-91. It was the last time I remember the lake freezing over. I was duck hunting by myself the morning that all started. I had waded into an area and took a dove stool with me. I was sitting in the water, under a tree limb. The wind was howling. I sat there for hours and watched 1000's of Shovelers drop out of the sky into the main river channel. When I got ready to go, my cordura waders were frozen. I could barely get stood up. They were frozen stiff.

I think it was that time when my wife asked me Does this skirt make me look fat.

2 degrees north of Mobile back in the eighties.

2011 in NW Nebraska, first week of May, 28 degrees with 30 mph winds with intermittent sleet....and I was wearing turkey hunting clothes for 80 degree weather.

-6 degrees (dont know what the wind chill was) Wilson NC unloading truck with pallet jack

What we did to those ducks during that freeze has bothered me every since.

A working fire in freezing weather is a different kind of suck!

A friend that is a retired FF from Green Bay tells of similar stories.

For me, duck hunting in the mid 80's in Reynolds Swamp. Froze solid and we busted ice with a sledge hammer. I got wet retrieving some ducks. I really thought my finger nails were gonna pop off my fingers.

-58F at Black Rapids, AK for 5 days...so cold if you threw a hot cup of coffee in the air outside it would turn to ice dust instantly.

My bedroom after really pissing the wife off.

I don't know the temperature - but I know the coldest I have ever been. Duck hunting in Arkansas when I was a teenager with two of my uncles. We broke ice walking to the point where we had a makeshift buck brush blind, broke ice where be put the decoys, had to periodically break the slush reforming around the decoys, and had to break ice wading out (although more like a thick slush). I remember one of my uncles laughing at me for pulling my waders down cause it was warmer than standing there with caked on ice all over my waders (I would have to pull them back up and reconnect the suspenders every time we shot a duck since I was the designated retriever).

All of our shotguns (Browning, Ithica, and Remington) had sluggish actions from the cold and we were limited to single shots, since they wouldn't cycle correctly. I don't recall how many we killed, but probably fewer than 10 ducks that day (this was in the mid 70s when we were on the point system).

None of us had clothing that prepared us for that day and I remember the skin on my index and middle fingers cracking from being frozen to the glove on my right hand where the water had frozen my gloves after gathering the decoys and wrapping the weighted lines after the hunt.

Coldest I've been. Around 97 it had snowed it was around 20degrees. I was rideing my bike across the dam of one of the pond. Some how wound up in the pond. Broke through about 2in. Of ice. Went completely under. If you haven't ever hit water that cold it sucks.

-40 and lower pretty often.....Eglin AFB Florida
When your eye lashes freeze together it's cold!

I can remember the lake freezing in the late 90's. We launched at the boat ramp on 227, past the feed mills, to go duck hunting. When we circled to go under the causeway on 227 the boat ran up on the ice and didn't stop until the foot of the motor caught. The ice was thick enough to hold a 16/48 aluminum boat with 3 guys and hunting gear. We finally were able to back it off, idled back to the ramp and went home. That same year we the ice was so thick from the launch on 431 around Alred Marina that you couldn't get a boat in. It was frozen all the way to the river channel.