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WKR
I put in a lot of hours up in Northern Minnesota last week for whitetail rifle season. Normally when someone mentions "Northern Minnesota" it's anything slightly north of the twin cities. This was way up in a small, no fence farm land/public land spot, about a hour drive to the Manitoba Canadian border.
They set a few records for the cold front that rolled through while I was hunting... For 3 days straight the high temps didn't get above 10 degrees F, and the lows were 0 degrees F and below. The real killer, the wind chill. There were steady 10-15 mph winds with gusts up to 20 mph. The feels like temps were in the -15 to -20 degree range all day. Pretty damn cold. What was amazing to me, the deer didn't mind it one bit. They were still out feeding in the early mornings, and in the evenings as per usual. The bucks were rutted up and making less than ideal choices for themselves which worked out nice for us hunting.
I was plenty comfortable in my first lite sanctuary bibs and jacket with their furnace long johns and a sawtooth vest under neath. The hands were toasty with the their talus finger-less gloves underneath their grizzly trigger mitts. I was also wearing the tundra cold weather balaclava with my heavy weight trapper hat in blaze orange. I was comfortable, but my breath was freezing to the face mask and the worst part, freezing to my eyelashes making these annoying "eyecicles" I had to try and glass through.
On the 4th day of waiting and passing on 64 deer that came by my tree, I finally had the big buck I had seen scouting the week before cruise by in the early afternoon. This was it! I had my old Remington model 742 semi auto, nice short barrel and light, easy to head up the tree with and shoots great! I slid the trigger mitt off my right hand and remembered that I needed to wipe the ice out of my right eye so I could see through the scope and get a decent sight picture on the buck. I wiped my eye with my right pointer finger, clicked the safety off, and rested that same finger on the action just above the trigger guard while I positioned myself slowly and quietly for a shot. I turned and shifted to my right and brought the rifle up slowly while I waited for him to turn broadside... He turned to quartering away and I went to move my finger to the trigger for the shot. My finger wouldn't lift off the action... It was frozen to the damn rifle. It kind of freaked me out and I stumbled a bit and took the rifle off my shoulder and yanked my hand hard and it unstuck fairly easily. I went back to the buck and he looked up at me and bolted into the thick woods. See ya later friend :-(
It all ended well... I learned a new sub zero temps lesson, don't let your trigger finger get any moisture on it lol. And, to top it all off, my wife's uncle ended up shooting that buck about 3 hours later. He was hunting a soybean field about a mile west of me. I was also able to fill the freezer on a decent buck and a doe, and my wife tagged a dandy buck. My father and law ended up with a nice tender Forky for his freezer. Fun trip visiting family and being blessed with some of the best whitetail meat the country has to offer.
They set a few records for the cold front that rolled through while I was hunting... For 3 days straight the high temps didn't get above 10 degrees F, and the lows were 0 degrees F and below. The real killer, the wind chill. There were steady 10-15 mph winds with gusts up to 20 mph. The feels like temps were in the -15 to -20 degree range all day. Pretty damn cold. What was amazing to me, the deer didn't mind it one bit. They were still out feeding in the early mornings, and in the evenings as per usual. The bucks were rutted up and making less than ideal choices for themselves which worked out nice for us hunting.
I was plenty comfortable in my first lite sanctuary bibs and jacket with their furnace long johns and a sawtooth vest under neath. The hands were toasty with the their talus finger-less gloves underneath their grizzly trigger mitts. I was also wearing the tundra cold weather balaclava with my heavy weight trapper hat in blaze orange. I was comfortable, but my breath was freezing to the face mask and the worst part, freezing to my eyelashes making these annoying "eyecicles" I had to try and glass through.
On the 4th day of waiting and passing on 64 deer that came by my tree, I finally had the big buck I had seen scouting the week before cruise by in the early afternoon. This was it! I had my old Remington model 742 semi auto, nice short barrel and light, easy to head up the tree with and shoots great! I slid the trigger mitt off my right hand and remembered that I needed to wipe the ice out of my right eye so I could see through the scope and get a decent sight picture on the buck. I wiped my eye with my right pointer finger, clicked the safety off, and rested that same finger on the action just above the trigger guard while I positioned myself slowly and quietly for a shot. I turned and shifted to my right and brought the rifle up slowly while I waited for him to turn broadside... He turned to quartering away and I went to move my finger to the trigger for the shot. My finger wouldn't lift off the action... It was frozen to the damn rifle. It kind of freaked me out and I stumbled a bit and took the rifle off my shoulder and yanked my hand hard and it unstuck fairly easily. I went back to the buck and he looked up at me and bolted into the thick woods. See ya later friend :-(
It all ended well... I learned a new sub zero temps lesson, don't let your trigger finger get any moisture on it lol. And, to top it all off, my wife's uncle ended up shooting that buck about 3 hours later. He was hunting a soybean field about a mile west of me. I was also able to fill the freezer on a decent buck and a doe, and my wife tagged a dandy buck. My father and law ended up with a nice tender Forky for his freezer. Fun trip visiting family and being blessed with some of the best whitetail meat the country has to offer.
