MountainDevil54

Just curious what the coldest temp you've hunted in with your muzzle loader and what load did you use?

Patched ball shooters, what patch lube did you use?

Conical shooters, what lube was on your conical, if any.

I've hunted in the low 30's before with patched round ball and bore butter. Snow and then warm temps later in the evening caused a great deal of rust issues despite the bore butter.

Grouse45

Minus 32F, BH209, Harvester sabot, 200grn Bloodline, Winchester primer.

Semisane

Hunted one time at 18°. Don't want to do that again.

super_hunt54

So cold the temperature gauge said "awww hell naw" and went for cover! (around -20) Wish I had as much sense as the damn thermometer! Took me 2 weeks to recover from that hunt. Aint the coldest I've hunted in but it was the coldest with a MLer. Knew right then I was gettin too damn old for that crap.Whitetail hunt in Saskatchewan. ML was my old TC Hawken with GM barrel .50 cal. Bullet was 300gr Shockwave with a Harvester CR sabot. Load was my old dependable 75 grain Swiss FFG. Dropped a buck at 58 yards weighing in at 317 pounds on the scale. 62 and -20 degrees aint a good combination but the cold sure didn't affect that old hawk! She barked and the buck dropped. Pretty much all a feller can ask for I guess. Except maybe a little more heat!

BarnesAddict

In the Great Lakes region, it can be 60°F one day and 0° the next morning. Probably the coldest with the muzz would be around -12°F, using BH or T7 and saboted bullets. The coldest days are the best hunting days, as it brings whitetails out early to feed in the afternoon.

Coldest I've ever hunted period? Whitetails in Saskatchewan at -20°F with 20-25mph winds. Warmest it ever got on that entire trip, -5°F and it felt like a heat wave compared to -20 and the wind! You'll learn what cold is in northern Saskatchewan.........

WV Hunter

I've hunted in temps around zero or slightly below zero a few times. We don't get real cold here typically until after the season is over. Below zero temps are pretty rare, but we do have a fair amount of single digit temps. I've never used anything with lube in real cold weather, so can't help you there.

alleyyooper

Michigan's UP 1995 Muzzle loader season is the coldest I ever hunted in with any thing. Morning at day break as I shut the cabin door the temp was a straight 28 below (didn't have a wind gauge so don't know what the wind chill was.) temp climbed to a whooping 18 below by mid day. The whole week was like that. I was taking out my 22lr from about 11:30 AM to 2:30 PM to shoot squirrels.

Ice on the bay would pressure crack sounding like a semi running down a rain soaked free way them a loud boom like a magnum rifle with a brake going off. So dang cold I could not get the gen set to roll over fast enough to start with 10 W 30 oil in it. Made up my mind would be the last year I didn't have one with electric start.

Rifle was a T/C plains rifle with a 5.00 yard sale Weaver K4, 80gr T7, 240gr Hornady XTP in a Green MMP sabot CCI #11 Mag caps.

Rifle fired off the day after the season closed just before I finished packing to go home.

Al

Triple Se7en

Yep, I recall that December muzzleloader season of 1995 in Northern Lower Michigan. It was a balmy 11 below zero that morning, 10 minutes south of Downtown Mio, Mi. Back then we were on private property and I hunted a corner parcel about a 10 minute walk-away from the trailer home where we stayed. I would hunt for an hour at a time, then return to warm-up for another hour. Then back out for another hour hunt.....

That whole strip where several trailer homes once stood scattered about, is now a golf course.

Gm54-120

Somewhere in the teens but temps are not what kills me. Wind and rain when its cold bother me the most. Sitting up in my comfy tree house makes it tolerable but strong wind makes the whole stand sway.

My least favorite hunt was only around freezing temps but it rained all day with gusting winds. It rained so hard that night it was hard to sleep in the pole barn. It wasn't insulated at that time and the sleeping quarters were not finished. My only comfort that night was a warm place to relieve myself.


DON'T VOTE FOR THE WIFE OF MONICA'S BOYFRIEND!

Blackpowdersmoke

Gm54...

I whole heartedly agree. And I can't really say what the absolute coldest day I hunted on was because our late ML (flintlock) season which starts after Xmas can get downright raw! I do remember that on New Years morning 2014, it was 2 degrees out when I left for my stand just before daybreak. After twenty min or so, a young deer came out of the neighbors cornfield and headed straight to me so I happily obliged it's invitation and shot it. Fortunately the stand I hunted from was only 150 yds. from the house so I dressed it out and hurriedly drug it back to the garage where I built a nice fire in the woodstove so I could work on it in comfort. I think it might have come up to a balmy 5 degrees by the time I got it in the garage!

BPS