Coldest temp you've hunted in?
 

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.

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

Hunted one time at 18°. Don't want to do that again. :s2:

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!

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.........

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.

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.

:D Al

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.

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!

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

You are soft. 18 is the typical low for the Kansas late season.

Two years ago, the first day was a high in the 20s. The next five days had a high around zero and lows around 15 below. I took a really nice Whitetail with my 45 Elite, 100 Bh209, Win 209 blue.

Instant ignition on day 4 of the cold.

Well considering he is from Louisiana and getting up there in age I wouldn't call him "soft". He's just not used to cold weather. You probably couldn't stand the heat he has to tolerate during early archery season. I know I hated it myself! Not to mention the mosquitos there need to call in for landing clearance!

I hunted snowshoe hare in Wisconsin a number of years ago & it was in the single digits so we waited until 11 a.m. to take the dogs out. I thought that was cold until I hunted Montana last year, it was -20 w/ wind chill of -36, so effn cold I was the only one of 8 hunters in camp to go out. We glassed a meadow/hayfield that had 150+ elk in it, only 5 of which were legal bulls & I shot the largest at 347 yds. w/ my .338 Win Mag uphill & scoped the sh*t out of my eye. Never in my life do I want to hunt when it's that cold. I get cold when it's in the 20s here in VA sitting in a deer stand :( At least in MT we were spotting & stalking, unfortunately the whole week was below 20 degrees & we did more spotting than stalking...

I've shot in subzero weather and felt very comfortable and I've shot in 40 degree weather and been close to hypothermic.

The coldest I went out to hunt. I wouldn't call it hunting. More just sitting in the cold. It was -32º below zero. Down along the river bottom where my stand was, it could have been colder. Its usually five degrees colder then where the cabin is. But no wind at least. Well not much. We were staying in a friends rustic cabin back in the woods that night. Wood stove for heat. Woke up and the water pail was frozen because someone forgot to wake up once in a while and load the stove. The dogs water dish was froze solid and too the floor of the cabin. He was sure confused.

Got up, got a fire going, huddled around the stove while the coffee cooked and all of us debated whether we wanted to go out and get in our tree stands that morning. Ate some cold corn bread and lots of hot coffee. Ate a wad of butter and decided to try it. My brother, my buddy and I decided to "try" and see how long we could take it. They said my brother was back within the hour. He was red in color and shivering so bad they had to thaw him out. My friend was back shortly after that. I lasted about two and a half hours sitting in a blind. But I had to admit... nothing was moving and I was cold!!! So we all came back in. For the afternoon hunt it had warmed up to -22º below so we all headed out again. I made it until dark but it was sure nice to see the lights of the cabin on the way walking out of the wood.

When its that cold I sure appreciated good boots, layering, and glove heaters. I was using a .54 caliber percussion Renegade with roundball. Once back at the cabin, I fired it off at the range we had there. It fired perfect.

About 8 degrees for me. That's cold enough.

Yep. Never claimed otherwise. Most of the season I'm hunting with morning lows in the low 40's and daytime highs in the low 60's. And I tell you, anything below freezing is COLD! :s2:

I have hunted when it was 20 below...that was a few years ago, don't think i could do that anymore..getting older now .

Naah, you're not soft Semi, you're just acclimated to your environment...

I have relatives that are born and bred Yankees that have lived in the South for a number of years now and they just can't stand what we consider comfortable weather here when they come up for a visit. My sister in law lived in south Alabama for over thirty years until her husband passed and she remarried and relocated to upstate NY several years ago. She's just now starting to get where she can stand it when the thermometer dips below 32 degrees!!

BPS

About 4 years ago it was cold every day. The warmest day I hunted that year was 6, the coldest morning was -30 and breezy. I can honestly say I don't think I enjoyed hunting a single day of that season. Rather it was more of an obligation. That was a few years after I moved to MN and before I really understood what cold weather hunting was. I've since started trying to spend some money here and there on better cold weather stuff. This spring I finally broke down and bought an IWOM XT.
http://www.iwomouterwear.com/content/iwom-xt-1
Basically an improved version of the heater body suit, and they guarantee you won't get cold your first year or your money back. I'm pretty excited about it and hope it's as good as they say.

-20 last yr & killed a nice buck @4 10 in the afternoon on final day stayed warm in a built ground blind & a mister buddy heater seen alot of deer those 4 days & when you did see them they were all bunched up smallest herd i seen was 8 deer & largest herd i seen was aprox 20 & that when i got my buck was the last one coming thru

In November of 2013 the low on muzzleloader opener was -20 and the high was -15, it was one of those clear no wind days.

When I was young and full of pi$$ and vinegar I hunted when it was so cold that when I went to my stand in the dark my flashlight beam was frozen and I couldn't turn it off!
But seriously - probably about -10*F. Now if I get up and it's that cold, I just go back up stairs and nestle back in bed with my wife (or my lab) if my wife is in FL.

I don't allow my rotties in the bed. They BOTH snore louder than me!

Oh believe me - I wake either of them up a couple times a night to get them to stop snoring.

I hunt west central Wisconsin, One year it is 60% above than the next is - 20% I will go out to -5 but that is it The deer are smart enought to hunker down and don't move unless you kick them out.

??????? Deer don't move when it's super cold??????? Some of my best hunting was in really cold temps. Deer actually move MORE. Now if it's cold AND windy they will hunker down, usually in a pine thicket if they have one close, to stay out of that wind but usually they are up and feeding to stay warm. Also, if memory serves me correctly, deer need water the same as horses do when it's cold to help stay warm so you will see them a lot around water sources.