Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "The Dead of Winter"?

I don't know if that expression is heard much any more. When would the dead of winter be to you?

Beats me! Its gonna be 75 here today

mid February

It's the time when it is so cold and still that not even birds can be heard. Dead silence, in other words.

It lasts until those %$#*^ robins start their incessant mating yammers before dawn in Spring.

I’ll go with late January thru February! memtb

today...........about 12* and the wind has blown all night........

live on the eastern slope of an 11K' ridge..........wind comes down off that and its miserable

hope it mellows out sooon......

https://www.ksl.com/

Now. Ed k

Right now.

Now. The low this morning was 9*. It's 21* right now. This is the warmest it's been in a couple of days.

When ever the winter gets bad and everything struggles like hell.


Some years we dont get it.....some years all winter is the "dead" of winter.

To a rancher the "dead of winter" means all those frozen steer carcasses he finds in the Spring.

To the poetic, it means the time before everything is reborn in the Spring.

Fortunately for the rest of us, it just means the middle of Winter.

My part of Florida was in the low 30s this AM. Not likely to get out of the fifties.

Some of our worst cold spells have come at Christmas time, but it’s generally mid Jan to mid Feb. Been a pretty mild winter so far.

I would consider it to be these few weeks in January.
I hunt waterfowl on the prairie waters most every weekend.
The change I see at this time of year is how vicious and desperate the predation and scavenging becomes.
Most of the season I can recover a downed bird when shooting slows a bit, but in January any bird recovery will be a race.
In January I have had downed ducks stolen many times by eagles. I've had 4 hawks and an eagle circling a downed duck on the ice just like vultures. I've crossed an icy creek to recover a duck, took me about 10 minutes, all that was left was feathers. Coyotes will risk falling through the thin ice to recover cripples on the icy surface.
January is a lean mean season.

I MUCH prefer Winter over Summer. Weather was horrid at work,things slowed and someone brought the fhuqking Flu with them and I toted it home with me...undoubtedly coerced at the coffee pot. (3) bottles of NyQuil later,I can sorta breathe this morning and am finally getting in the groove,to play in these pouring rains. Been decades,since I've been sick like this and am in no hurry to repeat.

"Odds" are,I'll bump some feesh today.................(grin)s

-5* today going up to mid 20's this week then back down to below "0" temps again.. Been in the mid teens to mid 30* below most of December. Gets down to about 3 & 1/2 hours of day light in December. We are gaining about 6 minutes of sunlight a day now.
Dead of winter starts when the heating bills go way up and the wood shed starts dwindling. Then there's the point that you can't get a shovel in the ground from the end of September to May. The blessing is it's rarely windy here as it does in Utah and other places. May 5th the buds start,and the mosquitoes are out at the same time, winters over. Dead of winter is from about 1st of November to mid February.
My wife gets glum and starts saying "winters coming, the days are getting shorter" on June 21. She also does't get all smiley on December 21 say "summer's coming". Can't figure that one out.

toward the end of january was when we always referred to the dead of winter. it could be cold in late december and into mid-late march. still we thought of late january as the time to hunker down. keep a good pile of split oak & hickory next to the warm morning woodheater.

January thru February!

Solstice was dec 21.

Late night, -40 F, on the road to Fairbanks. When I stop for a pee break, even though I am only going to be 3 ft. from the car door I take the keys. There can be no chance of wind blowing the door shut-freak-lock out.