Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Pics and stories of the worse weather you have hunted or fished in

Someones post recently about hunting in the fog made me think it would be cool to see bad weather pics and hear the stories that went with them.

Don't have anything myself other than this photo from opening day of the 2010 Wisconsin gun deer season, some of you will remember that it was really thick. It got a lot worse after I took this shot. I was texting my brothers and nephews to ask how bad it was where they were at by the open fields, but I couldn't get any response. Found out later they were all sitting back at the house drinking beer and playing cards and laughing about the one clown sitting out there in the fog. Sure would have been nice to get the last laugh by bringing in a buck, but that didn't happen. Didn't see a single deer. I was convinced there was one just out of sight in the fog and he was going to step into view any minute. Did catch up with one a few days later though, so it was all good.

Pete

I don't have any pics, but ice fishing on Misery Bay (aptly named) on Erie, Pa's Presque Isle State Park HAS to be right up there. Fortunately, I did it before wind chill was invented....For the worst weather hunted in, I think a guy would have to go a bit to beat Leighton's New England duck hunts. Good God!!!

Got several severe weather fishing stories.....18+ years Active Duty Coast Guard will do that to ya!

Got caught in lightning while I was fishing one afternoon on the St Johns River. The lightning was so bad I think I cried .... I was 15-16......it was hitting everywhere. Had a chance to run from the storm, but kept fishing; bass were hitting like crazy. Had a boron rod that was actually buzzing right before the sh$# hit the fan. Dumb azzez we were.

AK Peninsula brown bear hunts are usually conducted in weather most states start evacuating and waiting for FEMA to bail them out!

Seems like every season there's a day or few that turn from hunting into surviving.

No pics but hunted southern Wyoming for mule deer and it was about 35 degrees with 30-40 mph wind, and driving misty rain for two days. At night it froze. All our gear was wet, it was too windy and wet for a fire and the wind pushed then tent so hard it was impossible to sleep. Cold, miserable hunt.

Yep.... my last Brown bear hunt saw me waiting out winds of what the guide told me were 100MPH. With sleet and rain coming down. Stung one's face but good if (when)you ventured outside.

On the other extreme, Lion Hunting in Northern Zim, late October 2007. Temerature hit 120 degrees and I, foollishly, took off on a sprint to try to get ahead of a large maned lion we spotted breifly. More then once..... When I calmed down and realized the lion had eluded my crosshiars I was so spent that I nearly did not make it all the way back to the Land Cruiser. All of us were hurting puppies at the end of that journey and hunt. Added to the heat were milllions of Tsetse flys anbnd black flies trying to steal the moisture form your lips, ears, eyes and nostrils plus the myriad of insects and spiders and snakes that are part of the Zimbabwe scene at that hot time of year. Quite miserable, that part of the safari.

Elk hunting the High Country of Colorado is the first to come to my mind .

Don't seem to have many pics of lousy hunting weather, I guess I never bother to take any. Here's one, on a rainy, misty day in elk rifle season last year.



Here's a few from fishing trips, though.

Winter steelhead fishing. Looks like a lovely day, what you can't see is the ice on the kayak paddles and fishing poles. Each time we stopped to fish, we had to melt the ice off of all the guides so the line would run free.



Couple from spring chinook season, certainly not the worst springer weather I've been out in though!





This one is from a late summer ocean salmon fishing trip in 2011. I went out at the top of the tide, so I had to wait for the ebb to quit before I could safely come back in, so I was stuck out there for a few hours, worst part was I didn't even get a strike for almost seven hours of fishing in this crud!

Ditto on Leighton�s NE duck ordeals. I wouldn't like Safariman's heat either.

Have hunted fog in 20 foot visibility, for deer and also for geese. Hunted elk, moose and whitetails in cold lower than -40� but my worst conditions were on a four day backpack hunt for blacktail.

On the 8 mile hike uphill, wet snow blew sideways so heavy it was blinding, and then when the snow was 10 inches deep it turned to rain as we bivvied, with wind higher than ever. Wet sleeping bags all three nights, fortunately synthetics. By the first dawn great puddles formed on the bench where we camped between streams of water running through the sopping wet snow that was left. No pics of that but below are some similar blacktail conditions last Fall. You can see the sopping wet snow coming down thick against any dark background in each photo. It forms a thick layer of ice on rifle, scope, etc.

As I get older, sometimes I look out the window, and stay home.

You win.... lol!

You guys would just laugh if I posted our worst winter conditions. Some of our best fishing is during hurricanes, if that counts.

ran out of gas 30 miles offshore one night, sea's 6-8 ft tropical storm down in the bay of campeche.

Or lose!

I liked your steelhead pics. Here is one.

elk hunting several years ago the thermometer in the truck read -17, let's just say sleeping in a tent that night was not exactly fun,

Yup. Fished during tropical storm Gaston a few years ago off St. Augustine. 18 foot seas in a 30 foot center console. Caught the hell out of fish, but two of the guys on board were scared sh1tless the whole time. Got a little anxious myself on the way back in following seas. Skipper had the throttle wide open trying to stay on the back side of the swells in following seas, could hear that Cummins Turbodiesel singing......

not the worst but...it was chilly

a friend of mine invited me fishing at hell hole res. in N. ca., it's about 4,700 ft. in elevation. i forgot what time of year it was, but, oblivious to the weather conditions that weekend, all i brought was a windbreaker type jacket and a Tshirt, i know, . any way, the temps got down into the low 30's with the wind building up, rain coming down and turning to snow at times. the wind was blowing the rain and snow sideways.
my buddies boat was and open 15' smoker craft with a bimini.
man was i cold. he let me drive to warm up a bit and covered me in an 8x10 tarp he happened to have on board, it helped. but we ended up with only one mackinaw for the day and we had the lake all to our selves

The Halloween blizzard of 91 here in Minnesota comes to mind. The snow was knee deep and the deer were all yarded up. You either found them in bunches or not at all. Those that did had great hunts, those that didn't ate a lot of tag soup that year.

Two fishing trips come to mind. The first one was an afternoon walleye outing on Little Bay De Noc on Lake Michigan. One of those classic, fast moving Michigan storms came through. We were out on the point coming out from Rapid River and had no choice but to beach the boat and take cover. There was a big real estate sign out on the point, and we knocked it down and hid under it to weather out the storm. Good thing we pulled the boat up on the beach. It was full of water by the time the storm passed.

The second was a walleye run with my wife on Kabetogama in Northern Minnesota. The walleyes were on the bite as we watched the storm moving in. We were about 6 miles down the lake from our resort, and got back to the dock just as the rain hit. Thank God I had a float switch on the bilge, as the boat next to me didn't and foundered at the dock. We caught 17 walleyes in 25 minutes running Lindy rigs right in front of that storm. I went back out right behind the storm and banged a couple nice pike too. Had one up to the boat that probably went 20 lbs, but lost him on a head shake, spitting my Daredevile clear over the boat.

then, there was this Elk trip in CO. a couple years ago, temps down to -20, but i was dressed for it so it didnt really bother me.