StrayDog;
Top of the morning to you sir, I trust this second last Sunday in March finds you well and warm - I see you're in Texas so it should be that way or a bit warmer than up here.
Here in southern BC it's never that cold when we hunt, I can't recall it ever being much below -25°C - so that's comparatively balmy compared to when we hunted in the Saskatchewan prairies and bush as a kid.
There I can recall one week moose hunting where it warmed up to -35° once, but for the most part was well below that. Another hunt a few years later, my then new wife shot her first whitetail buck on a day where it never got above -38°, which she still recalls as "definitely cold".
Oh and she's a Manitoba girl so wasn't unused to snappy weather.
For the most part then, when we hunted in the real cold weather, we'd try our best to keep the gear outside as bringing it inside made it sweat and even relatively clean, lubricated rifles would sometimes rust. Sometimes as well, moisture formed would then subsequently freeze the parts up - bolt actions, magazine springs, etc.
With optics in particular, I'd say that I can't recall any internally fogging, but we made it a point to figure out which power setting we were using on a variable scope and left it there. Perhaps that's led to me personally gravitating to fixed power scopes on all my main hunting rifles, I can't say with entire certainty though.
We've had an older Leupold 25X spotting scope - the straight tube ones from the '90's I want to say - and it pretty much refuses to focus if its below -15°C. Maybe with a pipe wrench it would, but I'd have to bring a more skookum tripod if I start packing plumbing tools, so it just stays in the pickup on cold days afield.
If I was heading back to the family farm in Saskatchewan to chase the great grandfathers of the whitetail we used to see when we farmed there, I'd likely still be inclined to leave my gear outside as much as possible/feasible and keep it as mechanically simple as possible. My wife's individual focus Leupold binos would definitely come along as my Minox get pretty tough to adjust here on nippy days.
Anyway sir, I'm not sure that was useful or not, but I do wish you good luck on your future hunts, whether they're in your beautiful home state or in cooler climes!
Dwayne
