Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Stocks shatter from Alaska cold?

The difference between -40 and +60 is only 100 degrees. Barrel steel will be tempered at around 1100 degrees. When they are exposed to cryogenics to align grain structure in the barrel steel it is placed in liquid Nitrogen for a period of several hours at about 300 below zero.

40 below isn’t something barrel steel is going to recognize.

Well said. Apparently he never spent any time hunting in Barrow Ak. Or had a rifle at Dead Horse, not to mention Tok, Fairbanks, and various other places. Would probably catch a cold. I wouldn't have been able to get my Caribou in Barrow if my Ruger Mk II with Zytel stock was such a wimp.

I’m late to the party, but the coherent posts have let you know that it’s BS.

At one time no one would pour concrete foundations in Fairbanks, believing the concrete would turn to powder and crumble in the -50* cold. Also not true.

You’re lucky it froze. I’m sure you’re aware that one can damage their esophagus drinking liquids that cold.

Like the bear gun advice from folks who have never seen one!

I used to go caribou hunting in Ambler with my wood stocked Remington 788 in 22-250 when it was -45F with constant 40-50 mph wind. The gun would work fine but the caribou would freeze solid so you threw them in the basketsled and haul them to the school's machine shop for processing. Locals would stack them in strange positions. I will never forget four caribou sat in chairs with an empty bootleg bottle of R+R and hands of cards froze to their hooves. I figured out the guy had one of those dogs playing poker posters. You can get some interesting malfunctions on scopes, mounts, triggers and freezing firing pins if you take them out and them haul them back into your house. The moisture and heat inside the house really messes with them. Now I don't know what a carbon fiber compound bow might do if you shot it at -50F but most rifles are fine.

True statement. I used to do SAR/Medevac in Western AK. We had a case where a guy in a (dry) village took a swig of vodka that was left outside while it was -40 ish. His esophagus swelled up, and he had to have a tracheaotomy done by the local clinic nurse (he was lucky that they had a staffed clinic- a lot of villages don't). We helicoptered him to Nome, where he got a jet ride to Anchorage.

Oh, and I've shot rifles at -40... no issues, just keep them dry (lube).

Yup. Some will have a nip to “warm” themselves. Also, usually not realizing that the temporary warmth they perceive is dilating blood vessels accelerating heat loss.

The OP's question was about his stock in the extreme cold. I really doubt anyone not very accustomed to extreme cold is going to want to spend much time outdoors shooting a rifle in it, so I am inclined to say "don't worry about it."

But I once saw an expensive (plastic) suitcase get dropped off a tailgate after being in minus 50 for about an hour, and and the thing shattered in a thousand pieces. So I guess if I was really serious about shooting in 25 below I would try to find out what that particular stock material will take.

i left an AR-10 chambered in a 243 WIN. this AR had a Nightforce scope attached ,so i left this AR outside at my cabin it was -30 below for 12 hours then shot rifle still hit target well at 300yards and empty case ejected just fine so i shot the AR-10 again and it still shot well and ejected the empty case. i was testing this rifle AR10 /243 Win. for future coyote hunting in the cold . My test was done by the Canadian border in Northern Minnesota it gets dang cold up there.

First, why are you putting an asterisk behind -40?

Second, you are full of bullpucky. I have lived in Montana for over 60 years, and have shot rifles at -40 several times with zero problems.

Hi Dwayne,

Saw this in your first post here: "I want to say the coldest day I shot was more or less -42° though I can't recall whether I'd converted to Celsius by then or not....."

One interesting bit of trivia is that -40 is where Fahrenheit and Celsius coincide.

Sometimes I hunt in Saskatchewan or Alberta in late November. I noticed the power selection ring on my Zeiss Conquest scope gets stuck and can't be turned when it is about -20f. I'm wondering if this is common among all brands of scopes or some unaffected by extreme cold?
Thanks in advance

LOL. Thats asking for a miracle from him.

Hope all is well with you Dan.

Jeff

And thats what I was thinking I learned first of last winter.

I can do math. And not really....

I may be crazy, but I'm not completely stupid. Emphasis on completely.

Nor have I ever needed meat that badly. In younger days out of Pt Hope, and Barrow, i liimited my winter hunts to no colder than -30. In due time, I got older, but not ncessarily smarter. Much of my hunting was done solo, and there are a lot of more important things to worry about in remote country cold temps than a non-existant problem of guns exploding from cold.

The 2010-2018 period in Kotebue I wussed out and made it no colder than -15. Temps colder than that are best used to watch the sun dogs snarling and the snow blowing, over the steam of a hot buttered rum.

In the early days in Prudhoe they used czst steel pipe wrenches in big sizes, like 48". In deep cold they would often shatter when "clanged" together. They started buying aluminum...

I have shot quite a bit in cold weather...

Wow. Guess all those rifles, pistols, machine guns, mortars, howitzers and tank cannons and whatever else we fired at -40F were just imaginary? Firing a rifle at -40F is not just ok, it's within the REQUIRED operating range for US military weapons. Yes, I did spend some time at the Army Cold Regions Test Center at FT Greely AK. And no, the steel alloys in military rifles ain't that much different that commercial sporting rifles.

Oh year, no issues with plastic stocks either. But some stuff they tried to use LCD displays on were a complete failure well before -40F.

Like many others who have responded here I am shocked and stunned that I survived the discharge of rifles in -30 to -40 C ...... but thanks to Remington6mm I know better than to risk my wellbeing in the future by such uninformed choices.

Please note sarcasm font in use above.

Sarcasm font off. Wishing everyone a wonderful day.

I spent 3 years in AK. my rifle was a Rem 721 3006 with a 4 power weaver scope... never a lick of trouble with it,, I always got within 100 yds of any thing I wanted to shoot...