Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Backpack Hunting What’s your most miserable night in the woods

I don’t really have one, but I thought it would make for an interesting thread. My friend got back from Colorado from an elk hunt. He shot his elk around dusk and after 4 hours of cutting it up in 5 degree weather their clothing and them were completely frozen solid. Climbed into the tent and sleeping bag frozen to the core to try to get warm. He said it was a miserable time getting that guy the 5 miles back to the truck in about a foot of snow

Not near as miserable as that. Though when I was a teenager I shot a buck in the Black Hills at dusk. The snow was deep. I wounded that buck. He kept lying down and I kept following. No moon that night I had a two cell flashlight. Maybe the fourth time I got him up I had the flashlight in my left hand and shot him as he got up. The snow there was hip deep. To get back to the truck I had to drag him through deeper snow. It was hard enough for just myself. I was back to the house when dawn was breaking.
The first elk hunt I was on was high above the Selway River. My brother and I shared a small two man tent. In the night, the snow load had crushed the tent on top of us. That story is for another day.

Actually my worst night was not in the woods but ice fishing. We were ice fishing all day drilling 14" of ice. About 8 in the evening we decided to call it a night load up the wheelers and head back to the trucks. We didn't make it 200 yards when the ice broke and swallowed my buddy his 4 wheeler and my brother. Fortunately he had huge tires which caused the 4 wheeler to float back up. They were able to climb out. I still had the other wheeler and it was hell trying to get it pulled back onto safe ice. After everyone was safe we got all of our gear to the closet island. Everything was soaked including matches and lighter. Fortunately we had a gas ice auger. We built a huge bonefire size pile of wood. Dumped out most of the gas on the wood and some on a rag. Pulled the wire off the plug and was able to light the rag by sparking the plug. That was a long sketchy night. Especially the way back to the trucks after we were warmed up

Probably once a year I get back to camp at 4 AM or so, bloody and wandering through griz country. Wonderful times….usually not in a foot of snow though.

I have spent a few unplanned nights in the woods away from camp, for various reasons. The ‘worst’ was once when fog came in and I couldn’t see where I was at, nor which drainage I needed to take to get back. It was about 0 degrees and I just hunkered up underneath a big tree, threw all my extra layers on as well as my cheap aluminum safety blanket over me and proceeded to (mildly) shiver all night. It wasn’t the Waldorf Astoria, but it wasn’t all that bad. I started hiking again once I could see the next morning.

I have never once felt I was putting myself in danger. I have been in more ‘trouble’ in the heat than I have in the cold. Hell, most of the time my ‘camp’ is just a tarp and a sleeping bag and if it is early season, I quite often don’t even have the tarp on me.

Mine was bivying out on an archery elk hunt in WY. Partner and I picked a good spot for the night, then the wind came up. Ended up moving camp to the lee side of a huge rock outcrop away from the trees.

Heard trees snapping during the night, and saw fresh broken trees as we hunted out the next day. Not a lot of sleep that night.

I maintained a luxury spike camp in a wilderness area near home for several seasons. I would go in around Labor Day and leave cooking gear, food, down bag, thermarest, bivy, etc. Then on Friday evening before season opened I could get off work and haul ass and arrive at camp, packing nothing more than rifle and day pack with the usual stuff in it. In 2002 however a very rare weather event rolled in, but I had everything to survive in comfort. Arriving at camp just after dark in a couple inches of fresh snow, around 7,500 ft, imagine the sinking feeling when I discovered everything scattered to hell and gone and destroyed. An aggressive black bear had cut the paracords holding my belongings suspended up in the high limbs and just shredded my down bag, thermarest, shelter fly, cooking gear, and canned and dried food. By this time it was 8pm or so, still snowing, the pickup was three miles and 2,000 ft below...I decided to tough it out with clothing on hand and a poncho.
A long, long night, cold, discomfort, firewood gathering, not much sleep. After a hearty breakfast of jerky and raisins I proceeded to my favorite hunting/shooting overlook...and as it began to get light, a dense fog rolled in, I mean dense, my usual 300 yard view was restricted to 30 yards. Without sight of a deer, I returned to 'camp', burned the burnables, packed up the destroyed stuff and returned to the pickup that afternoon, as tired, wet, tail dragging a derelict as you will ever see. Never to return, clearly, final score: bear 1/hunter 0.

Damn I’d be putting in for a bear tag. I think the one thing I would have done differently than my friend was have a pile of wood and kindling already gathered and ready to go. He had a beautiful camp in the tree line with lots of wood. But he went to bed and woke up to over a foot of snow. Still managed to bag a beautiful bull. But I don’t think much improves the mood over a nice warm fire

Was bird hunting in Northwest Kansas. 50 degrees and sunny, 10 mph wind. Awesome 2 days. Tent on top of a huge ridge, camp set up, chain gang for dogs, water, the works. 5pm on the second day wind flipped from the north at 40mph and blew the tent flat. Picked all the stuff up and moved to a creek bottom and literally put the tent in a dry creek bed. A fire was out, but I did have a Coleman cook stove to make coffee and a few birds I had killed on. Finally got dogs fed and laid down around midnight. Woke up the next morning to single digit temps. Sleeping bag done a good job, but it was cold enough to freeze water bottles solid.
Have had several pack outs in freezing temps while raining but they were just deer and I was never more than a few miles from my truck.
Had another time I was bird hunting along the colorado/kansas border and it was similar as the snow was gently falling and it was about 25 with no wind. Turned into an ice storm and It took me 10 hours to make a 3.5 hour drive back home that night. That sucked about as much as the freezing tent night.

Spent the night on a razor back ridge during a blizzard while elk hunting about 30 years ago.

I've had several memorable ones. One would think just one would be a learning experience, but nooo!

This was the first.

I skied the 35 mile Resurecction Trail from Hope to Cooper Landing one Christmas break when i was in college, Took it easy, with backpack and food for 4 days, staying in USFS cabins about 8 miles apart. Short daylight hours....but I'd worked much of the trail on USFS trail crew the previous summers.

17 degrees when I left Hope. Temperatures crashed the second day - by the time I got to the Devils Pass cabin (about half-way, alpine, so no firewood- fuel oil stove, but no fuel), it was still dropping. My sleeping bag was "comfort rated" to 20 below, and you know they lie about that!

The cabin had 4 bunkbeds with thin mattresses on them, I used one under me, and 3 sort of tented over me for insulation, shivering all night long. Skiing down to Juneau Creek cabin the next day warmed me up. It was still very cold, but Juneau has firewood. Three women snowmachiners were just leaving, after over-nighting there, so the cabin was toasty on my arrival.

The next day, the snow machine trail was too rough to ski, but packed, so I walked out the 10 miles or so, carrying the skies, to Gwen's Cafe in Cooper Landing. The temp there read 53 below, and it had been noticably colder up at Devils Pass. With some wind.

Note to self...Check the weather forecast , dummy!

Twice I've spent the night "sleeping" in the rocks on sheep hunts, with just my hunting gear, but not as cold as that Devils Pass night!

Once a bud and I shot a moose 2 miles back in from the truck, no established or known trails out, as it was coming on dark. By the time it was semi-dressed enough to not spoil over night, we were only able to make it about half way out before it got too dangerous to travel in deep dark, even by flashlight, and I wasn't altogether certain where we were anyway. It turned out I was spot on, but we spent the night in our light jackets, under a big dry-underneath spruce with a roaring fire just in front (lots of deadfall), in a misty rain. That one was almost comfy!

when i was a young power lineman one of my most remembered night at 11p.m. was as a lineman lots of snow maybe 2 feet or more ,below zero and some wind we had a electrical outrage because of a tree , knock wires down ,right after a major snow storm ,one of many and the transformer fuse out ,secondary lines down on ground. road was snowed shut so we hike thru a smaller woods across country we knew the area with some climbing tools ,8 foot fiber stick and a couple fuses ,handline and chainsaw . ,primary line was still hot and up ,tried a fuse on transformer twice and the transformer was burned out .so we hiked back to truck got the new 10 KVA transformer off truck ,more tools and put the 350 lb. 10 kva transformer on a aluminum scoop shovel pulled thru the woods a 1/4 mile about ,had to go back and get a rope block and tackle too . i climb up the 40 foot pole got the smaller old transformer off by hand work it was smaller transformer probably only weighed 200 lbs. , got the secondary wires back up , got the block and tackle set on pole ,climbed down help the other lineman pull the transformer up climbed back up set transformer on the bolts , hooked up all the wires . the farmer had electric again carried everything back to truck but left old transformer tel he got plowed out a few days later. we finished about 6 a.m. with his lights back on . was a cold miserable night that many power lineman know all about thru their years as a lineman , this was 40 - 45 years ago when we had no bucket trucks then we climbed every pole . i worked with some dang tuff old white linemen and was sure fun in the bar after a hard day of work too !

I am expecting to really get at it after I retire. There were some memorable events already. I spent 3 hours treading freezing water in a lake with about 120 lbs of moose quarter on my cheap ass Air Force panelwood packframe after I fell through a beaver dam after dark in the early morning hours at Mile 52 on the Richardson Highway when I was 15 years old. I was hypothermic and my finally got "the I will not die like a rat in the drum mentality"; and made my way to crawl up on the bank. The water was about 6ft deep. I was about 1/4 mile from the road and would constantly get turned around. Eventually my father built a bonfire and I went towards it and made my way out.

I also died of hypothermia during the end of moose season during 1988 I was basically helping a number of the teachers get moose in a valley up in the Upper Tyone Creek Area. It was an area that had been closed for 20 years. One perfect morning I saw 53 bull moose that were legal from the top of the ridge. I was great at processing and hauling moose. Teachers would arrive on four wheelers- get set up in the morning- and I would drill the moose after they attempted it. I had a 7 Rem Mag Remington 700 with a four power leupold scope. I had two boxes of 175 grain partition ammo. Most of the time, the moose would go down quick.

I was alone at camp at the end of the season and a strange snow storm swept in. I think it was September 18th and we were nailed by a freak winter storm. I was at 4500ft of elevation so I should have expected it. I was wearing cotton jeans and a wool jacket with a waxed cotton carhart jacket. At this time in my life I felt that I was bulletproof and didn't need a tent. I just had a tarp and I had cheap Rocky boots that I think were made out of plastic. The visability was zero and the storm started out with freezing rain.

I had heard stories of folks being stranded for months so rather than waiting for a big 60+ moose I found a 55 inch moose about 500 yards from camp. I crept up on the moose and it was just as miserable as I was. The rain was falling quickly and would freeze when it hit the ground. Everything was covered with a big layer of ice. The moose would snort and was just looking for something to wreck going from one direction to another. I snuck up to about 45 yards and punched the first 175 Partition through the mooses lungs. The Partition bullet which was primo for most everything else didn't open and just punched an icepick type hole through the moose. My personal theory is that the 5-6 inches coat of ice armor made the bullets behavior strangely. When you are set up like this and you know that it is not operator error you follow one shot with another and then another and then another. I shot that blasted moose 12 times and had 1 bullet left. The bull at this time had figured that the pain was coming from one place and wanted to get even. People talk about sometimes moose will have murder in their eyes. He saw me and headed straight away at me. I dropped the lyman leupold dot reticle between the eyes of that bullet and squeezed. He dropped instantly 20 yards away. I was out of ammo for my rifle and I had left my trusty superblack hawk Ruger revolver back at camp. I started processing the moose. I knew that I needed to get it done before it froze to the ground. I was ripping and chipping through the moose when I did my regular check of the horizon. Out of the cloud bank appeared a large sow grizzly and two larger cubs that were teen agers. She was headed right my way. I looked around and knew that I better fight than flight. I remember that bears didn't see as well and I saw an old fire-killed spruce tree with roots and I put the root complex up in the air so it was about 12 ft in the area and I went right towards the sow and cubs yelling every expletive that I knew. The bear stood tranfixed and then she woofed swapped ends and made east towards Canada. I saw her and her cubs go right out of my visibility range at 1500 yards and I never saw her again.

I carried the moose to camp where I found my tarp frozen into the ground covered with about 4 inches of ice. I built a huge fire that was about 10 ft across and just built a monster bonfire. I slept next to the fire and woke up to below zero temps with 2 ft of snow that had fallen that night. I would eat moose and then just gather wood all day and run the fire all night. I just kept there. I knew that had I tried to leave that I wouldn't make it. I was there for 8 nights. During that time I struggled with cow moose that bombed into the fire during the early morning hours when I was asleep. I also had periodic visits by the mysterious stranger who would talk to me about staying put and not trying to walk my way out. I would get cold and wet on a daily basis as I drug fire-killed spruce to my bonfire. I eventually melted a ring down into the permafrost and I made a hooch type structure using the tarp. I ate moose five times a day. People know that eating that much close to killed fresh meat gave me some interesting digestive issues but I survived.

Finally I saw a rescue helicopter buzz by and they landed in the nearby field. They looked me over and said that a rescue group on snow gos was about 1 mile out of my camp and they would be there soon and that way I wouldn't have to forfeit my moose.

I wound up being 10 days late returning to college and I suffered from some frostbite on my face. I ended up hauling the moose antlers back to college to prove during my administrative hearing that I was not just missing class on purpose. Today, if you go to the Dean's office at Harvard College you will see a set of moose horns that hang above the Dean's desk. That is where that M....F... ended up.

I had something similar happen 35 years ago. Hauled in some gear/food for a small, minimum spike camp on the opposite side of a 13’teener I was archery hunting on. Sure enough, in the pursuit of a bull and his herd I ended up on the other side of the mountain, not long till dark. No problem, go find the spike camp set up the tent, fire the Hank Robert’s backpack stove, and have some Dinty Moor stew. Bear beat me to it. And rain/snow squalls were beginning to pass through. Was able to salvage enough of the tent to make a dry shelter.
Thank goodness for Snickers bars I always carry with me.

In the pursuit of more stew, the stupid bear actually bit through the Hank Robert’s butane canister…..

Kuboku
THAT is a great story…….

That might be one of the craziest stories I’ve read on the fire. Those rocky boots sucked

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

I have spent night's in crippling humidity and heat, merciless sub zero temps, cold and drenched in water, muggy and bug ridden nights, but the worst night I ever spent was in 1976 on the Appalachian Trail - we pulled in to a lean-to in the evening and settled in for the night. Later that evening a couple showed with a dog. Today dogs are ubiquitous, but in the 1970's (thankfully) it was fairly rare to see a hiker/backpacker with a dog. Anyway, they proceeded to tie the dog up on a short leash at the front of the lean-to. Sometime in the middle of the night barking brought me out of a deep sleep from the commotion. Then the smell. Skunk. Yup, the dog decided to tangle with a skunk, which unloaded its full arsenal right into the lean-to. I choked the remainder of the night under the merciless tyranny of that scent. I never could get all the odor out of my down bag.

I will never be a fan of dogs in the backcountry...

Wow!

Brad...That is funny.

My hunting partner and I killed two rams late in the day 80 miles from the nearest lightbulb and several from our base camp. As we came out of the basin we were in with packs full of meat the fog rolled in. It was so thick seeing 15’ was almost impossible. Knowing the terrain we were in and the dangers it posed we crawled behind a VW sized rock and spent the night getting rained and snowed on trying to keep hypothermia at bay. Long night that was.

That sounds like an epic day, Chuck.