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

Yes. Nobody died on that trip.

If they had been directly behind us, they'd have drowned when the egress flooded shut. They saw a wall of water coming at them and ran. The problem was they ran in the wrong direction and ended up in a blind room above the entrance. When they figured out their mistake, they had to go back down through the flood water to get to the right passage. I know where they ended up. We marched through a section of dry cave at one point. It showed signs of being dry for 1,000 years or more.

One of the two guys had been flooded in 10 years earlier. He and a woman got into a tall room and the water rose and cut them off from leaving. They huddled up at the ceiling and watched the water rise for a day and a half before finally stopping and going back down. When they were rescued, the first thing they did was divorce their spouses and marry each other. That was the potential widow I was up with at the Jerry's.

I was tasked with writing an article on what happened, and it got published in the journal. I took a lot of heat. I asserted that I had seen thunder and lightning on the horizon as we were going into the cave. Some people claimed that would never have happened. The NSS would never conduct a trip with bad weather imminent. There were some reputations on the line, specifically the two older guys I was with. They'd been at it for decades. I was a relative newbie.

One funny thing from the trip. I was with these two older guys, way the hell back. This was still in the days of carbide lights. One fellow had his light go out and he turned to the other and said "Dave, give me a kiss."

When they turned and looked at me, I was plastered up against the wall with a frightened look on my face. I didn't know that meant to put two helmets together and get the other carbide lamp relit.

Too many instances of misery. one recent example on a winter caribou hunt by dog team:

Accidentally grabbed a 0 degree sleeping bag, looked identical to my 30 below bag. Was better than 40 below zero when I slept on the trail. Shivered all fkn night. Woke up first light and felt so disoriented that I felt drunk.

Could barely get a fire started. My spleen and core muscles were convulsing so violently, I couldn't do anything with any sort of dexterity. Couldn't get snowshoes on my feet. Snow was too deep to scrounge for wood.

A fkn flint, and a bottle of yellow heet got me core temp up. Luckily, my camp stove was pre-packed with a little bit of wood. I ate a frozen stick of butter and melted snow. Drank about a half gallon of scalding hot water with butter in it.

Back in mother fkn business!

Camping with a bunch of Boy Scouts in a wilderness area in East Tennessee. No rain at all in the forecast so we were set up fairly close to a river. Woke up about 2:00 am basically floating around on an air mattress in the tent. Packed everybody up and headed out with it just pouring . Accidentally found an electric fence that we didn't see on the way in > Major Bummer. Kinda mild compared to most previous posts but it's really the only bad experience I ever had camping.

I want to know what to look for to know a cave area has been dry for appx 1000 years. LOL

Probably could’ve stopped after your second sentence ha ha. Winter caribou hunting by dogs team sounds pretty hard core.

That's a good question. You have to know the layout of the cave and how it relates to where the water is running. You may be 200 feet underground, but if the water never gets above 300 feet, that part of the cave may be bone dry. Given that it may take 10000 years for water to cut through a layer of rock and turn it into a tunnel big enough to crawl through, that bone-dry section of cave may have been like that for a good long time.

I'm not a karst geologist, but the one thing I learned to recognize was a fine, powdery sand/clay mix in these dry rooms. If water hits clay, the clay expands. When it dries, it cracks. It takes a long time for the top layer of clay to degrade so that there is nothing left but dust. That's with no wind, no rain, in the dark for centuries. This is also one of the most stable places in the cave. The room is usually rock solid, because it has no water impinging on it. Rooms like this are preferred for overnight camping and (for the more adventuresome) underground horizontal mamba lessons. You just have to bring a tarp, because that fine particulate gets into everything.

I honestly did not like camping underground. It was a lot of trouble to get a sleeping bag a mile or two back. At 50F and 100% humidity, hypothermia is a constant companion. As far as the other, I had one adventurous cave woman decide to take me to one of those dry rooms. She admitted later that she'd planned the whole weekend just to get me back there. When we got to the dry room, she announced her intentions by dropping all her gear. It was a bit like doing it on the beach.

Most miserable nights I can remember was on a DIY Manitoba moose hunt up the Bloodvein river by canoe, late September of 1973. Nice fall weather when we headed out but turned bitter cold the second day out. I had packed light, including my sleeping bag, and wore everything I had that was dry to sleep in but still shivered all night for the remainder of that trip. I still remember the pleasure of getting up in the mornings and trying to get dressed in outer clothing frozen stiff as a board. Oh yeah, we never saw a Moose

Gotcha. Didn't realize every conversation ends up in sex. I guess so these days.

Beach. Ugh. don't like sand. Would not like sex around sand. Just sand please go away. Like you said it gets into everything and its a PITA.

This was (gosh!) 40-some years ago. It was before AIDS. It was also the NSS. This was dangerous business and it attracted a certain type. It's a bit like alpine climbing in the dark without all the ropes, and death at 50F comes a lot slower. I got into it, because I designed a lighting system for filming 16mm in a cave. My buddy only told me I was going in the cave with the rig after I was up to my neck. I dug the vibe and stuck with it for 5 years.

A simple broken arm could kill you or, worse, put a whole team in jeopardy. We were under strict orders that, should an accident occur underground, we NOT alert the local authorities. We had an 800 number. It rang to a 24/7 nationwide rescue team that was on call to fly in and get you out. While I was active, there was one death. Somebody slipped into a crevasse and their helmet caught. They strangled on their chin strap before anyone could get to them. It was two married couples and lifelong friends on that trip.

While I was still caving, I got a call. The University of Cincinnati had put a team down the hole and the cave had flooded. Somebody had erroneously leaked that I was the 5th unnamed member of the party, and it went out on the national news wires. Everyone thought I was in there, although I was sitting at home, warm and happy. That made for a strange call to my parents.

Truth of it was, the 5 members had anticipated flooding and prepositioned stuff in sealed 55 gallon drums for such an occasion. This trip was way over my head, because it required scuba. After 2 weeks, the flood subsided and they swam out.

I never got checked out as a cave diver, because. . . well, I kept a poster in my bathroom for years




I could never see a way out with cave diving.

In the mid '70s I worked and lived at a Forest Service Ranger Station in northern Montana, just south of Eureka, MT. The Forest Service had a Fire Lookout tower on top of the highest mountain behind the Ranger Station.

During grouse season, I often hunted the tops of the ridges around that Lookout tower. On one hunt I spotted a huge mule deer buck and decided to come back and look for him when deer season opened.

So deer season opens, and my ex-wife and i drive around the mountain and up to the Fire Lookout tower. We park my pickup at the tower and head down the ridge in the direction that I had seen the big buck.

About mid day we hadn't seen that buck, but I find a nice 5x5 bull elk. Deer and elk season was concurrent, so I shoot the bull elk. We go ahead and dress him out and quarter him, and instead of just leaving him there and go home to get my horses, I decide to pack one quarter down the mountain.

The road that we came in on follows the Stillwater River, and I figure that my elk is in a small drainage that is just about straight above the bridge where the road crosses the river. So I strap one 85# hind quarter on to the cheap aluminium pack frame that we had, and tie the 5x5 antlers on top of the pack. I told my wife to go back to the truck and drive down to the bridge and I would meet her there. And I grab my 10# rifle and start down the steep draw to the river.

It was probably about a mile straight down that draw to the river, but the draw was steeper that I expected, and the alder and other brush was very thick. I fell a few times going down, and tombled a couple of times. One time the aluminium pack frame broke.

By the time that I reached the bottom of the mountain it was pitch black, it was drizzling rain, and the valley bottom on the side of the river was marshy and full of beaver dams. My ex wife was at the bridge, and we could call to each other, but it was too dark to try to cross that swamp, especially with that heavy pack. So I called to her and told her to come back in the morning.

I then found a dry spot under a spruce tree where I could be out of the rain, and built a small fire from all of the small dead branches at the bottom of the tree. I cut a few strips of meat from the elk quarter and cooked them over the fire. Throught the night I would stoke up the fire, replenish my stash of wood, and get a little sleep until the fire died down and I would wake up shivering.

At daylight the next day, my wife and my boss came back to the bridge. With daylight I could easily find a dry way to the bridge and it only took me about 5 minutes to get there.

The rest of that trip, and coming back with my horses to get the rest of the elk were uneventful, and actually quite easy.

My dad spent 1944-45 "backpack hunting" in northern Europe during the battle of Hurtgen Forest and the Battle of the Bulge. He said every night was misersable, especially when he was listed as MIA during the first week+ of the Bulge.

4th infantry division, 22nd infantry Regiment. (Silver Star with oak leaf cluster, Bronze Star with oak leaf cluster- both with "V" for valor device, Purple Heart with oak leaf cluster, Presidential Unit Citation, ETO campaign medal with 3 stars).

How was your backpacking hunting trip?

My dad backpacked and island hopped in the South Pacific fighting the Japanese, hand-to-hand in some cases. He was awarded a bunch of medals, including a Presidential Unit Citation which is equivalent to the Crosses but awarded to a unit rather than an individual.


Oops, sorry wrong thread.

and I appreciate both of ya'lls dads for their sacrifice

January 25, 1985. I was on an ROTC field training exercise. Temp dropped to -3 degrees. That was actual temperature, not the windchill. With windchill, it was even lower. Spent the night in a canvas army tent, in an army sleeping bag. So cold, as many as 4 cadets slept in one tent to try and stay warm.

Same unit as my grandfather.

Boy scouts when I was 14. Scoutmaster took us on a survival camp 5 days. We could bring a blanket a pancho, a canteen, and fishing tackle. Camped in the woods on the edge of an oxbow lake east of town. It was a good lesson. River was high and muddy and backed into the oxbow.
Fish wouldn't bite. We did catch a bunch of turtles on a trotline he set out. We had one pot to boil water to drink and he gave us 2 matches each for starting fires. We had no food. Ate turtle meat and turtle livers cooked on a stick. We did manage to catch a couple of grinnels so we had fish on a stick. It rained most of the nights and the.mosquitos were awful. We were all wet all night most nights. I was glad when it was over. Good experience though.

Shaman, some great stories.
I was in mammoth caves as a kid, always wanted to go back.

I was with my family and we were on a guided tour. Pretty cool nonetheless.

I always thought it was called spelunking?

Backpacking trip with two college friends, Dolly Sods wilderness area in WV mid-1970s
Started out with light snow and 20F
About 12 miles in, it started to rain on day three........in those days rag sweaters and down bags were the norm; no Gore-tex available
That night, temps dropped to near 0F. Weather forecast on the ol' Panasonic transistor radio projected teens and lower for the next two+ days.
We made a one-day (and night) forced march back.
Walking bridge across the river, within sight of the parking lot, had washed out.
Actually pretty dangerous situation once we realized our situation

Man you all have had some rough times, it's been fun to read through all the posts. As for myself I've spent a lot of cold wet nights out in the field but nothing like all of the stories I've read on this thread.

I took a good friend of mine on his first backpack hunt 10 or so years ago. We were looking for elk as he had never taken a good bull. It was cold, about 18 below without the wind and the first night we were there we got on a group of bulls with a pretty nice 6 point in the bunch. He couldn't get a shot that night but I figured if we toughed it out for a day or two he'd get a crack. He woke up the next morning and said the hell with this and he was heading home...lol he hasn't went on a backpack hunt since.

Gotta say this has been one of the better threads I've read through lately, hope the stories keep coming in.