Bad Weather Hunting? You Need the Right Gear! - Part 2
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We arrived at hunting camp at around 4:00 on Friday. The sun was just beginning to set to our west. The sky started to get very dark and the wind began to howl from the northwest. We had to set up camp fast because it was going to get dark soon and a possible winter storm was heading our way. I was in charge of pitching the camping tent while the others looked for the firewood.
After about 20 minutes the tent was pitched and my friends were walking up the trail carrying armloads of firewood that they found lying on the forest floor. My friend John said that they saw three big bucks in the valley as they searched for the wood. He said they ran straight to the south side of the woods jumping an old dry stream. Now we knew where we were going to start our hunt early the next morning.
Before we could think about hunting, we had to get a fire started because the storm was approaching quickly. We built a simple fire ring out of big rocks then built the fire and got the rest of our stuff unpacked and put away. As soon as we got the fire going to a roaring blaze it started to snow very hard. It was really cold out so we decided to leave our sandwiches in our picnic backpack and barbecue some juicy strip steaks. Since John had just bought new bbq tools, he got to do the honors. Besides, nobody in our hunting group will ever complain about John’s cooking. He really is the master of the grill.
The snow began to build up very quickly. In a little over an hour we had two inches on the ground. My new four season camping tent was holding up to the weather conditions very well. Soon the steaks were done and we could get into our tent and enjoy our dinner. We grabbed the cooler out of the back of the truck and headed for the tent for an evening of storytelling, food and beer.
As we ate, the snow and wind got even worse. The tent was shaking hard but we weren’t worried. I was very happy I bought the four season tent instead of the three season one I had thought about. If I had gotten the three season tent, we would have either cancelled the trip or we’d have been camping in the truck. A little while later the dinner and beer were just fond memories and it was time to climb into our sleeping bags and get some sleep. The alarm clock was going to go off early because tomorrow we would hunt!
Please come back soon for part 3 of this story about my bad weather hunting trip. In part 3 I’ll tell you the story of the hunt and the huge buck I shot that day.
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