Growing up in New England I’m partial to hunting in cold snowy weather and rarely ever see it here in North Carolina so I was excited about this weekend. I love hunting in snow and one of my dreams is to stalk hunt a buck in the snow so this snowfall was giving me a chance to fulfill this dream.
Friday afternoon I climbed up into the stand with snow falling but not much accumulation at that point. It was a beautiful afternoon but did not see any deer. By the end of shooting light the ground including the roads were snow covered. The snow continued to fall and by 11 pm there was over 7 inches of snow and I got ready for bed excited about the morning hunt. The weather had kept everyone else away from the hunt camp but I was real comfortable in the clubhouse planning out my plan of attack. Just before I fell off to sleep I heard the unmistakable sound of rain hitting the roof I hoped it would switch back to snow.
Photo taken around 11pm shortly before the snow switched to rain
When I got up at 430 am the rain was still pouring down and the snow had been compressed to about 4 inches. There was no way with the conditions and what the weather was calling for that my stalking plan was going to be feasible the snow was real crunchy and only got worse when the rain turned to sleet and freezing rain shortly after sun up.
Saturday was challenging with strong winds temperatures hovering around freezing and the precipitation changing from rain to sleet, to snow. At least my stand had a roof so I stayed relativity warm and dry, I got the opportunity to try out one of the fine products I won over on the blog Desert Rat . I used Crooked Horn Outfitter’s scope cover to keep the ice and snow off my scope. I’d never seen their scope cover before but I’ll tell ya it worked great. I’m going to have to pick up a few more of these for some of my other rifles.
Rain switched to Freezing Rain after day breaking making it a bit hairy climbing out of the stand with all the ice.
The sleet and freezing rain made a very crunchy crust on the top of the snow and pretty much everything just holed up waiting for this system to pass.
I didn’t see much of anything as far as game goes but it was still and enjoyable day out in nature. One of these days it will happen and I’ll get my chance to hunt in a big snowstorm. Less than 2 weeks in the North Carolina deer season so I better get cracking if I want another deer or two for the freezer.
