While Shooting in the Cold My Firearm . . .

[Riomouse911]

I’ve been lucky, I’ve never had a frozen gun issue.

My buddy Hector’s wife is from Sioux Falls, SD. Several years ago he was invited to go hunting with his in-laws on their lease. (They were all still hunting in individual stands,)

It was one of those polar vortex type days, in the stand he said it was well below zero and nothing was moving. After several hours in the freezing cold they called it and everyone met at the truck.

Hector said he was using a borrowed .30/06 rifle with a blind magazine, by description it sounded like he was using a Remington 700 ADL. Hector said he went to open the bolt to unload the gun and the bolt was frozen closed. It was so locked up he said they had to bring it home and put it by the heater for a while to loosen the oils that froze in the action.

Stay safe.

 

[jmr40]

I've had 3 incidents, two in Colorado with snow on the ground. The 1st time it was just a minor inconvenience. While hunting in the cold conditions the floorplate of my rifle froze closed. I had to unload the rifle by cycling the rounds thorough the action at the end of the day. No big deal.

The 2nd time could have been worse. While walking into the hunting area I opened the action of my bolt rifle to load the magazine. I was walking in the dark using a headlamp and was watching where I was walking. I was loading the rifle by feel. When the magazine was full, I reached to close the bolt and it was not there. Apparently, the button you press to remove the bolt had frozen down and the bolt came completely out and fell to the ground when I opened it.

It was easy enough to backtrack myself in the snow and I found a hole in the snow about 30 yards back. When I reached in the bolt was there. The snow was around 10" deep.

There was no oil in either rifle. The day the floorplate froze shut the temps were hovering around freezing most of the day. Parts of the day were just above freezing with melting snow, then dropping below freezing later in the afternoon. Melting snow from brush had gotten on the rifle in the middle of the day and later froze. The only thing I can figure is condensation caused the 2nd incident.

The 3rd happened while duck hunting. It was cold enough that the beaver pond I was hunting had about an inch of ice on top of it. I shot a duck that hit with enough force to break through the ice and was floating just under the ice. The water was only about 2' deep, and I was wearing hip boots. While retrieving the duck I stepped in a hole with 1 foot and fell to my knee with the other. The hand with the shotgun in it went to the bottom of the swamp to prevent me from falling completely down.

The shotgun ended up on the bottom of the swamp and water flowed over the top of the one boot. I managed to get back on my feet and immediately unloaded the shotgun before everything froze up. It was a cold 1.5 mile walk back to the truck and the shotgun was a block of ice by then. But it thawed out and cleaned up when I got it home. Had I not unloaded it quickly I'd have had a situation to deal with.

 

[CDW4ME]

The indoor range is always about 70 degrees, but I get the point.
Its a brutal 39 degrees this morning and only 59 for todays high; I sure hope my pistol works in such cold.

 

[twofewscrews]

The indoor range is always about 70 degrees, but I get the point.
Its a brutal 39 degrees this morning and only 59 for todays high; I sure hope my pistol works in such cold.

I'll be sure to think of you when FL (I'm assuming Florida) gets its next hurricane, as I enjoy not being in the middle of a hurricane ;-)

 

[lightman]

I'm finding many threads asking/talking about shooting in the cold lately (since it seems to be colder than normal in many places) and they all make me chuckle. I am over 70. I have hunted and shot guns during winters that most of you will never experience, and I would have to say that my guns have never failed to function because of cold. Occasionally, if I am foolish, a scope will fog up from my breath, or my fingers will stick to metal briefly, or accumulated ice and snow may get in the way of function, but they just keep working. Almost no oil or grease, never take the gun into the warm until you are completely done, don't breathe on optics, and tape up the muzzle are all I do or think about. I think guns are actually quite amazing at how they deal with the elements so effectively.

One year when Deer Hunting near Chitek Lake in Saskatchewan I didn't degrease our bolts and we had sluggish ignition. Thankfully we all shot our rifles before we hunted and found this problem before getting to the blind. I think the high for the day was -15º F. I treasure those trips to Canada!

I've had an automatic shotgun freeze up when Duck Hunting! We're having fun now!!!

 

[toivo]

There's a scene in the Finnish movie Talvisota (The Winter War) where the battle veteran asks the new recruit if he has oiled his rifle. The new guys says "Yes," and the veteran tells him to wipe it off. He doesn't explain why, but this must be due to the problem of a sluggish bolt in the extreme weather.

The subtitle actually says "Is your barrel oiled?" but that has to be a mistranslation. He says "kiväärin lukko" ("rifle lock") not "kiväärin piippu" ("rifle barrel").

Great movie, BTW. Hit "Elokuva" to play. The scene is at 59:00.

https://www.finna.fi/Record/kavi.elonet_elokuva_126330?lng=en-gb