Mid November. Heavy snow to hunt in, then it sort of melted. Then the wet stick to the trees snow at the start of gun season. Then that froze solid to the branches as the mercury hit -10. Then a little bit of normal with some little snows.
Last weekend temps reaching high 50's with frozen ground and snow on top of it brought heavy fog. Saturday and Sunday I couldn't see 30 yards during the first and last 2 hours of the day, maybe 100 yards between. Yesterday the fog broke mid morning while it rained.
Frozen ground with mush now on top of that but it saturated the leaves and made for quiet walking. Today back to the 20's with 20-30 mph winds. Crunchy leaves but the wind kind of cancels that out to some degree. I had to sit on the ground it was so cold with the wind whipping though.
I even passed up on a nice doe at quitting time because I thought it was too cold to gut and drag her. (or maybe I was more afraid of a possible long cold recovery) The warmth of camp was more important at the moment. Now I understand how cold my dad really was on some of our hunts back when I was young and immune to the cold. Oh the torture we put ourselves through for the thrill of this sport.
Even more important, don't do something you fully know is stupid just because you are in a hurry and overwhelmed by how much there is to clean up.
And, I did not expect that particular log attached to the uprooted stump would spring UP instead of falling when cut through.
Net result, chain meeting the inside of your wrist is not a good thing but I was lucky. The quarter inch wide cut stopped skin deep, did not cut nerves, tendon, or arteries. But I could see the artery pulsing. Only side effect is that the cut area has lost some sense of feeling and I get some tingling and itchy feeling there from time to time.
I was very lucky that my quick reaction when I saw and reacted to what was happening delayed the impact enough that the chain had had time to just about stop as it met my wrist. It could have been far worse, luck has provided me with a wake up call to pay attention when that little voice is telling me I am about to do something stupid instead of trying to make it work anyway.
A week later I drove my skid steer too close to the hole created by an uprooted triple trunk red oak tree and the two right side wheels dropped in. Again in a hurry to finish something before dark. I was lucky again in that the root ball sticking up kept the skid steer from tipping sideways. It tilted far enough that the fuel line pickup ended up with no fuel which was good as it stopped me from trying to get it out that night. Next day I added more fuel (that I had to siphon in because the tree roots prevented a fuel can being where it needed to be). Then I cut blocks of wood and put them in the hole under the wheels to keep from tipping more on the way out. Then got it started and pulled myself out with the grapple claw being chained to a tree out in front of me. Oh, and first I put the bolts that hold the roll cage down back where they should have been.
