Who hunted the two freezes of 1983 & 1989

[Mary]

Pretty sure it was '83 when I was out duck hunting on the frozen bay....brutally cold!

[Gary Roberson]

83 I was duck hunting with E. T. Barrett at the Navasot Club near Normangee simply because his wife didn't want him going by himself. Slough was frozen over and I tore a gash in my waders walking in. I saw two ducks out of range of a .270 and I promise the Good Lord if he would just get me out of that swamp, I would never hunt a duck again. God delivered me from the suffering and I have made good on my promise...I have never hunted ducks again.
Adios,
Gary

[Goldeneagle]

I hunted 5 days at Possum Kingdom in '83. The highest temp we heard on the Breckinridge radio station was 7deg. We didn't do much hunting.

[nursejenn]

It wasn’t as long ago as some of y’all are talking about but in around 2006 or 2007, we had some real cold. We hunted in Brownwood at the time. I watched the weather and saw the predicted temp was around 20* for a Thursday morning. We were planning to go to the lease for the weekend so I called in sick for Thursday and Friday and took off for the lease around 4pm. It was 17* the next morning. After that, I started keeping a heater in my box blinds!

[Tx_Wader]

It was brutal. Water wells freezing up, burned two cords of split mesquite in a pot belly stove to keep the cabin warm...don't ever do that. The mesquite got so hot you could see through the cast iron and it was bouncing a little up and down. Had to open windows and it was 15 degrees in La Salle county.

We gave up and shut things down and headed back to El Campo then drove down to Palacios the next morning to see West Matagorda Bay frozen. We got some rocks and walked to the end of the Pavilion pier and as far as you could throw a rock it would bounce.

Fish were packed in ice frozen on the banks of the Tres Palacios river...yea I remember both freezes very well and don't want to see anymore of them down here.

[S-3 Ranch]

Maybe some folks don't realize there's a lot of Texas north of I-10 too - every year.

Yep cold up there, drove from big springs to kerrviile, 9 hours in 4hi , weird feeling being only guy on I-10 in ice and snow closed interstate, cannot imagine living in North Dakota winter

[lovemylegacy]

While you slackers were hunting, in 83 I was working in that cold slop! Yeah, busted pipes all over the plant and we were working cleaning that up. Driving over the Sabine River bridge, was an adventure. Vehicles in the median, wrecks all over. Yeah, I was hunting for a warm place.

89 we were at the hospital having our first baby boy. Much better conditions.

[bboswell]

Who hunted the two freezes of 1983 & 1989

Hunted in Brownwood in 83, midday I shot my 243 straight down into the tank, it didn’t penetrate the ice!

Only heater I had was one of those handwarmers that ran off lighter fluid.

Played golf twice during the 89 freeze in Huntsville, I was in college and alcohol may or may not have been envolved....

[MetalMan2004]

Not 83 or 89, but 3 or 4 years ago we hunted in the El Campo area when it hard froze. Overnight was 12 degrees I believe and the pipes at the cabin we were staying at froze. If you needed the toilet bad enough you had to go to the pond, break up the ice enough to get a bucket of water to fill the toilet tank with.

The guide broke up the ice around the pit blind before sunrise by driving circles through the water with his SxS. He had to get out and break it up again every hr or so. He had a small heater at one end of the blind but it was not my side and it was dang cold.

I’ll never forget that hunt because the guide shot a duck that was frozen the the ice and was trying to fly but couldn’t get unstuck.

[tex4k]

I was there for both of them, wasn't able to hunt though, funny thing is nobody thinks it gets all that cold in Texas but it did those years, cold enough that saltwater froze and busted flowlines, control valves, and a bunch of other important stuff that caused me and a whole bunch of other folks to have to work around the clock cleaning and repairing the oil fields out here so folks didn't run out of heat for their houses and to have gas to move someplace warmer.

[SaltwaterSlick]

In '89 I was gonna go duck huntin' Christmas Eve morning. We were at my lake house in Livingston... My mom was there and she tole me, "Honey, it's too cold to be out there on the water!" I tole my mom, "Oh mamma, it's not that cold. I'm gonna go shoot some mallards for you to make duck dressin' with." Well I hooked up to the boat trailer and backed it down the ramp (in my back yard), and the trailer just backed out on the ice... I couldn't get the dang boat in the water!! I came back in the house and stood in front of the old Deerborne and mom said, " What's wrong honey?" I said, "well mamma, I guess you were right. The lake is froze over so bad, I can't get the trailer to break the ice to get the boat in the water!"


I'll have to say, I ain't NEAR mad at 'em now as I was back then!! Today, It would never even cross my mind to think about going duck hunting when it's THAT cold!!

[Ouch]

I was a kid (13 yo) in '89. Dad and I went to the farm to hunt one afternoon, but ended up breaking ice on the pond for the cows to have water. The two water troughs in the corral were frozen SOLID.

Dad shot a monster the next morning.

[ghostgoblin22]

Maybe some folks don't realize there's a lot of Texas north of I-10 too - every year.

yep I go with my buddy every year to his way way north panhandle lease and it usually is 30-35 degrees as the high for a week, cold cold but man I love it out there

[Goldeneagle]

'89 was the one and only time I have ever been duck hunting. Went with a co-worker to a pond outside of McKinney. We put the decoy's out the evening before. When it got daylight, we discovered the decoy's were frozen in. We got in a jon boat and busted up the ice with paddles. It got so cold, my coffee froze solid in my Stanley thermos.

[whitecrow]

I don't specifically remember anything from 89, but in 83 I was in high school and a couple of buddies and I hunted the Trinity river bottoms for ducks several days in a row. We had to break holes in the ice but it was crazy good. Point system days and we got 10 bird limits a piece every day. It sucked when a hit bird would land on the ice, slide about 20 yards and get up and walk away. It was too thin to walk on (maybe, we weren't gonna try) and too thick to break quickly in the boat. Had to run the boat up on the ice, then bounce up and down to get it to break through, then repeat.....14 feet at at time. Not sure I need a dead duck that bad now.