What's your worst mid-hunt equipment failure?

[TheCougar]

Had a peep come off my bowstring on a coues hunt. 7 hour round trip to get it fixed and Sighted back in. I ended up killing a nice coues buck shortly after getting back on the mountain, so it actually worked out okay.

 

[ICEMAN86]

Pulled the trigger on my newer savage 110 in 300 win mag on a giant black bear and it went click. Had a weak firing pin strike. Went on to deal with this problem of misfires about every third shot for quite I while before I changed out savages new style firing pin assembly for the old style adjustable one. Haven’t had a problem since.

 

[robtattoo]

my boat got swamped by a yacht on the river while i was away hunting

I feel you......

 

[MallardSX2]

Dropped a literally brand new pair of binoculars out of a treestand 30 feet into a rockpile.

Wifes M77 misfired on the only buck she got a shot at last season. Weak firing pin spring. Replaces with 24 pound wolf spring...had to but a special tool to replace it too...

 

[TrueAt1stLight]

I am literally dealing with this one right now: about 3/4 into my annual northern MI grouse hunt I started feeling odd in my abdominal region. Hastily wrapped up the hunt as it was screaming hot in MI a few weekends back and was in increasing-pain.

I drove down to my folks’ place in Southern MI to see my sick father who couldn’t make this year’s hunt before I drove back to MN. The night before I was to leave I had severe abdominal pain and went to the ER, only to be diagnosed with a severe case of acute appendicitis! Now stuck with my bird dog at the folks’ place for a week recovering after emergency surgery and only a few days away from my WY hunt. Thank god it didn’t burst up north, or worse-yet, in WY!

 

[Loebs]

Not as much of an equipment failure, but that contributed to some bad decisions. We were hunting Laramie Peak in late November, with the usual snow on the ground. We were camped on the south side headed to Medicine Bow. Our buddy brought his 5th wheel up and set up. I walked back off the mountain with dreams of a hot meal while wearing shorts and the heater running. Go figure, heater fires up one time time and then promptly gives up the ghost... Buddy makes a 6 hour round trip to town and picks up two space heaters, which of course max out the little Honda generator, damn it was cold. Next day I'm walking back and the camper is packed up, we're apparently moving camp. I climb a small peak and text my wife back in Florida that we're moving camp and I'll check on latter or the next day. The boys decide to cut through Labonte Canyon, sounds good to me since I don't know the area. After some white knuckle driving we hit the bottom and enough snow that it took us two whole days to dig out. Broken tire chains, winches maxed out, and dead tired. We condensed supplies and gear, loaded into one truck with all 4 wheels chained up and finally made it off the mountain, leaving 2 trucks and a 5th wheel 30 miles in. Another day to finally claw our way to town and a $1200 bill to a grader operator to plow back in to retrieve our left equipment the following day. Time was up and hunting was over. I have learned a lot since then. But will never stay in anything but my wall tent in late season.

Sent from my moto g(6) using Tapatalk

 

[BluMtn]

One of my cousins who has since passed away told me that back in the early 60s he was hunting with my dad and the rest of the hunting party, my cousins scope had fogged up because of the snow, cold weather and poor scope design. So he unscrewed the Ocular lens and found a stick putting his handkerchief on it and cleaned the moisture out of the inside of the scope. Screwed the ocular lens back on the barrel then put the rifle up and looked through the lens only to find the cross hairs gone. This was back in the day before etched glass crosshairs when they were actually hairs. He still laughed about that 40 years later.

 

[camecolb]

Forgot my release at home once. Range Finder battery went dead once mid hunt. Now I keep an extra release in my core hunting pack and always have an extra range finder battery in my binocular harness.

 

[hevi14]

View attachment 123985

I feel you......

its probably happened half a dozen times. bad part is i can hear em coming. now i carry a gallon bucket with me.

 

[CelticClamper]

Years ago I hooked up with my old archery teacher for a pig hunt. I was shooting a PSE with a huge overdraw kit, 70lb pull, with an old drop-away rest. That bow was super fast and flat. The arrows were only 2" longer than crossbow bolts at the time. The old timer that got me into archery took a look at my setup and said "Wow, that looks amazingly complicated." I said yes, and it was hard to get dialed in, but shoots so fast now. I asked what he was using, he showed me an old springy rest. I said "Man you gotta get with the times." He said that he preferred simplicity. Well about 2 hours into our hunt we were hiking through brambles. My foot got tangled up and I kissed the granite. When I got up I realized that my overdraw had been knocked out of position. I was done. He reached into his pack and pulled out a spare springy rest. We put it on. He handed me 3 of his arrows. He caved an embankment in, and I shot into the soft dirt to sight in. He had me up and running in a little over an hour. I rank that old timer up there with some of archery's best. He knew bows like no one else. To this day all my archery equipment is kept simple.

 

[skyler_2010]

Pulled up on a beautiful wood duck this weekend paddling the canoe around with the kids and first shot just clicked, racked another shell right away as the duck started taking off and click went to rack another shell and as I took my hand back to work the bolt it went off. Luckily my step dad instilled safe gun handling in me no matter what because after replaying the situation in my head if I would have came down to cycle the action I would have been a statistic that shoots his hunting partner. ALWAYS PRACTICE MUZZLE CONTROL!

 

[All American Boy]

Okay... you win!!

Agreed, you win!

 

[gibbons025]

I would say boots for me. Bought a pair I thought would work for me that had low ankle support. Found out real quick that sucked bad. And I didn’t bring my older boots what had worked just fine. Right after that hunt I bought a pair of Lowa Tibet’s Hi’s and have never looked back. Hand down the best boot purchase I’ve made for boots.

Another one was we were riding in on the beginning part of our trip and a guy rolled his atv over on top of him. My law enforcement training kicked in and I was able to save the quad from rolling even more over him and possibly killing him. He looked in bad shape and I told his buddies he was with he needed to get back down the mountain and to a hospital. I think he ended up breaking acouple ribs and my his wrist. He was lucky that day we were that close to him.

 

[fastaedna]

I had the serving on my peep sight let loose. Didn’t realize what had happened at first but as I grabbed my peep it slid up and down within the string. Made my best guess at where it had been and 5 minutes later into a bugle battle with a decent herd bull that came in fired up. Drew back only to find that I was looking at the side of the peep, not the opening. That was a tough one to watch walk away.

 

[WCS]

Rain gear, on 2 occasions while guiding in the Yukon. Both times it was warrantied, but not worth a lot when you're wet and cold and still have 5 weeks of guiding ahead of you.

 

[Fatcamp]

Rain gear, on 2 occasions while guiding in the Yukon. Both times it was warrantied, but not worth a lot when you're wet and cold and still have 5 weeks of guiding ahead of you.

So what rain gear do you use now?

 

[TraderMike]

Borrowed my grandfather's .270 WBY Mag for an elk hunt. I took off the Weaver K4 scope and slapped on a Simmons 3-9 figuring the added magnification was required. Sighted it in; good to go. Opening evening and I am laying on a granite slab at tree-line watching a herd file through an avalanche chute at 300 yards-ish. That beautiful Weatherby resting on top of my pack; I had been watching that herd for 10 minutes and was ready when the bull paused, framed between two spruce trees. He was a very nice 6x6. I squeezed off the shot, expecting to hear the soft "plop" of bullet hitting ribs. Nothing. Bull still standing there. Racked another round and same result. No indication of a hit. Now I begin to realize something is wrong as there is no way I should have missed under those circumstances.
Next morning I set up a piece of cardboard to check zero. Shot three times at 75 yards or so and couldn't register a hit. I figure the impressive recoil from that .270 WBY killed the scope. I could still see through it and it apparently held together long enough to sight in but failed after that last shot at the range. I messed with it some more on a .22 (after the season) but it was toast. Hard lesson to learn. That hunt was almost 30 years ago and it still stings.

 

[Bigwindymt]

First bow season for elk. Missed a spike the previous week due to a tiny, unseen branch. Found three raghorns later in the day, but couldn't draw because the herd had surrounded me. I was hiking out and had just crested the mountain when I sat down to change my socks before a long hike down. Just pulled off my second sock and saw movement out of the corner of my eye. A beautiful 5x6 was walking across the slope 30 yards below me. I slowly grabbed my bow. Arrow was nocked, because I had just still hunted a small patch of pines, I executed the slowest draw of my life and shot.

Crack, not thwack was what I heard. The bull jumped but didn't run. He turned directly away and headed downhill as I nocked another arrow. He proceeded to walk away into oblivion as a sadly watched.

There was no way I could have missed such a rock solid, perfect shot. I spent about an hour looking for the arrow and found it lodged in a log about 10 yards beyond where the bull was. As I bent down to twist the shaft free, I saw that one of the green vanes was missing. I found it 5 yards from where I shot. I don't cuss folks too often, but I cussed the fellow who flectched those arrows.

I continued to shoot those arrows for practice and had green vanes come off 5 more times. I now fletch all my own arrows.

 

[264win]

More operator error and bad luck that equipment failure...
Second day of a rifle hunt, driving up a snowy logging road, my buddy grabs his jacket off the dash and a few loose rounds fall out of his pocket. One lands straight in hole for his missing cigarette lighter ( apparently the ash tray had rattled open on the rough road).
It felt like a slow motion scene from a movie. I exited the truck at 20 mph, my buddy who was driving got his head out the door just as the shell went off. Blew chunks of the dash apart all around the ash tray, cracked the windshield, and the rear window, pieces of dash and shell casing embedded all over the truck and my buddy. Fortunately we were both wearing heavy clothes so he didn’t have any deep cuts and I had some cushion for my landing when I bailed out.
We spent half the day patching the wires in the dash to make it back home.

 

[Bigwindymt]

Frozen Power Bar.

Those pockets on the inside of your jacket, that is what those are for . Left one is for a water bottle and the right one is for power bars and meat sticks. Or is it the other way around...