Any of you hunters ever been on a hunt where you were stranded for a day or two,because of auto trouble or other things that murps law brought about ?I was thinking of several i have been on where a mud hole swallowed the truck or axle broke or something that stranded the hunting party for a while,Had to hike several miles to get to a phone and call for help! WE usually just pitched camp right at the spot and hunt for a couple days till supplies got low and we ran outta cold ones ..then go get help.. Fun of my misspent youth,Those were the days!

well there was 3 weeks worth in alaska when the weather had us pinned down, or 4 days in quebec with more weather, or another 5 or 6 days on another alaksa trip. actually looking back on it some of the time it was fun, or at least sure beat coming home to go to work

Well, a few years ago my friends and I hunted, or rather tried to hunt in the Cat Creek area near Mosby south of Fort Peck and ended up with a serious example of just what "Jordan Mud" is all about.

It was raining when we got to the end of the pavement and the road was already very slick and deep with mud. It was supposed to stop raining soon according to the local weather report so we pushed on. We got a couple of miles in and the sky opened up and just dumped. We came to a small hill and simply stopped, no traction period. It took the rest of the day just to get turned around, we had two rigs towing small trailers. As night fell it stopped raining and cleared up. We prayed it would freeze overnight.

A local stopped at our makeshift camp ground and said if we were not out by the end of the day tommorrow he'd tow us out. His rig spoke volumes about the road conditions, one ton 4 X 4 with douleys on the back running tracker tires with chains all the way round. The rooster tails off that truck went for several dozen feet, but he just moved down the road at a steady pace.

It didn't completely freeze by dawn but the road had stiffened up considerabily so we elected to give it a shot. We chained up all four wheels on each truck with the light weight chains we had with us and set off one at a time. It was a total white knuckle drive out since there were a couple of nasty little drop-off and no shoulder. My rig whipped back and forth and damn near stalled out traction wise a few times. After a few agonizing minutes of red lining and skidding I hit pavement.

There were huge clumps of mud on my windshield, on the roof of my truck and on the roof of the trailer. The undercarriage was packed with mud several inches thick. The sides of the vechile were plastered so thickly that the door was hard to open. When my friends came out with their engine screaming, throwing mud and slidding all over the place it was quite a sight. We were so happy to be out we stopped at turn out and had lunch and a few beers to settle down. Closer examination showed we had lost all four sets of chains to the mud. It took over an hour at the car wash to get both our rigs cleaned up.

While at the car wash we ran into the local game warden, he thought we were just halarious. It seems though it could have been worse. He related to us that a few years ago two bedraggled hunters came through his check station with a couple of nice trophy racks and no meat. No meat is a serious thing in Montana and when asked they said well, we ate it. Both deer said the warden. Yep, the two said, we've been stuck out off the Cat Creek road for over a week and a half. Seems they were just going out for an overnight and didn't bring much with them from their camp near Winnett. Since they were not expected home for another day or so no one had called to say they were missing.

If I ever get the urge to go up there and hunt again I think I'll camp next to the road and use my ATV, with "farm" tires and chains to venture into the mud wilderness.

Hey Hunter,Thanks for the memories!I was on a hunt like yours one time in south Georgia swamps and the name of the road was RED DOG Road!Red Georgia clay as far as the eye could see........Slick is a understatement!We had to be towed out and the red mud was caked on everything just like your truck was....Yee HAA The Dukes of Hazard aint got nothing on us! Cant wait to do it again!

stranded in alaska while moose hunting. weather was too bad for pick-up plane and bear in camp made for an exciting 4 day wait. bear got into our grub, so we ate moose for 4 days. wouldn't want to go through it again, but wouldn't take anything for the experience.

Thanks for the memories HunterMontana. On my first trip to Montana in 1980, my buddy and I ran into this hellacious event called gumbo, aka Jordan Mud. We were up on Binion-Hayes Rd. Being from NC, I had seen red clay mud before but you ain't seen nothing until you're confronted with Montana Gumbo! That has got to be the nastiest stuff ever.

Bull1

Spent almost 2 weeks snowed into a high country elk camp in Colorado when a 40 inch blizzard blew through in 1984. Not much fun and by the time we got out, food was almost gone and most of the vehicles were pretty beat up.

That's why I hnt the early seasons now.

Mac