EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

It's wintertime for real here, 2 degrees, 9mph wind, 10 degrees for a high today. I see the cold goes on across the nation as well. We're only supposed to get a couple of inches of snow if any.
We re-bedded the dogs a couple of days ago in preparation for this spell and broke ice on their water the last two days. It'll be too thick for that today so I'll go to soaking their feed in hot water then go back and wet it again so not only is it soaked and swelled but becomes a slurry, thats a pain in the rear but gotta keep'em hydrated.
Gotta be careful huntin in this cold of weather, dogs can fall through the ice, if they stay in or cross the water repeatedly they can be hypothermic. Everywhere we hunt here there is a big creek or two that could be a hazard. Treat Ol'Fido good till it clears up.

That’s exactly how we are dealing with it here Old Man. I soak my feed anyway but I will add more when I feed. I remember one year that it was cold like this. A group of us made a hunt and big boar hog jumped in the creek to cross and went through the ice but it was too thick for him to be able to bust it and swim either direction to get out. I hooked a couple of leads on my old Vegas dog and was gonna fish the hog out. Well, as my luck goes, the root I was holding on to broke and myself and the dog and hog were all in that hole. I went from singing base to singing tenor muy pronto! I handed the boars hind legs to those that were warm, dry, and on the top side then the bulldog. By the time they helped me out I thought I was gonna freeze to death. They hurried me to the truck and I got warm but I think it was a couple days before I got some base back in my voice. Ole Vegas was happy to share that truck heater too.


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A couple of years ago Adam had one die from it, we caught her after dark and they had all swam a big creek multiple times that day but when we caught her she was wet and acted a little cold but not abnormal. We put her in the front of  an open sided stock trailer with the rest of them, they were mostly dry. We drove 12 or 14 miles home and she didn't act right, didn't want to get up or come out of the trailer. Adam took her to her house and tried to feed her she didn't eat but wallowed in her house and was dead the next morning. I believe she was near hypothermic when we caught her and the cold ride home finished the job, then once she started to warm up the cold blood from her extremities came to her heart it killed her. That is how a person can die from it if they are warmed too fast. 

Right now it is 6 degrees and snowing to beat the band, but the snow should pass over by 4:30.

I pulled a dog box in the garage and put a space heater on them all night. Thankfully Wednesday it worms back up around here, one more night of this

Yesterday it got up to 8 then back down to 3 overnight, today it made 15 and tonight back to 2. It will be Wed. before it gets above freezing during the day and next week before it stays above freezing at night. I do not envy the folks up north that have real winter for months at a time.
But I guess like we were talking about the dogs we could acclimate if we had to haha.

Clue, I spent 2 winters in No. Mn. 18 months total. First winter they had record snowfall. They had about 5 ft as a base. Looked like a maze where our sidewalk went out to the driveway because I would just keep throwing the snow up and it was probably 8 ft or so. Next winter record cold. It was 15-20 below pretty regular. No place for a southern boy. I will never ever complain about a La. winter again.

I had remembered y’all talking about the water in the feed truck some years ago and it sure came in handy 3 years ago when we got that big snow in ETX it’s down in the teens now and I’m doing it again!


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