Nebraska ranch hunters tend to ignore hypothermia in their hunt planning.  They know that Nebraska’s far from the Yukon and that a warm hearth and cup of coffee are never more than a few hundred yards away.  The only problem with this conviction, is that surviving hypothermia is not a matter of distance, but of time.

Number One Cause of Outdoor Fatalities

According to the Center for Disease Control, hypothermia is the number one cause of outdoor fatalities.¹  Between 1999 and 2011, nearly 17,000 people lost their lives to hypothermia.  Part of the reason for this grim statistic is that hypothermia can sneak up on you before you realize it’s happening.  As the body loses heat (and this may happen even in mild temperatures) individuals typically don’t recognize that they are becoming impaired.  Exhaustion, confusion, slurred speech or the inability to use your hands for building a shelter or fire are usually experienced with the onset of hypothermia.  By the time you realize that you are shivering uncontrollably and your hands and feet are not working well, you are well along the path to serious hypothermia.    The problem now is one of time, not distance to the ranch house.

Survival Is a Matter of Time

Distance is relative however.  When you can’t find the ranch house or get back to it during a storm, a worst case scenario may be closing in on you.  Worst case scenarios can be set in motion by many things.  High winds, rain, fog, wind-driven snow and frigid temperatures can quickly impair hunters with reduced visibility, dexterity, mobility and fatigue.  And, any of these impairments can create risk-elevating conditions for vehicle accidents, disorientation, and mobility-impairing injuries.  any of these impairments can extend exposure and may result in life and limb-threatening hypothermia.

Deadly Conditions in a Matter of Hours

When it comes to worst cases, the mother of all worst cases happened in Nebraska in January, 1988.  A sudden change in wind direction dropped temperatures across the Great Plains from unseasonably warm to minus 40 degrees in just 24 hours.  Temperatures fell by a whopping 100 degrees F.  The sudden drop in temperature caught thousands of people completely unprepared for what would come next.  Known as the “School Children’s Blizzard“, high winds and deep snows turned conditions deadly in just a matter of hours.  By the time the storm abated, 235 people were dead, including a teacher and three of her young students.  So rapid was the onset of this storm that the teacher and her students succumbed to the cold just 90 yards from the safety of her home.  Again, the problem is one of time, not distance.

With this fact in mind, the challenge for hunters is one of planning how to avoid such situations or to get out of them quickly if they arise.  Here are seven, basic planning factors to help you avoid hypothermia.

Get to Know the Ranch

The best place to start your hunt planning is also the simplest.  Knowing the place where you’re going to hunt is not only the most basic planning factor but the one that will keep you out of trouble.  Familiarization with ranch size, boundaries and major terrain features are a good place to start.  Major, off-ranch landmarks are Table Mountain to the east and the red electrical tower lights to the west.   Table mountain is easily visible from most locations during daylight hours and the red tower lights are a prominent landmark after dark.

On-ranch landmarks include the location of the ranch house and corrals, ranch roads, trails and prominent landmarks.  Particularly useful landmarks due to their easy identification are the FAA towers in the southern part of the ranch and our network of windmills and stock water tanks.  Boundary and cross fences may also be used as landmarks.  Each of these landmarks should be annotated on your map.  Don’t forget to plug these landmarks into your digital mapping applications, such as OnX Maps or Avenza maps.  I got lost a few times as I was getting to know the ranch.  Each time, I managed to find my way back to the ranch house by following fences or confirming cardinal directions using Table Mountain as an off-ranch landmark.

After landmarks, distances between you and your destination and nature of the terrain between the two locations are the most important.  Once you know that the ranch is criss-crossed by deep canyons and forests, you will be able to make a more realistic estimate of your travel time.

To help you begin your planning, Little Sage Ranch ranch offers summer scouting sessions beginning in June.  Scouting sessions give you the opportunity to become familiar with the ranch before your fall deer or turkey hunt.

Set Limits

Setting limits on your hunt is a good next step once you understand the terrain.  Start by identifying specific conditions for terminating your hunt and starting back to camp.  These may include limiting the distance to be hiked or the time spent in the field.   I also recommend setting a quitting time that will get you back to your truck or the ranch house before sunset. Knocking off a half hour early is often enough to give you a safe walk out.

Setting limits also means setting a reasonable pace on your first day out.  The ranch’s elevation ranges between 4,500 and 47,00 feet.  While not quite a mile high, the elevation is still challenging for those unaccustomed to high elevations.  Also, consider plans to end your hunt with the onset of high wind, rain or any snow beyond a passing flurry.  Waiting for conditions to improve can trap you in dangerous wind chill conditions.  Rain and snow makes trails harder to negotiate and elevates your risk of falls and injury.  The same conditions make it harder for vehicles to reach you in case of emergency.  Consider other limitations to accommodate your specific location and conditions.

Monitor Weather Throughout the Day

Part of your planning should also include daily monitoring of local weather forecasts for indications of approaching storms, cold and wind chill forecasts.  Bookmark and refer to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Wind Chill page for information about how to translate wind and temperatures into wind chills. NOAA’s weather service also publishes timely alerts of dangerous weather conditions.  Nebraska’s weather is quite changeable and conditions are likely to deteriorate or improve quickly.  A little patience and willingness to heed weather alerts is often all that’s required.

Along the lines of planning for the worst, it is also important to consider how rain or snow will effect your ability to get back to the ranch house or your truck.  While we may be dressed well enough to hunt, we may not dressed equally well for digging out a vehicle or, heaven forbid, spending a cold night in the field.  Over the course of a day, even light snows can drift to a foot or more and rain can turn a dusty road to into a slippery, muddy mess.  Otherwise good roads can be rendered impassable fairly quickly.  I recommend keeping a change of clothes in your vehicle.  Heavy, lined gloves and coveralls with zippered legs are good choices for working in bad weather.

Make a Hunt Plan and Share It

Making a plan and sharing it with friends and our ranch house can be the key to survival.  Nebraska’s Hunter Safety Course and the national Hunter-Ed.com describes this kind of notification as a Hunting Plan.  We believe they are an indispensable safety tool and we require all hunters to have one!

As a minimum, hunting plans should state when and where you and your hunting party plan to hunt, your inbound and outbound travel routes and the times you plan to begin and end your hunt.  We will mark your location and contact information on our wall map and send out a searching party if you don’t return on time!  A phone call or test message is all that’s needed.

Consider breaking up your hunt into manageable morning and afternoon excursions. Midday breaks at the ranch house will give you a chance to rest, warm up and, if needed, change into dry clothes before heading out in the afternoon. If needed, you can also change your afternoon plans and let us know about the conditions you experienced in the field.  A brief rest will leave you ready and alert for your hunt.

Dress for the Whole Day

Dress as if you are going to spend the entire day in the field.  This means dressing in layers and bringing a pack that contains snacks, water and emergency lighting and signaling equipment in addition to a phone.  Check local weather reports frequently and be prepared to hunker down for a minimum of 36 hours.

Your pack should contain materials for setting up a shelter; nylon rope; rain parka; body-length space blanket for keeping warm; water; and a thermos of hot soup or some other nutritious beverage.  Chem-flares are also a good idea for marking your location.  Although we do not permit camp fires due to the typically extreme fire hazards that prevail well into the fall, we do recommend small sterno or propane heaters when the ground is wet with rain or snow.  We also recommend seeking shelter from the wind and drifting snow in the deep, wooded draws that are not far from any location on the ranch.

Bring a Map and Compass

Never go into the field without a waterproof, topographic map and compass.  I know we have cell phones and satellite phones that can communicate over thousands of miles and deliver precise locations to within a few feet.  The problem with these tools, though still a must have on any hunt, is that they become bricks when batteries run out.

As a minimum, the map should indicate your hunting area, route of travel and all of the natural and man-made features that can help you find your way back to your truck or the ranch house.  These include beacons, roads, stock tanks, windmills and canyons.  I prefer simple maps, with large print that I can read by the light of a chem-flare.  I also annotate my maps with fence lines, the location and telephone numbers of neighboring ranches and any lights that may be visible.  Although topo maps are considered by some to be “old school” because of modern GPS devices, they do not run out of battery power and are hard to damage in the field.  If well-annotated, they are also far simpler to use for quickly determining your location and needed direction of travel.

Bring a Mobile Phone

Even though batteries can go dead on you, we still recommend taking along a mobile phone.  Reliable communications are key to getting help and out of dangerous wind chills quickly.  Although cellular service is good on most of the ranch, coverage in deep draws and pastures is spotty.  Low power (.5 watt), low cost line-of-sight walkie-talkies, such as Motorola’s Talkabout™ series, offer acceptable communication in the vicinity of the ranch house, but are spotty in draws or even just as mile beyond the ranch house due obstructing terrain.  Satellite phones for hikers, such as Iridium, can provide excellent coverage our here, but are prohibitively expensive for many people.

While there are many more things that you can do, these seven planning factors are a good place to start building your hunt plan.

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1. Class Materials, Nebraska Hunter Safety Training Program.

² See also, Centers for Disease Control, Quick Stats: Number of Hypothermia-Related Deaths, 1999-2011. January 4, 2013.