I have an old friend who is still doing gunsmithing work in Prince George British Columbia, which is about half way up the province to Alaska. There is just not much development North of there. But there are lots of trappers and hunters among native peoples who do live and hunt there, and subsist. For them, there is no such thing as staying home when it gets too cold. Only a blizzard keeps them forted up. The rest of the days, they are out seeing to their traplines, or hunting, or both. Their guns have to work. Curly has had all manner of lever action rifles brought to him to be repaired, or restored. Many are original Winchester models 1873, 1876, 1886, 1892, 1984, and 1895 model buns, and the owners are the 4th and 5th generation members of a family to use them. Some stocks show up being held on with baling wire, or rawhide and horsehide glues used to repair cracks. Parts are worn out. Barrels are shot out. It would be cheaper to replace the gun with a modern gun, but the owners want them restored. Curly puts in barrel liners, gets replacement stocks, and before the current CAS craze, made the parts that had to be replaced. Now, he can order replacement parts again that will almost drop in, and require very little hand work to fit. He orders them NEW .32-20, 25-2-, 38-40, and 44-40 ammo, so that they can have a new quantity of brass to reload. He orders powder and primers for them, and even repairs their reloading tools, usually Lyman Cracker tools. ( model 310 ). And they pay him what he asks, and leave happy to have their old friend back in working order, refinished, and ready for another 100 years of use. They don't take many long shots, because the people he serves tend to live in the interior, and do not hunt seal very often. Seal hunters want scope sights on their rifles because shot may have to be long. He has customers who have killed moose with a .22 rimfire bullet to the brain, usually put through an ear at amazingly close ranges, measured in feet rather than yards. And, they do not seem to know what a thermometer is. I suspect it would be too depressing if they actually knew how cold it was outside.
Curly is the go-to guy to ask about cold weather hunting, and how to make those guns work. I did it with my local BP gun club, just to get my friends out of their soft chairs and out to the range during January, February, and March each year. Sometimes shoots had to be canceled because there was too much snow to let anyone drive into the range. But most of the time our winter shoots went off as planned. It became the " macho " thing for guys to do, and we limited the shooting at targets to no more than 5 shots. The pot belly stove in the shack became the most friendly place to be near, and we all enjoyed catching up with each other. One year, the river froze over with about 10 inches of ice, so I took the kids and a couple of wives on a nature walk on the river, showing them tracks, and identifying the animal that made them, showing them how to tell, and showing them how to read the tracks to tell what the animal was doing. We found out that we had a beaver living in the river a lot closer to the club than we previously ever thought, finding one of his holes where he came up on top of the ice, and went back in after grabbing a branch off a small tree, bentover by ice, to eat. I showed the wives and kids his teeth marks, as well as his footprints, and tail drag.
I do not have any trouble with folks sitting at home enjoying their favorite libation. However, its always useful to know how things can be done in the event you have to do them like hunting and shooting in freezing temperatures.
