In this issue, as the late season is upon us for deer, geese and mountain lion, we will look at the health problems we can cause ourselves in cold weather. Hypothermia is the two dollar word for an abnormally low body temperature and the consequences can be life threatening. Being a doctor sure didn't help Paul and being an experienced hunter won't help you either if you fail to understand the causes or don't take the right actions in a cold environment. Paul's personal lesson in what not to do and the risks of not doing began in February of 1999. The way he tells it….
I was invited to go on a mountain lion hunt with a good friend of mine, Mr. Mike Popp out of Kamiah, Idaho. I left my home State of South Carolina where generally the coldest temperatures we see is in the 20's (we ain't metric in SC). In Blythewood the altitude is basically sea level. Daffodils were already reaching upward as I boarded the plane for Idaho. I arrived into Kamiah, Idaho and it was a different story weather wise. The highs were in the teens and the altitude was thousands of feet above my home. So far all I felt was the excitement of the pending hunt. I knew I had lots of experience with extreme cold and how to dress for it. I have hunted Saskatchewan, Canada every November for Whitetail deer for years and there the temperatures easily can be minus 30 degrees.
The plan was to get up early in the morning and travel by snow mobiles pulling a sled with the dog's cage. The temperature was in the single digits and the wind was blowing hard. As we ascended the narrow heavily wooded mountain trails to the area known to have big cats, the snow began to get deeper and deeper. Luckily for us, another skiff of snow had fallen the evening before making it very easy to identify new tracks from older ones. I traveled in relative comfort as we scoured numerous miles of trails looking for just the right size fresh cat track.
Boy did we ever find tracks! Tracks made by bobcats, tracks made by immature male mountain lions, tracks made by female mountain lions, and finally, a huge, fresh, male lion track. The excitement of the hunt grew as we let the dogs loose and they struck out immediately. It sounded as if this was going to be an easy hunt, just like 'coon hunting back home only with snow. I figured it would be a quick hunt so I didn't think it through and didn't bother to remove any of my clothing for the chase and pack them for later. Nope, I just grabbed my gun and began to plow through the snow drifts as fast as I could to catch up to the dogs.
Well, 'coon hunting in the snow isn't the right description at all. Despite being in really good shape, the plowing quickly changed to near crawling from shear exhaustion. I was way too excited to pay attention to how warm, then hot I was getting with all this exercise. In fact, I was boiling inside all those clothes. I was sweating so profusely that I began to lay a trail of clothes behind me on the mountain as I peeled off layers. I reached a comfort level of layers, but it was well after I was drenched with sweat.
Experienced mountain lion hunters know all about "easy lion hunts". Needless to say, we trekked up and down those steep mountains after those dogs through countless blow downs covered by deep snow. My 'coon hunt with snow, easy hunt that started at 9 am when the dogs were released, was now into its seventh hour. Now wet, there was nothing I could do to get warm. My poor planning that caused the sweating started a whole cascade of events that resulted in mild hypothermia. Vigorous exercise followed by slow progress did nothing to warm my wet body up.
Now I was shivering uncontrollably and felt as if pins and needles were sticking me all over especially in my arms and legs. To make matters worse a blizzard blew in right as we closed in on the cat as daylight started to fail. He was finally treed in a location where we could actually get to him. I pushed myself up the steep mountain side and despite the shivers took a great cat. We took pictures as quickly as we could and begun the long trip back to Mike's home on the snow mobiles.
Now that the trophy was in hand I began to re-focus (as best I could) on my situation. I began to have real concerns and at one point did not think I was going to be able to make it back to base without real problems. The second stages of hypothermia began to set in. Now not only were my arms and legs getting funkier by the minute, I was having more then my baseline mental problems. I could not think clearly and my mind started to wonder pointlessly and my focus was gone. Luckily and I mean luckily I did not become the "other guy who got sick or hurt" on this adventure. I fell into a nice warm bed with a lot of warm dry thick blankets. I was blessed and I got a great trophy, all 170 pounds of him.
Paul with his 1999 Mountain Lion. Now this is cold.
Hypothermia is defined as when your core body temperature falls below 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 C for our Canadian friends). Mild hypothermia is 89.6 to 95 degrees (32 to 35 C). Moderate hypothermia is 82.4 to 89.6 degrees (28 to 32 C) and severe hypothermia is present when the body temperature falls below 82.4 degrees (28 degrees C). Obviously the most common cause is cold environmental exposure. The second most common cause of hypothermia is cold water immersion or being wet in cold temperatures (say from sweating in your heavy clothing). Hypothermia occurs much faster when the body is wet because water conducts heat loss 20 to 30 times greater then air.
Let us deal right here with the myth about alcohol keeping you warm. Firstly, alcohol has no place at all during the actual hunt regardless of temperature. Secondly alcohol actually does not warm you up, quite the opposite. It will dilate blood vessels bringing warm blood from the deeper parts of your body to your skin and rapidly increase your heat loss and the cooling process. The warmth you feel as your skin flushes will quickly be replaced with hypothermic symptoms exacerbated by the poorer judgment of intoxication. There are multiple risk factors that greatly increase the incidence of hypothermia with exposure to cold, even in mild climates. Instead of listing these here and helping you fall asleep, we have them noted on our website. Suffice it to say the majority of the risk factors are underlying and untreated medical problems.
What occurs first when we get chilled is that all our vessels in our arms and legs begin to constrict to reduce the blood flow there. This reduces the amount of heat loss and keeps the warmer blood around the "essential" organs of the chest, abdomen and of course, the head. The next thing our body does to protect us is to shiver. Look at shivering as a form of exercise as it involves the active use of lots of muscles. This generates heat as shivering burns up to five times the fuel as the same activity without shivering.
If the above bodily responses do not maintain your temperature and it begins to fall and goes below 96.8 degrees (36 C) your mental processes begin to slow. While this decline in judgment can be harder to tell in some more than others, it is all kidding aside a serious sign that things are getting worse .The early symptoms are slurred speech, mild amnesia, mild confusion and changes in mood from concern to oblivious about the situation. All of this occurs because of decreased blood flow to the brain.
As your temperature fall below 89.6 degrees (32 C) you begin to lose your ability to shiver, you start having balancing problems, your heart rate, blood pressure and respiratory rate begin to decrease and the chance of developing abnormal heart rhythms greatly increases. These all worsen as your temperature continues to drop. Below 82.4 degrees (28 C) most of us lapse into a coma till our brain activity finally ceases.
Treatment of mild cases of hypothermia is getting out of the cold and getting into warm blankets. Don't forget to wrap up your head because you can lose up to 30% of your body heat through your head. Normal temperatures are generally quickly restored and no harm is done. Now with moderate cases of hypothermia, a great deal more care must be taken because you have lost the ability to shiver so you can not generate your own heat and it must be supplied by outside sources. Just wrapping the person in blankets is not effective because the body isn't generating enough heat to return things to normal. External heat sources such as heated blankets, hot water bottles, heat from a fire or warmth from other bodies (dogs count, remember think medical here not what usually comes to mind when you think about applying other bodies to your trunk). These external heat sources should be applied to the trunk only not the arms or legs. Cold and relatively stagnant blood from the arms and legs will gradually be returned to the body core this way. Applying the external heat to the arms and legs will be counter productive bringing too much cold stagnant blood to the core of the body too quickly thus making the situation worse. Lastly, with severe cases of hypothermia immediate professional medical care in an equipped facility is the only real effective therapy. No hero or macho here, just get immediate professional medical care and continue with efforts to keep the core warm while help is on the way.
As always prepare for your hunt in advance, prevention is the key. Call the outfitter and find out the weather conditions to be expected and plan for the worst. Know where emergency services are available and what resources your outfitter has on hand. The environmental factors to consider are wind, rain, snow, temperature ranges and the possibility of water crossings. It is absolutely essential that you think about the amount of activity that you will be engaged in. Sitting in a blind in sub-zero temperatures and scratching your way up a steep mountain side in the same temperature requires totally different clothing preparations/set-ups. Absolutely avoid getting wet by any means or source including the obvious rain/snow and water immersion. But the most sneaky and insidious cause is getting soaked by sweating because we are over dressed for the situation/activity and feel as if we do not have time to stop and remove some layers because the hunt is on. This can cause you serious problems that can't be fixed if you are on a long back packing or spike camp type hunt where your ability to dry out the few clothes you have is limited. Remember, animals do not have watches and are not on a time schedule per se so you can take the time and proceed at a safe and comfortable pace.
If you do get into trouble like we all can, at least recognize the early symptoms (constant shivering). Stop whatever you are doing and get warm, be it by a fire, getting out of the cold/wind, changing out of wet clothes (extremely important) and/or using any other source of heat you can come up with. This will prevent the mild symptoms from progressing to a more serious problem. Unlike reptiles, we can't wait until sunrise and stretch out on a warming rock.
As if you didn't notice, Paul didn't follow the exact advice we as the Hunt Doctors are giving you. Well, Paul had no excuse then and now, neither do you. Like always, be safe and enjoy the outdoors.
