For years I wondered how big game managed to live through the hard
winters. How did they obtain food while the snows lay deep? Two
winters of snowshoeing through the Rocky Mountains as Snow Observer
often brought me in contact with wild game. These wanderings, together
with numerous winter camping-excursions through the woods in other
scenes, gave me many a glimpse of the winter manners and customs of
big wild folk.
One autumn a heavy snow-storm caught me in the mountains of Colorado
without snowshoes. In getting out of this I found it easier to wade
down a shallow unfrozen stream than to wallow through deep snow.
Presently I came upon a herd of deer who were also avoiding the deep
snow by using a water-way. They were traveling along in the river and
occasionally paused to feed off the banks. Out all floundered into
the snow to let me pass. They reëntered the water before I was out of
sight.
A few days later I returned on snowshoes to see how they were faring.
Deep snow had not seriously concerned them. They were in a snow-less
place near the river. During the storm an accumulation of sludgy,
floating snow had formed a temporary dam in the stream, which raised
the water and flooded a near-by flat. Presently the dam went out, and
the water ran off; but the water carried with it some of the snow, and
it had dissolved much of the remainder. In this cleared place the deer
were feeding and loitering.
Wild life easily stands an ordinary storm and usually manages to
survive even a deep, long-lying snow. The ability of big game to
endure storms must in part be due to their acquaintance with every
opportunity afforded by the restricted district in which they live.
Big wild folk do not range afar nor at random, nor do they drift about
like gypsies. Most animals range in a small locality,--spend their
lives in a comparatively small territory. They are familiar with a
small district and thus are able to use it at all times to the best
advantage. They know where to find the earliest grass; where flies are
least troublesome; the route over which to retreat in case of attack;
and where is the best shelter from the storm.
[Illustration: A DEER IN DEEP SNOW, ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK]
With the coming of a snow-storm big game commonly move to the most
sheltered spot in their district. This may or may not be close to a
food-supply. A usual place of refuge is in a cover or sheltered spot
on a sunny southern slope,--a place, too, in which the snow will first
melt. Immediately after a storm there may often be found a motley
collection of local wild folk in a place of this kind. Bunched, the
big game hope and wait. Unless the snow is extremely deep they become
restless and begin to scatter after two or three days.
There are a number of places in each locality which may offer
temporary, or even permanent, relief to snow-hampered game. These are
open streams, flood-cleared flats, open spots around springs,
wind-cleared places, and openings, large and small, made by
snow-slides. During long-lying deep snows the big game generally use
every local spot or opening of vantage.
In many regions a fall of snow is followed by days of fair weather.
During these days most of the snow melts; often the earth is almost
free of one snow before another fall comes. In places of this kind the
game have periods of ease. But in vast territories the snow comes,
deepens, and lies deep over the earth for weeks. To endure long-lying
deep snows requires special habits or methods. The yarding habit, more
or less intensely developed, is common with sheep, elk, deer, and
moose of all snowy lands.
The careful yarding habit of the moose is an excellent method of
triumphing over deep snow. In early winter, or with the deepening
snow, a moose family proceed to a locality where food is abundant;
here they restrict themselves to a small stamping-ground,--one of a
stone's throw or a few hundred feet radius. Constant tramping and
feeding in this limited area compacts the snow in spaces and in all
the trails so that the animals walk on top of it. Each additional
snow is in turn trampled to sustaining compactness.
At first the low-growing herbage is eaten; but when this is buried,
and the animals are raised up by added snow, they feed upon shrubs;
then on the willow or the birch tops, and sometimes on limbs well up
in the trees, which the platform of deeply accumulated snow enables
them to reach. Commonly moose stay all winter in one yard. Sometimes
the giving-out of the food-supply may drive them forth. Then they try
to reach another yard. But deep snow or wolves may overcome one or all
on the way.
During one snowshoe trip through western Colorado I visited seven
deer-yards. One of these had been attacked by wolves but probably
without result. Apparently five of the others had not as yet been
visited by deadly enemies. The seventh and most interesting yard was
situated in a deep gorge amid rugged mountains. It was long and
narrow, and in it the deer had fed upon withered grass, plant stalks,
and willow twigs. All around the undrifted snow lay deep. The limbless
bases of the spruces were set deep in snow, and their lower limbs
were pulled down and tangled in it. These trees had the appearance of
having been pushed part way up through the snow. In places the cliffs
showed their bare brown sides. Entire spruce groves had been tilted to
sharp angles by the slipping and dragging snow weight on steep places;
among them were tall spruces that appeared like great feathered arrows
that had been shot into snowy steeps. The leafless aspens attractively
displayed their white and greenish-white skin on limbs that were held
just above the snow.
With a curve, the yard shaped itself to the buried stream. It lay
between forested and moderately steep mountains that rose high. In
this primeval winter scene the deer had faced the slow-going snow in
the primitive way. At the upper end of the yard all the snow was
trampled to compactness, and over this animals could walk without
sinking in. Firm, too, were the surfaces of the much looped and oft
trodden trails. The trail nearest to the stream passed beneath a
number of beautiful snow-piled arches. These arches were formed of
outreaching and interlacing arms of parallel growths of willow and
birch clusters. The stream gurgled beneath its storm window of rough
ice.
I rounded the yard and at the lower end I found the carcasses of the
entire herd of deer,--nine in all,--evidently recently killed by a
mountain lion. He had eaten but little of their flesh. Wolves had not
yet discovered this feast, but a number of Rocky Mountain jays were
there. The dark spruces stood waiting! No air stirred. Bright sunlight
and bluish pine shadows rested upon the glazed whiteness of the snow.
The flock of cheerful chickadees feeding through the trees knew no
tragedy.
The winter food of big game consists of dead grass, shrubs, twigs,
buds and bark of trees, moss, and dry plants. At times grass dries or
cures before the frost comes. When thus cured it retains much
nutrition,--is, in fact, unraked hay. If blighted by frost it loses
its flavor and most of its food value.
During summer both elk and deer range high on the mountains. With the
coming of winter they descend to the foothill region, where the elk
collect in large herds, living in yards in case of prolonged deep
snow. Deer roam in small herds. Occasionally a herd of the older elk
will for weeks live in the comparatively deep snow on northern
slopes,--slopes where the snow crusts least. Here they browse off
alder and even aspen bark.
The present congestion of elk in Jackson Hole represents an abnormal
condition brought about by man. The winter feed on which they formerly
lived is devoured by sheep or cattle during the summer; a part of
their former winter range is mowed for hay; they are hampered by
fences. As a result of these conditions many suffer and not a few
starve.
Wolves are now afflicting both wild and tame herds in Jackson Hole.
Apparently the wolves, which formerly were unknown here in winter,
have been drawn thither by the food-supply which weak or dead elk
afford.
The regular winter home of wild sheep is among the peaks above the
limits of tree growth. Unlike elk and deer, the mountain sheep is
found in the heights the year round. He may, both in winter and
summer, make excursions into the lowlands, but during snowy times he
clings to the heights. Here he usually finds a tableland or a ridge
that has been freed of snow by the winds. In these snow-free places he
can feed and loiter and sometimes look down on unfortunate snow-bound
deer and elk.
The bunching habit of big game during periods of extreme cold or deep
snow probably confers many benefits. It discourages the attacks of
carnivorous enemies, and usually renders such attacks ineffective.
Crowding also gives the greatest warmth with the least burning of fat
fuel. The conservation of energy by storm-bound animals is of the
utmost importance. Cold and snow make complicated endurance tests; the
animals must with such handicaps withstand enemies and sometimes live
for days with but little or nothing to eat.
Big game, on occasions, suffer bitterly through a combination of
misfortunes. Something may prevent a herd reaching its best shelter,
and it must then endure the storm in poor quarters; pursuit may
scatter and leave each one stranded alone in a bad place; in such case
each will suffer from lonesomeness, even though it endure the cold and
defy enemies. Most animals, even those that are normally solitary,
appear to want society during emergencies.
A deep snow is sometimes followed by a brief thaw, then by days of
extreme cold. The snow crusts, making it almost impossible for big
game to move, but encouragingly easy for wolves to travel and to
attack. Of course, long periods separate these extremely deadly
combinations. Probably the ordinary loss of big game from wolves and
mountain lions is less than is imagined.
Some years ago an old Ute Indian told me that during a winter of his
boyhood the snow for weeks lay "four ponies deep" over the Rocky
Mountains, and that "most elk die, many ponies die, wolves die, and
Indian nearly die too." A "Great Snow" of this kind is terrible for
wild folk.
Snow and cold sometimes combine to do their worst. The snow covers
everything deeply; then follows an unbroken period of extreme cold;
the Ice King is again enthroned; the snow fiendishly refuses to melt,
and lies for weeks; the endurance of most wild folk becomes exhausted,
and birds, herds, and wolves perish. Similar calamities used
occasionally to afflict our primitive ancestors.
Over the vast Northwest a feature of the climate is the
winter-annihilating Chinook wind. This occasionally saves the people
of the wilds when other relief is impossible. The snowy earth is
quickly transformed by this warm, dry wind. In a few hours conditions
become summer-like. Fortunately, the Chinook often follows a blizzard.
Many a time at the eleventh hour it has dramatically saved the
waiting, suffering birds and rescued the snow-buried and starving folk
of the wilds.
The beaver and the bear are often benefited by the deep snows which
afflict their wild neighbors. During the prolonged hibernating sleep,
the bear does not eat, but he commonly needs a thick snowy blanket to
keep him comfortable. The beaver has his winter stores on the bottom
of the pond beneath the ice. These he reaches from his house by
swimming beneath the ice from the house to the food-pile. If the ice
is not covered by snow, it may, during a cold winter, freeze thickly,
even to the bottom, and thus cause a starving time in the beaver
colony.
Deep snow appears not to trouble the "stupidest animal in the woods,"
the porcupine. A deeper snow is for him a higher platform from which
the bark on the tree may be devoured. Rabbits, too, appear to fare
well during deep snow. This uplift allows them a long feast among the
crowded, bud-fruited bush-tops at which they have so often looked in
vain.
The chipmunk is not concerned with groundhog day. Last summer he
filled his underground granaries with nuts and seeds, and subways
connect his underground winter quarters with these stores. But heavy
snows, with their excess of water, flood him out of winter quarters in
spring earlier than he planned.
One March at the close of a wet snow-fall I went out into a near-by
pine grove to see the squirrels. One descended from a high hole to
the snow and without trouble located and bored down through the snow
to his cone-deposit. With difficulty he climbed up through the heavy
snow with a cone. He did not enjoy floundering through the clinging
snow to the tree-trunk. But at last up he started with a snow-laden
cone, in search of a dry seat on which to eat. After climbing a few
feet he tumbled back into the unpleasant snow. In some manner the wet
snow on the tree-trunk had caused his downfall. With temper peppery he
gathered himself up, and for a moment glared at me as though about to
blame me for his troubles. Then, muttering, he climbed up the tree.
Sometimes the chipmunk, and the squirrel also, indulge in hibernating
periods of sleep despite their ample stores of convenient food.
The ptarmigan is preëminently the bird of the snows; it is the Eskimo
of the bird world. It resides in the land realm of the Farthest North
and also throughout the West upon high mountain-tops. In the heights
it lives above the limits of tree growth, close to snow-drifts that
never melt, and in places above the altitude of twelve thousand feet.
It is a permanent resident of the heights, and apparently only
starvation will drive it to the lowlands. Its winter food consists of
seeds of alpine plants and the buds of dwarf arctic willow. This
willow is matted, dwarfed, and low-growing. When drifted over, the
ptarmigan burrow into the snow and find shelter beneath its flattened
growth. Here they are in reach of willow buds.
Buds are freely eaten by many kinds of birds; they are the staff of
life of the ptarmigan and often of the grouse. They are sought by
rabbits and go in with the browse eaten by big game. Buds of trees and
shrubs are a kind of fruit, a concentrated food, much of the nature of
nuts or tubers.
The cheerful water-ouzel, even during the winter, obtains much of its
food from the bottom of brooks and lakes. The ouzel spends many winter
nights in nooks and niches in the bank between the ice and the water.
This is a strange place, though one comparatively safe and sheltered.
In getting into the water beneath the ice, the ouzel commonly finds
opportunity at the outlet or the inlet of the lake; sometimes through
an opening maintained by spring water. There are usually many
entrances into the waters of a frozen brook,--openings by cascades and
the holes that commonly remain in the ice over swift waters. Excessive
snow or extreme cold may close all entrances and thus exclude the
ouzel from both food and water. Down the mountain or southward the
ouzel then goes.
Woodpeckers and chickadees fare well despite any combination of
extreme cold or deep snow. For the most part their food is the larvæ
or the eggs that are deposited here and there in the tree by hundreds
of kinds of insects and parasites which afflict trees. Nothing except
a heavy sleet appears to make these food-deposits inaccessible.
Most birds spend the winter months in the South. But bad conditions
may cause resident birds and animals to migrate, even in midwinter.
Extremely unfavorable winters in British Columbia will cause many
birds that regularly winter in that country to travel one or two
thousand miles southward into the mountains of Colorado. Among the
species which thus modify their habits are the red crossbill, the
redpoll, the Lapland longspur, and the snowy owl.
After all, there are points in common between the animal life of the
wild and the human life of civilization. Man and the wild animals
alike find their chief occupation in getting food or in keeping out of
danger. Change plays a large part in the life of each, and abnormal
conditions affect them both. Let a great snow come in early winter,
and both will have trouble, and both for a time may find the struggle
for existence severe.
The primitive man slaughtered storm-bound animals, but civilized man
rescues them. A deep snow offers a good opportunity for more intimate
acquaintance with our wild neighbors. And snowy times, too, are good
picture-taking periods. In snowy times, if our wild neighbors already
respect us, tempting food and encouraging hunger will place big, shy,
and awkward country fellows and nervous birds close to the camera and
close to our hearts.