I love living in Minnesota for a variety of reasons, but the extreme differences between our seasons is probably the thing I love most about this state. We can have temperature swings of over one hundred degrees in just a few months. The same piece of land has four distinct looks as the seasons pass. And, of course, the widely varied seasons allow for a wide variety of activities throughout the year. I shudder to think of the boredom that would set in if I were to live somewhere that lacked seasonal changes.
I've done quite a bit of shuddering today. A week ago I was sweating in sixty degrees; today was a little cooler. It was twenty six degrees with a single digit windchill at 7:00 a.m. today as I trudged through snow that was anywhere from an inch deep in spots to over my knees in others...due to drifting....due to the whipping northwest winds. More than once I had a brief longing for the warmth of last week.
Cold, yes, but a really nice day for a walking hunt. So walk I did. My inner odometer tells me I logged about four miles through fields and trails, over flat land and hills, and all in that soft, silent snow. Thinking the deer would be up and moving in the first snow of the year I hoped walking would do two things for me: improve my odds of crossing paths with a deer while giving me a chance to scout deer movements.
At 10:30 I settled into the Tree Rocker stand. Three-and-a-half hours of slow, steady walking had taken me through almost all of our western hunting area; the Tree Rocker Ravine looked like a cattle yard. Tracks everywhere, like maybe a buck and doe meandering around. Two runways beaten into the snow within sight of the stand. Part of me felt like moving on, knowing it's hard to get a lot of nutrition from tracks. But often a doe and buck combo will wander back through an area they've already been in, and I was really tired. I decided to stay in this spot until noon.
At 11:30 I thought I saw some movement across the meadow, but with grasses moving in the wind and snow falling off branches it was hard to tell. No, something besides grass and snow was moving over there, so up came the scope in time to catch a deer in the brush. I got one quick glimpse of its head, enough to see antlers rising above its ears. And then it was gone. I got to the ground and moved south along the meadow, hoping he would keep moving along the edge to give me another look at him. When I saw two deer moving up the ridge opposite my side of the meadow I knew my move was wasted. To make matters worse, a different deer entered the meadow heading towards the stand I used to be sitting in. I headed back that direction and managed to quietly walk up on the deer I had seen only to discover it was a big fawn. I watched her pass by and got back in the stand, sure that I had seen the buck and doe responsible for all the tracks around me. The fawn had been chased off by the buck, so I was going to bank on the doe to eventually come back this way looking for her offspring and leading the buck right to me.
By 2:30 the confidence in my plan had dwindled, as had the feeling in my toes and fingers. I walked back to the field on our main woods road and was relived to find no tracks; I had strongly considered spending the day walking and sitting along that road and was thankful to not have to deal with yet another "should have". I followed my morning tracks back to the Bald Knob and again was pleased to not find any deer tracks in mine. Until I got to my oat plot. That had been track-less this morning. And was now crisscrossed with tracks. With a deer bed along the edge. I sat in my stand knowing it was pointless to do so, what with a bad wind direction and the track-makers long gone. But at that point in this frustrating season it didn't really matter what I did anymore. So I sat in the stand until the sun dropped below the tree line and then began my walk home.
Dear Self: Do NOT enter the woods after the first snowfall of the year. Stay in the pines and wait for the deer to come to you. Sincerely, Me.
On my return trip I couldn't see my morning tracks in some spots, due to the high volume of deer traffic that had obliterated them. We've seen this before after a big snowfall - the deer spend a lot of time roaming in and out of our pine groves. I suppose the exposed grasses above the snow are a quick food source in good cover with protection from the wind. This being the first snowfall of the year I thought the deer would be moving in the woods, too, but it wasn't the case. So, I should have hunted the fields today.
Tomorrow morning is forecast to be in the single digits temp-wise, but with very little to no wind. I think I'll walk again, maybe take a little different route but stay close to the fields. Or in the fields. I've got three cameras still hanging out there that I need to collect, and with a little luck maybe there will be one more memory out there, too.
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