The First Snow of Autumn
Last fall was one of the driest on record in the West. Arrowleaf crackled underfoot like rice paper, temperatures that should have hovered close to freezing hit 60 every day, and meadowlarks were still warbling in November.
It didn’t feel like big-game season, and I didn’t feel like hunting; but deer and elk represent sustenance as much as sport to my wife and me, and the weather patterns that caused the drought showed no signs of abating.
Two, perhaps three, times a week I would course the mountainsides that rise above our cabin and return sweaty, discouraged, and emptyhanded. The sighting of so much as a doe was cause for celebration; the woods seemed barren, boring, and without promise.
Then, one mid-November night it snowed. It was not a heavy fall, but upon awakening that morning, there was a palpable change in the air. It smelled swept-clean and new, and for the first time that season I felt the electricity of anticipation. When I struck the woods there was a new snap to my step.
I crossed my first trail at sunrise, and a half hour later I had four muley does and fawns in my sights. They were feeding beneath a big Douglas fir on a south-facing slope, and they never saw me. I left them and went over the ridge, striking the trail of a good-sized herd a mile away.
When I caught up with the deer, they were bedded down at the head of a black coulee. A doe jumped up, and led eight does and fawns by me. They passed one by one between a gap in the timber like sheep jumping a fence. A forkhorn brought up the rear, and I considered taking him, but declined. I wanted a heavier animal.
It’s not the amount of early snow but its mere presence that gives the deer hunter a new advantage.
As noon approached, my legs began to tire. I turned homeward, working downslope on a gentle incline that led me over a series of terraces and through dark pine hollows. I slipped up on two other skinheads who never knew I was there and killed a four-pointer where the forest met the canyon floor.
On that one day I had seen more deer than during the previous three weeks of hard hunting. The temptation is to owe their sudden appearance to migration, but snow depths were insufficient to create the kinds of conditions in the high country that would force game into the lowlands. The deer had actually been around all season long; it just took a little snow for me to see them.
There are both physiological and psychological reasons why this happens. Most important is the effect the first snow of the year has upon a deer’s perception of critical zones.
Most deer develop a sixth sense regarding how close they will allow a human to approach before becoming evasive. This critical zone amounts to a circle of terrain, and its diameter varies with the kind of cover they inhabit—the thicker the vegetation, the tighter the circle. Critical zones are largely determined by a visual limit called the forest curtain. This is the distance you and they can normally see into the forest. It is not a wall, but more like a veil, a gauzy haze of brush and trees. At the inner limit of the curtain you can see objects clearly. At its outer limit everything is obscured. However, between those two points, a sharp eye can usually pick out the ill-defined form of a deer.
Perhaps taught by the actions of older deer, or by signals of human recognition—hunters or hikers staring, pointing, yelling, making excited motions, or shooting—deer learn at what point within that curtain it is safe to watch a walking hunter without being seen. Snow, because it reflects flat light into the darkest woodland corners, and because of the contrast it provides, moves the forest curtain back. But deer don’t realize that at first—remember, the animals have spent six to eight snow-free months with the woods on their side, warned by sounds and scents and hidden in dappled shadow patterns—and as a result, they stay put and are easier to spot.
Even light snow cover can short-circuit a deer’s early warning system: it muffles and absorbs the sound and shock of footfalls, helps cover and diffuse human scent, and silhouettes the deer’s telltale outline. All in all, the first snow of autumn brings a dramatic change in a deer’s environment that the animal is unprepared to cope with and that makes it much easier to hunt.
On the other side of the prey/predator relationship, snow has a positive effect on hunters and their habits. Perhaps the visual change wrought by a blanket of white suggests to our subconscious that the slate has been wiped clean. Perhaps it is the invigorating effect of cold, crisp air. Whatever the reason, the sight of fresh snow seems to call up a new reserve of human energy and resolve. You are more eager, more confident, and as a result, you hunt harder.
Tracks play a part, too. Not so much because they lead directly to game, but because a fresh track is incontrovertable evidence that a deer passed that way recently and that it is somewhere nearby. Cutting tracks pumps you up psychologically. It keens your senses and forces all of them to focus upon one thing—serious hunting—and that edge often accounts for the difference between success and failure.
I remember one particular fall—back when I was a guide and outfitter—when the weather conditions were similar to those I experienced last year. Indian summer lingered like a curse, and except for the flurry of activity that always occurs on opening day, the meatpole behind camp held neither elk nor deer week after week.
Many times watching a football or baseball game, I have sensed a lack of spirit on the part of the losing team. It is not an identifiable fault or flaw, just a kind of negative aura that hangs over the heads of the players and the way they execute their parts. An equivalent dark cloud hung over my clients every day we went up into the mountains, an overbearing sense of “the game is already lost.”
Then one morning we awakened to three inches of snow that had flurried in during the night. I can still recall stepping out of my tent to greet that day. The scattering clouds were tinted pink by the first rays of the rising sun and they wreathed the distant peaks like cotton candy. Snow clung to every branch and bough so lightly that it seemed a sharp breath would blow it all away. Suddenly it was a whole new ball game.
Like a key play that sparks a rally, you could feel a change at the breakfast table. Conversation was more animated, everyone ate with more gusto, and where clients had lingered over their coffee before, they now left the table to get suited up immediately.
The presence of tracks urged them deeper into the timber that day. They complained less about being winded and tired. They went the extra yard, and that afternoon we shot a fine muley buck, then a spike elk the next morning, and the rest of the week went well.
Although a fresh snowfall is a powerful ally, hunters do need to adapt to some of the changes it brings about. It’s always a good idea to use binoculars when big-game hunting, but it’s a virtual necessity when there’s new snow.
Clinging to boughs, branches, and the trunks of fallen trees, cottony snow combines with the forest tones to create the illusion of an animal—the right balance and shape of white, brown, gray, or buff that suggests things like the white throat patch on a whitetail or muley, or the butt of an elk. With a pair of binoculars, these illusions can be sorted out quickly. Before I got that figured out, I spent a lot of time stalking stumps or, more embarrassing, watched the object I had positively identified as a blowdown get up and run away.
Wool pants, recommended hunting apparel because they are quiet, are a must when hunting in snow. Every other material forms ice around the cuffs, which then whiff and wheeze as you walk, warning every creature within earshot. Wool stays supple and soft.
Lastly, I have found that game learns to adjust quickly to the changes brought about by the first snow: the harder they are hunted, the sooner they extend critical zones to encompass the new forest curtain. Hunting the same area with no competition, I figure I have four days before the deer move farther back into the brush. In heavily hunted areas, I’ve seen them do it the second day.
When that happens, if I have the gift of time, I hang up my rifle until a truly severe storm blows in from the north, with all the physical stresses attendant to knee-deep snow and bitter cold. That kind of a snow changes game habits once again, and in other ways. But that is yet another story.
Reprinted with permission of Silvia Strung.