Winter Game Thoughts From My John Deere

The storm began last night. The roads were a mess then, and today it was much worse with 18 inches of soggy wet snow on the ground around my place, and several more inches of dry snow on top as the thermometer plummets.

My John Deere snowblower was fired up at 7:30 this morning, and there I pulled my Carhartts on, heavy boots, leather mittens, and had an urge to throw all of the snow out into the fields and woods around my house.

The tractor soon had the snow flying. This is one of those jobs where you pay attention to what you are doing, but there is a good bit of dead time while traveling up and down the driveway. It's a time I often spend thinking about the outdoors until the spout of the blower clogs up with snow. And that happened far too many times today.

Snowblowing gives me time to think about our wild game.

I was on and off the snowblower constantly, trying to blow wet, heavy snow. I spent as much time cleaning the blower out as I did blowing snow through it.

But, I don't dwell too much on the weather as it pertains to me but I do spend time thinking about what this may do to the local deer and turkey populations. The quick and simple answer is it won't do too much for either one unless we get another 12 inches tonight, and still another dumping the next day. But when snow covers choice feeding areas, whitetail does will fight for dominance as shown here.

There is enough wind today to scour some of the snow to the east and south, and wherever it hits the wood-line, the storm will start backing up in major drifts. It's when those drifts become a foot deep that deer and turkeys have to start working harder to feed, and should the snow pile up to two or three feet, things then start going bad in a hurry.

One thought today was that it's been an easy winter so far. We'll get a storm, 10 inches of snow will fall, and then it warms up. So far, deer and turkeys have had a fairly easy winter of it. There's no need for panic just yet because of another nasty snow storm.

Most of the winter has seen brief warm-ups, snow melts, bare ground may show up, and then it snows once again. The process seems to repeat itself every two or three weeks during most winters. This winter has all the earmarks of another winter like last year. We already have had 36 inches of snow at my house, and more is on its way.

Much about the weather can change in just a few days.

Two or three days ago we had deer tracks around the mail box. A week ago a small group of turkeys snaked through our woods behind the house, and they were jabbering as they fed freely on weed seeds and other things.

So, is this current storm something very critical for deer and turkeys? The answer is no. Nor will it become a problem unless one of two things happen: a nasty ice storm hits and remains on the ground for a week or more without an increase in air temperature to melt it. The second bad thing would be a  storm that brings two or three more feet of snow in one wave after another without any break or a warm-up.

The mild warm-up today took the temperature up to the mid-30s before it dropped about 10 degrees in two hours. The warmer than normal temperatures we've experienced so far has sucked most of the frost out of the ground. Any warm-up will help the snow to melt, but if the temperature plummets and the snow continues to pile up, this is when wildlife begins to have trouble. The forecast is for cold temps and snow through next Tuesday, at least.

Game is still doing well but that can change overnight.

Actually, deer and turkey are in good shape right now. When bad weather starts in November, and there is no midwinter break, that is when these animals start their winter die-off. We could still have a bad winter for January, February and March, and unless a severe ice storm hits, most of our birds and deer will make it barring another 200+  inches of snow like last year.

Now that my driveway has been scraped with the help of a neighbor with a big tractor and a huge snowblower, the deck has been shoveled twice today, the bird feeders have been filled. It's now time for dinner and the Red Wings game. We root heavily for the Pistons and Red Wings during the winter months.

What we don't root for is more snow. We are at 36 inches of snow so far, and I don't want to see another year like 2008-2009 winter when we had more than 100 inches of snow by Christmas. A few more snow showers, and perhaps 60 inches of snow total seems like a fair amount of the white stuff for any one winter.

Posted via email from Dave Richey Outdoors