Watched by Wild Animals

by Enos A. Mills

One winter afternoon I followed down the brook which flows past my cabin. The last wind had blown from an unusual quarter, the northeast. It made hay-stack drifts in a number of small aspen groves. One of these drifts was perhaps twenty feet across and about as high. The treetops were sticking out of it.

On the top of the snowdrift a cotton-tail was feeding happily off the bark of the small limbs. This raised platform had given him a good opportunity to get at a convenient food supply. He was making the most of this. At the bottom he had bored a hole in the snow pile and apparently planned to live there.

While peeping into this hole two mice scampered along it. This snow would protect them against coyotes. Safe under the snow they could make their little tunnels, eat grass and gnaw bark, without the fear of a coyote jumping upon them.

Tracks and records in the snow showed that for two days a coyote did not capture a thing to eat. During this time he had travelled miles. He had closely covered a territory about three miles in diameter. There was game in it, but his luck was against him. He was close to a rabbit, grabbed a mouthful of feathers—but the grouse escaped, and even looked at a number of deer. At last, after more than two days, and possibly longer, he caught a mouse or two.

Antelope in the plains appear to live in the same territory the year round. Many times in winter I have been out on the plains and found a flock feeding where I had seen it in summer. But one snowy time they were gone. I found them about fifteen miles to the west, where either less snow had fallen or the wind had partly swept it away. The antelope were in good condition. While I watched them a number started a race.

The wolves had also moved. A number of these big gray fellows were near the antelope. Just what the other antelope and the other wolves who used this locality did about these new folks, I cannot guess.

Mountain deer and elk who usually range high during the summer go to the lowlands or several miles down the mountains for the winter. They may thus be said to migrate vertically. One thousand feet of descent equals, approximately, the climatic changes of a thousand-mile southward journey. They may thus winter from five to twenty-five miles from where they summered, from one thousand to several thousand feet lower. The elk that winter in the Jackson Hole region have a summer range on the mountains forty or fifty miles away. But elk and deer that have a home territory in the lowlands are likely to be found summer after summer in the same small, unfenced pasture.

Moose, caribou, deer, and elk during heavy snows often resort to yarding. Moose and caribou are experts in taking care of themselves during long winters of deep snows. They select a yard which offers the maximum food supply and other winter opportunities.

One snowy winter I visited a number of elk that were yarding. High peaks rose snowy and treeless above the home in the forest. The ragged-edged yard was about half a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide. About one half the yard was a swamp covered with birch and willow and a scattering of fir. The remainder was a combination of open spaces, aspen groves, and a thick growth of spruce.

Constant trampling compressed the snow and enabled the elk readily to move about. Outside the yard they would have bogged in deep snow. In the swamp the elk reached the moss, weeds, and other growths. But toward spring the grass and weeds had either been eaten or were buried beneath icy snow. The elk then ate aspen twigs and the tops and limbs and bark of birch and willow.