Watched by Wild Animals

by Enos A. Mills

Ease of movement in this area enabled the elk to keep enemies at bay. Several times I saw from tracks that lion had entered this selfmade wild life reservation, and on two occasions a number of wolves invaded it. But each time the elk had bunched in a pocket of a trampled space and effectively fought off the wolves.

One day late in February I visited the yard. The elk plainly had lost weight but were not in bad condition. While I lingered near the entire herd joined merrily in chase and tag, often racing then wheeling to rear high and fence with heads. If I counted correctly this herd went through the entire winter without the loss of an elk.

But the caribou appears to be the only animal which migrates between summer and winter ranges, that is, which makes a long journey of hundreds of miles; as much change of place as made by many species of migrating birds. The main cause for this migration is the food supply, but myriads of mosquitoes in the woods may be one cause of the moose moving each summer far into the north where there are grassy prairies and large openings in the woods. But for winter they seek food and shelter in a yard in the forest.

While snowshoeing in the forested mountains to the southeast of Long’s Peak I came upon a mountain lion track startlingly fresh. I followed it to a den beneath a rock pile at the bottom of a cliff. Evidently the lion was in. Seeing older tracks which he had made on leaving the den, I trailed these. After zigzagging through the woods he had set off in a bee-line for the top of a cliff. From this point he evidently saw a number of deer. He had crawled forward, then back-tracked and turned to the right, then made round to the left. The snow was somewhat packed and his big feet held him on the surface. The deer broke through.

The lion climbed upon a fallen tree and crept forward. He was screened by its large upturned root. At last he rushed out and seized a near-by deer and killed it, evidently after a short struggle. He had then pursued and killed a young deer that had fled off to the left where it was struggling in the heavy snows. Without returning to the first kill the lion fed off the second and returned to the den.

I followed the other deer. In a swamp they had fed for a time on the tops of tall weeds among the snow and willows. I came close to them in a thick growth of spruce. Here the snow was less deep. A goodly portion of the snow still clung to the trees.

These deer circled out of the spruce swamp and came into their trail made in entering it. Back along this trail they followed to where the lion had made the first kill. Leaping over this dead deer they climbed up on the rocky ridge off which so much snow had blown that they could travel speedily most of the time over the rocks with only now and then a stretch of deep snow.

Often during my winter trips I came upon a porcupine. Both winter and summer he seemed blindly content. There were ten thousand trees around, and winter or summer there were meals to last a life-time. Always he had a dull, sleepy look and I doubt if he ever gets enthusiastic enough to play.

Birds that remain all winter in snowy lands enjoy themselves. Like the winter animals, usually they are well fed. But most species of birds with their airplane wings fly up and down the earth, go northward in the spring and southward in the autumn, and thus linger where summer lingers and move with it when it moves.