Editor’s note: James Egan has lived in Hovland the last seven years. He works as a fishing guide in the summer and is an amateur naturalist who hunts ducks, deer and partridge. He is the new outdoor writer for the Cook County News Herald. His column will appear every other week in the newspaper.
The wolves have killed a deer, across the road from us, down over the snow-covered creek, and up over the snow-covered fold into the next bottoms.
It is not hard now in deep winter to find the kill sites. First I was tipped off by a bald eagle flying away from the big lake and flying as the crow flies. They live well on dead deer – road kills along the highway and wolf kill further up in the woods.
The road runs east-west, and the deer trails cross it north-south. We can take the hardest-packed deer trails across the road and into the trees.
Over the creek you begin to see crows in the air or on birch or black ash limbs ahead. Climbing hard up the short ridge they begin to caw and over the ridge there is the murder of crows, you make them alight.
Of course, without fresh snow the site is easily visible – crimson and black and dirty urine-packed snow down below in the next bottoms. Nothing much was left of this doe, only the green and yellow stomach contents which no scavengers had eaten yet.
It is no surprise, really. This is the third year we have found a kill site here, along this deer trail in the bottoms. The wolves have found a natural ambush – a pinch point that they can drive a deer into and, laying in wait, waylay.
The road is one boundary and the bigger creek meanders down along the road, frozen this time of year but with deep snowdrifts and false footing. The ridge overlooks the deer trails and the ridge runs down to the point where another smaller creek with deep broad black ash and tag elder bottoms comes down and cuts it off.
I will check the site, looking for bones – usually there are not many remaining. Everywhere is the fecal smell of wolves, and the musky smell of winter red fox in mating season. And everywhere is the smell of canine urine, and the urine of the burst bladder of the doe, soaked away now. Any further remains are hide and fur, which I may take to tie fishing flies for the summer.
Leave a Reply