Woods & Water by Dick Herfindahl

 

I don’t believe I can remember hearing anyone say it would be nice to have a couple of inches of snow for Thanksgiving. Whether anyone wished it or not – here it is! I don’t want to be the one to say it, but the forecast, temperature wise, doesn’t make it sound like there will be melting going on anytime soon. I guess we now have winter no matter what the calendar says.

Moving on to the parts of winter that I like would be easier if it wasn’t quite this early, oh well. I have always enjoyed going outside in the morning and seeing little tracks in the snow. I am quite content to follow those little footprints just to see where they are heading and where they have been. If they are rodent tracks I would prefer that they do not begin or end anywhere close to the door leading into my house.

Yes, I will see rodent tracks, usually the bushy tailed rodents that we call squirrels and other assorted mammal tracks along with the tracks of the various birds that are hearty enough to make this area their year-round home.

My love of following tracks and trying to identify the critter responsible for them can be tracked all the way back to my childhood. As a kid I would roam freely through the slough near our house in the winter time. Once the slough had iced-over a curious kid (that would have been me) could have a whole new world opened up to him. Saturday mornings were the prime times for us kids to venture out on the slough to explore and conquer the unknown. We would usually stay out there until we either got water in our boots, our pant legs started “clacking” when we walked or we were cold enough to want to seek the warmth of the old heat register at home.

As kids, we would play cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers or Army. When the winter was upon us, I would change the game and in my mind I would be Sergeant Preston of the Yukon or would pretend that my buddies and I were a group of French Canadian explorers or fur traders. It was always fun to pretend that we were exploring the untamed wilderness even if it was just a slough that existed not all that far from home.

Even as a kid I would always try to identify tracks in the snow and wonder what critter had made them. Every once in a while, I would be pleasantly surprised by the tracks of something larger than a field mouse or a rabbit. Finding an occasional raccoon or fox track would surely get the adrenaline flowing and make me want to trek on through the slough hoping to get a glimpse of the critter. I do believe that over the course of a winter the only animal larger than a mouse that I ever spotted was a pheasant and they would scare the bejeebers out of you when they got up from the slough grass right by your foot. I did, at one time, spot what appeared to be a fox off in the distance trotting across the slough. I took that as a great accomplishment while exploring my outdoors world.

Last winter I had taken some old meat from the freezer and placed it on the ground alongside my trash can. One morning, I was greeted by a fresh layer of fallen snow. When I went outside to start the car I noticed tracks leading from under my deck to that package of meat. The tracks were not made by a common house cat but were different and much larger. I could tell by the way that they had sunk down into the snow that it was a larger animal. I took some pictures of the tracks and sent them to my brother-in-law Lynn Johnson who lives in Nome, Alaska. Lynn has been trapping for years in the area around Nome and pretty much knows what every critter’s tracks look like. He contacted me and told me that they were definitely bobcat tracks. That was my guess, but I wanted to confirm my suspicions before telling anyone. This spring, I actually saw that bobcat in my backyard. I had heard the birds making a commotion in my trees so I looked out in my backyard to see what all of the noise was about. That’s when I saw the critter as it stared at me for a moment and then pranced off towards the neighbors.

I think folks were a little skeptical when I told them what I had seen, but this summer someone put a video on Facebook of that same bobcat as it crossed Fifth Street and bounded into a neighbors back yard. Although the video was a little grainy, it was clearly a bobcat. Now I don’t know if someone has tried to domesticate a bobcat, but it does roam freely about the neighborhood. I spotted it in my backyard again just last week as I got out of the car after arriving home. I didn’t tell anyone about that last sighting because by the time I would have said something, it was gone. I’d like to believe that it is indeed wild and living somewhere close by in our neighborhood. In the past, I have seen fox and an occasional deer while taking an early morning walk around the neighborhood, so this would not be too surprising.

I have heard of a few bow hunters who have gotten some pretty dandy bucks so far this season. A couple of those bucks were taken off of public land WMA’s. My personal observation that I have made while driving around the countryside is that there are plenty of deer there for the firearms season so the numbers should be up. Good luck hunters, I wish you all a safe hunt!

Please remember to keep our service men and women in your thoughts and prayers. Without them we would not be able to enjoy the freedoms we enjoy today. When you show respect for our flag, you are also honoring them.