It looks like we’re having an old-fashioned winter like we used to get 25 or 30 years ago. Lots of snow and days on end where the mercury never gets above freezing. I remember when we were on the ranch, having to use the crawler tractor to bulldoze a path through four feet of snow to feed our cattle. Some of the neighbors with long driveways couldn’t get their cars out because of the snowdrifts.

The County Road Department cleared the school bus and mail routes and left many lesser roads abandoned. The old timers used to say: “When you see a white rooster tail of snow flying off the top of Chief Joseph Mountain, get to the store and buy two weeks groceries.” Of course, we learned to cope with it even when we sometimes didn’t see bare ground until almost 1 April.

But what about the wildlife? How do they cope with severe winters? Actually, during some winters with deep snow and sub-zero temperatures there are extensive die-offs, especially the mule deer. Sometimes it takes several years for the herds to recover.

A lot depends on the type of fall we have. If we get a good September rainfall resulting in a greenup that is rich in vitamin A, the deer will go into the winter with an abundance of intestinal fat and a thick layer of tallow covering their backs. Vitamin A is a disease-prevention vitamin, and the fat reserves in the deer’s body will be metabolized during the lean times of winter. If the deer use up all their fat reserves before the winter is over, that’s when we have die-offs, especially with the fawns.

One thing that helps mule deer herds survive Wallowa County’s winters is our topography. We have many deep canyons where deer can migrate to lower elevations and sometimes get below the snowline. But even at higher elevations, there are many south-facing slopes where the sun melts the snow, exposing a growth of green cheat grass that can restore a deer’s vitamin A deficiency.

There is one other danger from a long winter followed by a sudden warm-up that many people don’t know about. Ruminants have a very complex digestive system that revolts against sudden changes of diet. So for a deer to go from coarse browse to rich green grass too quickly can result in a toxicity and death. Years ago when we had those conditions, I remember driving from the top of Little Sheep Hill all the way to Imnaha, and almost never being out of sight from a dead deer carcass. Fortunately, these are rare occasions, and cheat grass has saved far more deer than this unpopular grass has harmed.

Whitetail deerThirty-some years ago there were almost no whitetail deer on Upper Prairie Creek. Now they have taken over almost all of the agricultural land. On most days in the winter you can drive east of Joseph, take a loop from Tuckerdown Road to Liberty Road, and easily count about a hundred whitetails. They paw through the snow to nibble on the frozen remains of alfalfa and seem to be oblivious to weather as they bed down in the snow where there is nothing to break the wind. We used to hear the anti-logging groups say that deer and elk need the thermal cover of trees to survive the winter. That just isn’t true. Their body heat is retained by hollow guard hairs. The same hollow hair that makes a bucktail caddis fly float on top of the water.

Rocky Mountain elk As for the Wallowa County elk herds, they are even more weatherproof than deer. The only place I know of where the elk are fed hay in the winter is on Eden Bench down by Troy. Far more of our elk are killed by bears and cougars than ever die from severe winters. It’s true they migrate from their summer range high in the Wallowa Mountains when winter snowstorms cover their grassy meadows. But they seldom go to the canyon bottoms to avoid the snow. Instead, they stay high on the ridges of the rim rock country above the Imnaha and Snake Rivers, where the winds blow the snow off the bunchgrass. They winter quite well on this abundance of brown bunchgrass.

Elk herds can be a problem in late summer and fall when their normal diet turns dry and unpalatable. Once they get a taste of nutritious alfalfa, it’s almost impossible to keep them away. They wiped out our entire second cutting on Upper Prairie Creek before we put up the elk fence. Elk are a majestic game animal unless they cut a big swath from your livelihood. Then the people who need that crop to feed their cowherds in winter lose some of the romance of seeing them on a green background of alfalfa.

So this is my report on “The Nature of Things” regarding big game animals and Wallowa County winters. For the readers’ information, I wrote it all from the top of my head relying on almost 40 years of observations in this county with no reference books or internet search. That means if I got it wrong, it’s all my fault.