Calendars are still filled with ongoing outdoors activities, including hunting pheasants, ruffed grouse, turkey, and deer by archery and crossbow (until January 7, 2024). Rabbit and squirrel seasons close February 29, 2024.
Registration totals are ongoing for deer (283,317) and turkeys (3,766).
While waiting for safe hard water, trout season opens January 6, 2024 and some open water fishing continues, too.
Winter continues with enthusiastic bird watching and feeding using eyes to notice Snowy Owls and Evening Grosbeaks visiting the area. Bald Eagles are beginning nest refurbishing while waiting a bit to lay an egg or two and then hop on the egg to keep it from freezing. Once an egg is laid and incubation begins, there will always be an adult (white head) sitting on that egg deep in the nest. The pair trade places, but mostly females incubate.
Take note this is no time for a holiday from learning, participating, scouting, and enjoying numerous outdoors activities, sometimes in a quiet fashion.
Future endeavors and seasons could be cut short if hikes, investigations, identifications, notices, notes, photographs, and plans are discontinued so, weather permitting, be outside in December and months beyond.
Adventures and activities can be as simple as a walk in a woods maybe with nothing more than ears, eyes, noses, mouths and fingers alert.
Think of these as practice sessions for the real practical examinations when chives’ scents are airborne, morels are noticed, small wood chunks litter the snow below a pileated woodpecker’s chipping, and next summer’s blackcaps are hanging heavy on bramble canes. Clues are abundant. Read them.
Few people would forgo being fully exposed to autumn allures, scenes, photo ops, and scents of decomposing leaf litter. So why not during winter, too?
Notice stickseed weed burs still hanging tough on dead plants as an unpleasant reminder of hours spent cleaning hiking clothes of stick-tights. Winter walks are not a desert; hitchhiking plants are still alert.
Watercress is ready; December has an “R” in its month’s name. Deer scrapes are evident with some being visited now after gun deer season.
The deer were there at Thanksgiving time, but hiding. They are still there, clues reveal.
Snow, when it comes, is nature’s trail camera. Picture it.
Turkeys love to “talk” and are gregarious, too. Early morning gobbling may begin anytime. Hear it. Rotting stumps, dead elm trees, and injured oak trees are very likely homes to sulphur fungi, morels, and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, respectively. These signs show better now with leaves gone than in August, April and September, too.
Things are changing, though, with phenology now off by as much as few weeks. Climate change is real, drought, too. Events may be earlier or later. Hike now for exercise and observations.
Enjoy winter outdoors, but with caution.
— Jerry Davis is an Argyle native and a freelance writer who lives in Barneveld. He can be reached at sivadjam@mhtc.net or at 608-924-1112.
