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.
Around me the skunks hibernated about two months each year; some winters possibly not at all. Generally the entire skunk family, from two to eight, hole up together. One den which I looked into in mid-winter had a stack of eight sleepy skunks in it. A bank had caved off exposing them. I left them to sleep on, for had I wakened them they might not have liked it. And who wants to mix up with a skunk?
Another time a snowslide tore a big stump out by the roots and disclosed four skunks beneath. When I arrived, about half an hour after the tear-up, the skunks were blinking and squirming as though apparently too drowsy to decide whether to get up or to have another good sleep.
Many tales have been told about the terrible hunger and ferocity of wolves during the winter. This may sometimes be so. Wolves seem ever to have good, though not enormous, appetites. Sometimes, too, they go hungry for days without a full meal. But generally, if the winter is snowy, this snow makes it easier for them to make a big kill.
Deer, elk, and mountain sheep occasionally are caught in deep snow, or are struck by a snowslide. A number sometimes are snowbound or killed at one time. Usually the prowling wolves or coyotes discover the kill and remain near as long as the feast holds out.