So Far, It’S Been A Winter To Die For

While some creatures struggle through a winter such as this, cross country skiers and poachers thrive.

First, the unpleasant news.

A month of cold, snowy weather has forced much of the region’s wildlife into lowland proximity with caring people who enjoy watching them.

Unfortunately, the poachers among us are taking advantage of winter’s hardship much like burglars preying on the holiday season.

No one knows how many birds and animals are being killed by poachers this month. A vignette released Wednesday by the Idaho Fish and Game Department gives us a hint, not only about the local nature of the poaching, but also about the perpetrators’ intellectual prowess.

A chain of lucky breaks gave Idaho a minor victory in the fight against wildlife crime.

Idaho enforcement officers were staking out a dummy deer they had put up just outside Heyburn State Park.

“That day, three shooters were cited,” the release says:

“No. 1 for shooting from a public road, criminal trespass, and for hunting from a motorized vehicle.

“No. 2 for shooting from a public road, criminal trespass, and hunting from a motorized vehicle.

“No. 3 for shooting from a public road and criminal trespass.”

The officers started putting two and two together when they noticed blood in the pickup of shooter No. 2.

Earlier, while placing the dummy deer, they had noticed a fairly fresh drag trail indicating a deer had been killed there recently.

“As the officers were writing up No. 2, a local resident drove by and said No. 2’s vehicle had been there when someone had shot the deer responsible for the drag trail,” the release said.

“One of the officers got No. 2 to confess to shooting a deer earlier and not tagging it. “The dummy deer operation was closed down and two officers followed No. 2 to the house where the illegal deer was hanging.

“When they arrived, No. 3’s vehicle was also there. The shooters were related. When the officers looked in the shed for No. 2’s illegal deer, they discovered two additional untagged deer hanging with it.

“Those had been shot by No. 3 and his passenger in previous days. No. 3 and his passenger had fled into the woods behind the house before the officers arrived.

“No. 2 ended up with three more citations for failure to validate a deer tag, attempting to overlimit on deer, and obstructing an officer.

“Eventually, No. 3 received two more citations for attempting to exceed the bag limit on deer and failure to validate a deer tag.

“His passenger received two citations for exceeding the bag limit and hunting without a tag.”

With the tally at 15 citations, the officers scored a bonus bust. While trying to find No. 3’s house, they accidentally went to a wrong address.

“A man standing in the yard saw them coming and moved quickly into the house. One officer checked out back while the other knocked on the front door and they caught the homeowner tagging a deer in the garage.”

A Fish and Game patrol vehicle idling through neighborhoods this time of year could probably get more people scrambling than an ice cream wagon on an August afternoon.

Meanwhile, some people are bright enough to take advantage of a cold, snowy winter in a more positive way.

For three weeks, the region’s skinny skiers have had the unusually lengthy luxury to make tracks starting from their doorstep.

Skiers with old boards they’re willing to sacrifice to road sand have been trekking across neighborhoods, parks and pastures.

Mike Aho at Spokane Parks and Recreation jumped on the opportunity two weeks ago to groom ski trails at Downriver Golf Course and on the Centennial Trail starting from the Bowl and Pitcher overlook.

Our family set out from the south edge of town at 9 on Christmas evening and skied through the woods for nearly two hours on trails we and our neighbors had made earlier in the week.

City lights reflected off the clouds and cast an orange glow on the landscape. We left our headlamps off most of the time, slinking in and out of the shadows like coyotes.

Deer lurked in the brush around us. We know this not because we saw them, but rather because we found their tracks following our ski trail on the return trip. Oldest daughter, Brook, was leading our foursome at a brisk pace when she skidded to a stop. “Shhh,” she said.

Keen ears are welcome on night-time adventures. As we huddled together in the still of night, we heard the nearby call of a great horned owl.

“Hoo!, hu-hu-hu, Hoo! Hoo!” I called back, admittedly with less-than-perfect intonation. The three female family members waited a full two seconds before bursting into a gale of giggles.

Then they tried, sounding even less like an owl and more like chickadees with strep throat.

“This isn’t exactly the way it happens in `Owl Moon,”’ I said, referring to a well-worn children’s book in our family library.

We left the animals in peace and glided back home, noticing that lights were blinking in houses as our neighbors went to bed.

Needing one more fix of the night and the season, I went back into the dark to fill the bird feeders for the morning feeding frenzy.

The stillness was pierced by the report of a high-caliber rifle coming from where we had seen the fresh deer tracks an hour earlier.

‘Tis the season.