I knew the significant snow that skipped us on Monday had fallen more to the north of Lauderdale County, but when I went to my elevated shoot house on Tuesday in Kemper County, there were patches of snow everywhere. Besides the snow bringing me good luck by way of a buck on the ground, I spent the almost four hours in the stand recalling many previous snowy hunts as I watched several openings for wandering bucks.

Once when I had more hair and less belly, I jumped a small herd of elk a third of the way up Ute Mountain on the west side of the Continental Divide in Colorado. I was hunting south of the Ute Pass road where the mountain is completely covered with dark timber (fir and spruce mostly.)

The elk ran upward, as they always do, and I trudged after them in foot-deep snow. An hour later I knew I was getting close to their new bed when their tracks turned toward the cliff side of a bench. I was slipping carefully, but they saw me first and bailed off the cliff right back to the bottom.

Escape maneuver

I followed far down the mountain until they predictably turned back uphill, a maneuver designed to guarantee a hunter’s heart attack. Out of oxygen and energy, I gave up and lived to hunt another day.

Another time I was on my first spring turkey hunt in eastern Wyoming and it was snowing, as it often does in springtime in the Rockies. I had never been in the area. Fresh tracks in the snow revealed a dozen turkeys traveling over a ridge. I guessed their destination and lay in wait near an opening. They waddled into the little snowy field, bobbing along like raisins in stirred milk. I left for home that day with the heaviest gobbler of my life. A twenty-plus pounder.

Then there was the time when my son insisted on following lion tracks near Estes Park, Colorado instead of looking for mule deer bucks. The tracks led to a cave. Fortunately the cat had moved on.

I forget where I was that day when I was tracking a big whitetail buck in the snow and he and I had covered a lot of territory. I came upon a sharp left turn from his general direction of travel. Following, I discovered a sweeping, C-shaped maneuver that took the buck to a high lookout point where his hoof prints showed he had stopped and viewed me as I had followed his tracks far below.

The buck’s cunning made me want him all the more. But I never got sight of him.

False security

My last, and largest, mule deer lay inside a copse of aspens in 15 inches of snow. He thought the trees hid him and he never moved when I approached to 200 yards. But his outline and even his antlers were in stark contrast to his pure white surroundings. I shot him in his bed.

My fascination with hunting in snow began when we lived in north Alabama and I was about eight. I don’t remember if I was armed with a BB gun or sling shot. But I followed rabbit tracks in the four-inch snow and marveled at the experience. I am not sure I jumped the rabbit, but I know I didn’t get him.

That day began a life-long infatuation with creatures leaving their diaries open for me to read once the sky has covered the landscape with snow; a clean page onto which animals and birds must write their stories.