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Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, July 02, 2008 at 01:42:59 :
In Reply to: David posted by Paul ( in NY) on Tuesday, July 01, 2008 at 22:49:28 :
Yes, the elk get trapped. The last time we had a heavy snow, somebody I talked to had found the remains of 30 elk concentrated in one small spot that had been trapped in a valley in the headwaters of the St Joe somewhere. He said all the bark and twigs had been eaten off of the trees in the area. The problem is that elk are naturally prairie animals. They used to live on the plains like buffalo. They can't step very high when they walk. They were brought into North Idaho and turned loose after the 1910 fire burned the timber off. Before then, there weren't a lot of hoofed animals any kind. Lewis and Clark nearly starved both times the crossed through the Biterroots. The elk multiplied pretty well on all the burned-off brushy hillsides, but now the timber is growing back and there's less winter browse for them. I think the forests may be making the snow deeper too.
In any case, once the snow gets more than a couple feet deep, the elk with their shuffling gait can't get through it very well. Moose on the other hand have extremely articulated shoulder joints and even longer legs than elk. They can raise their front feet almost up to shoulder hight with walking through deep snow. I watched a cow moose and yearling calf walking up a steep hill last April in snow that was probably 10' deep. They sunk in almost to their bellies, but they still got up the hill a lot faster then I could on snowshoes. The other thing their "double-jointed" front legs are good for is kicking. They can kill anything by kicking straight out at it if they can connect. That's how they fight off wolves.
The small animals (rodents) are native here, so they're accustomed to deep snow. Most of them stay in their burrows all winter. Some hibernate or eat stored seeds and hay, and some burrow around on top of the ground but under the snow looking for whatever they can find. It's pretty safe for them once the snow is deep. Rabbits move around during the winter, having grown lots of fur on their feet to keep them from sinking into the snow, and sometimes squirrels come out for a little while during sunny spells. Coyotes, wolves, and raptors all prey on any rodent that comes out in the winter. The rabbits turn white for camouflage, but most of them get eaten anyway. All the weasel-type animals (weasels, minks, martens, etc) are active all winter, hunting the rodents, usually by going right into their burrows and eating them. They're long and skinny so they can go into rodent burrows, even though that means they lose heat faster than more rounded animals, and thus have to eat all the more. We may possibly have wolverines (the largest weasel) around here, but I don't know anyone who's seen one personally. We have a tiny but ferocious "short-tailed weasel" here that becomes the ermine in the winter. I accidentally caught one in its winter coloration in a rat trap I'd mistakenly left set over the winter. The fur was spoiled by the time I found it, and I felt bad not only for having killed something that didn't need to be killed, but for killing the very animal that I want to encourage because of its appetite for pack rats.