December 7, 2021 – Those inevitable cold fronts bring damp and chilly changes to the Midwest, causing white crusty ice crystals to form during the night. Across the tired and dejected-looking landscape, a delightful sugary coating enhanced by the morning light shimmers and sparkles, the heavy frost covers the withering but determined understory and tells the tale of the coming change. Strong north winds remove stubborn leaves from the nearly bare trees. Marcescent hardwoods, with their tattered dried leaves, rattle in the breeze, a somewhat haunting sound that will continue through the dormant season. The pockets of cover that wildlife like White-tailed deer and Coyotes have used all summer will no longer be the havens of safety and vantage for these large mammals, although they remain to be quick escapes for pheasants, cottontails, and fox squirrels. Those tangled bare stemmed forms that border woods and prairies that were once places of a safe retreat have been reduced to transparent wiry frames offering much less safety and protection for the coming months. The struggles of winter are within sight. Flushed out into the open by the strong desire to breed, the behavior of White-tailed deer has changed with the colder weather of late autumn. Meteorological winter began December 1st, and although the rut will soon start to decline, the breeding will continue a bit longer. It is not unusual to see a doe bed down in corn stubble mid-morning in a wide-open area with a few bucks standing nearby waiting for an opportunity to breed. The gestation period for the White-tailed deer is about six months. The female deer will carry her unborn through the harshness of winter, a time of snow, arctic blasts, and food supplies that become increasingly limited. With the unpredictable calamities caused by climate change and the effects on the jetstream that impact all of us, the periods of extended cold and snow cover potentially affect the development of the White-tails’ fetus. Other animals surviving the winter in the Midwest require food and habitat to get them through those hard times. Nature restoration programs and land left undeveloped provide year-round safe places for nature. It is easy for humans to go indoors by a fire to warm up during the coldest of times, but wildlife of the Midwest endures some unimaginable bitter conditions during the winter. Let’s not forget to leave them some habitat.
