A DARK MORNING WITH SOME FREEZING RAINSaturday, 8:30 AM. 33 degrees, wind SW, light but increasing. The channel is frozen over except for the ferry trail, broken open again this morning. The sky is overcast and the barometer predicts precipitation. It is over a month since the winter solstice, but it is still a late sunrise. The January thaw continues.
The walk this morning verged on the slippery, but we didn’t get enough rain last night to really make it hazardous, although it probably was so further to the west and south.
On our walk I talked with another old duffer who has a weekend house on 9th St., and he said that on opening day of the gun deer season he saw one deer and five bears. He also hunts with a crossbow during bow season, and did not get a deer this year. He thinks we have a predator problem. The extended January warm spell without additional snow should help the deer survive the winter and hopefully reproduce well in the spring. The snow depth in the deer yards (heavy cover where the deer congregate in the winter) certainly has decreased, saving the deer considerable energy, and the extended warmer weather will also reduce nutritional stress and increase survivability. Maybe the DNR will wriggle off the hook.
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