Snow is a Good Thing!

Well, as promised, it snowed across much of the state! For central Iowa, it snowed a lot. Ooops.

 This storm shifted substantially overnight targeting central and SW Iowa with plowable snow, thundersnow (a thunderstorm producing heavy snow), and slushy to snow covered roads.



Image courtesy IEM shows narrow corridor
of intense snowfall. If you awoke to thundersnow,
accumulation rates were 1"-3" per hour.

 The band also constricted in size from earlier forecasts with a compact strip of 5-6" of heavy wet white. As a forecaster, this one was a bit of a heartbreak.  The storm displayed it's full potential over a populated area 50-70 miles further east than expected. These things happen, and I apologize. But snow is a fantastic asset to a successful hunt. Here are some reasons why:

Snow is great for visibility. Deer become very easily spotted in the timber or afield. Watch out, you are easy to spot too! So be careful and consider using vertigo-style camouflage that brings in white colors to break up your outline.

Fresh white snow makes tracking a breeze. The snow stopped falling the morning of the 9th, so you can use this information to help pinpoint when the deer were walking through the area. Size of tracks, direction of movement and how old the sign is can all be determined by using snow to your advantage. Old tracks will have fuzzy/muddled edges, and fresh sign will have a crisp clean edge. When the snow melts, you can still use the wet ground and mud to brush up on your tracking skills. Identify the most recently used heavy trails and hunt them immediately.

Melting snow means wet ground. Add in breezy weather and you have a perfect recipe for sneaking and stalking. I love to still-hunt on a windy day where the leaves are wet and my steps are quiet. The wind moving the trees helps conceal your own movement and that will help you get closer to game. So even after the snow melts, the water left behind can still help you out.

Snow is cold. This seems like a no-brainer, but when it snows, the air becomes refrigerated by the snow and temps are colder. Colder weather makes the deer move and feed more aggressively. Isolate good food sources, use the snow to find fresh sign and good trails, and set up close for an evening ambush. Be sure to get out early, colder weather brings the deer out to feed sooner. For morning hunts, plan your attack in reverse. Deer will be filtering out of the fields in less uniform fashion and usually in family groups. Set up someplace near doe bedding areas, and pick on those south or east facing slopes, and try to find several heavily used trails leading into this area. If the wind is right, I'll sometimes even sit right in the bedding areas and see deer moving around through the noon hour.

So snow is a good thing and I'm hunting the heck out of the next few days. I hope you can enjoy it too!