Nothing in my long memory beats watching a whitetail forest awaken in the morning where I hunt. Sometimes, what I see in the beam of my flashlight while hiking to a stand site is also hard to beat, especially when everything you see is covered with dazzling diamond-like white crystals of hoar frost. What I hear along the way can also be a treat—the call of a saw-whet or great horned owl, for example, or the distant howl of a wolf. Though spellbinding at first, the sudden hard slap of a beaver’s tail on the surface of an adjacent pond as you pass is a reminder that I’m not the only creature in the woods that is active at this predawn hour. Finally, upon arriving there, I sit down on my stool to wait.

At first, the world around me is silent and pitch-black except for the stars above. I then commonly hear some rustling in the leaves a few feet away, likely a mouse, and then the cadence of foot beats of something small bounding past, possibly a pine martin or fisher.

A narrow band of light finally appears along the eastern horizon, slowly growing wider. Fifteen minutes later, the black evergreen trees about you begin turning green, meaning that first light has arrived and is now sweeping across the forest from east to west.

As the sky above begins to brighten, the wings of a raven are heard approaching from the south. Overhead, it croaks twice, and it is almost immediately answered by another raven with a deeper voice. As they continue flying north, they trade multiple croaks as if making plans for the day.

Soft, flute-like calls then draw my attention, made by a pair of gray jays alternately looping from branch to branch about ten feet apart as they pass.

A red squirrel then hops up onto the horizontal trunk of a fallen birch tree in front of me and leans back, purses its lips to form a perfect round opening the size of a dime, and then begins trilling long and melodically. It seems to be saying, “Good morning world,” but maybe it’s only warning other red squirrels in the area to keep out of its favorite patch of cone-seed bearing spruce trees. Another red squirrel about 50 yards away then trills in reply.

Right about then, a ruffed grouse noisily flushes upwards out of the spruce tree that I’m leaning against and lands on a branch of a mature quaking aspen about 40 feet above the ground. It then begins tiptoeing out toward the end of a thin, sagging branch to feed on aspen buds.

My eyes are then drawn to an angry red squirrel suddenly chipping and squawking in a tall spruce tree about 30 yards away. Just below it, I spot a gray wolf silently passing from left to right along a deer trail. It is kitchen-table tall at its shoulders and 6 1/2 to 7 feet long from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail. Right behind it is another wolf, and then another. It’s the 12-member wolfpack of this area, cruising single file in search of a vulnerable deer within its 100-plus square-mile hunting range. At the tail end of the pack are two half-grown pups, excitedly poking their noses into recently made deer tracks in the snow and scampering to keep up. Soon, they are all out of sight.

A bald eagle is now soaring overhead, also searching for prey.

About 20 minutes later, as the rising sun began peeking over the eastern horizon, casting its first bright rays horizontally through the trees about me, I am surrounded by dee-deeing chickadees. One lands on a branch about two feet from my head to look me over. These sharp-eyed, little birds miss nothing during their quests for food. Suddenly, the entire flock flutters away, making me wonder what else might be near. I thus sit very still and wait.

Sure enough, a white-tailed doe silently appears about 10 feet away on my right. This is not unusual, because my deer hunting partners and I have never hunted does in this area, because our wolves have long prevented our deer from attaining an ideal population of 16 per square-mile.

After a decade of this, several does in this area decided that we are harmless and occasionally pass very near without displaying the least bit of alarm. This one was feeding on leaves of red oak saplings. While I watched it slowly pass on my right, a second deer came into view on my left. It was a fawn, and like its mother, it completely ignored me while also feeding on red oak leaves.

Later, upon returning to camp for lunch, one of my sons asked, “Did you see anything Dad?”

“Naw,” I answered, “just two does. How about you?”

“Nothing,” he answered. “But it sure was a nice morning to be out there.”

As we continued talking about what we saw that morning, it occurred to me that few, if any, persons in the world, other than us deer hunters, ever get to witness the wonders of a whitetail forest awakening in the morning.

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