Not a deer trail but a super highway

Rush hour on my bush trail that I keep clear of snow.

It will be interesting to see how wildlife populations on our property react this spring and summer to what so far has been a near-total absence of canine predators. This has been the first winter in probably 15 years that timber wolves haven't scoured our land each night in search of whitetail deer.
By this time we normally have a half-dozen deer kills right near my walking trails. This year there hasn't been a track of the big predators.
Nor has their been any sign of red foxes. They typically whip around the property every few days and have proven remarkably adept at catching ruffed grouse while they slept beneath the snow. In fact one time I saw evidence of where a fox went after a group of five partridge that were hanging around the house. The fox got a bird each night for five consecutive nights. In an intriguing display of animal behaviour, it left half of the last partridge near our front step, seemingly as a present to our black Lab, Bud. The fox then left and I didn't see a sign of it for weeks. Bud, of course, accepted the gift.
The coyote photographed a few posting back isn't a regular visitor. I would say he swings through about once a week. He seems most interested in mice.
Someone must have shown my post about the absence of some animals this winter to the red squirrels because the very next day a couple showed up for the first time at the bird feeders. There suddenly are lots of tracks from them around the trails too. I suspect they had put away a ton of green balsam and spruce cones last summer and have been munching on them rather than ones still on the trees. Apparently the store has now run empty.

Deer are really thin now. They have been losing weight every day since last summer.