Bats live astonishingly long lives for their size — many species commonly reach 10 to 20 years in the wild, and some individuals have survived past 30 or even 40. By the normal rules of mammal biology, that shouldn’t happen.
Elk can run at speeds of up to around 40 to 45 miles per hour in short bursts, making them among the fastest large animals in North America. Just as impressive is their endurance: elk can hold a ground-eating trot
Moose grow the largest antlers of any living deer. A mature bull’s rack commonly spans 4 to 5 feet from tip to tip, and the biggest Alaska-Yukon bulls can exceed 6 feet of spread, with a full-grown pair of antlers
Caribou can run at speeds of up to about 50 miles per hour (80 km/h) in short bursts, making them one of the fastest deer species in the world. They can’t hold that top speed for long, but what really
No — skunks do not truly hibernate. In cold climates they enter torpor: a lighter dormancy in which body temperature and metabolism drop modestly and the skunk sleeps away the coldest stretches in a den, but wakes periodically and will
Yes — female reindeer grow antlers, and they are the only deer species in which females routinely do. Even more interesting: males typically shed their antlers in late fall or early winter, after the breeding season, while females usually keep
Yes, deer are social animals, and most of the deer you see are traveling in groups. For white-tailed deer, the most common arrangement is a small family group built around an adult doe, her fawns, and often her daughters from
The snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) is the boreal forest’s shape-shifter: a two-to-four-pound hare with enormous, fur-soled hind feet that work like snowshoes, and a coat that molts from summer brown to winter white and back every year, triggered by day
Biologically, hearing an owl means something specific and rather good: a healthy predator is claiming territory or courting a mate close to you, which in turn means your neighborhood has the rodents, trees, and quiet an owl needs. Most owl
The giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) is a true bear — the eighth and most specialized member of the bear family — found only in the cool, wet bamboo forests of the mountains of central China. It’s a study in contradiction:
Wild turkeys sleep in trees. Every night, shortly before dark, a flock flies up 20 to 60 feet into the limbs of large, mature trees — a behavior called roosting — and stays there until first light. It surprises people
Owls can rotate their heads about 270 degrees in either direction — three-quarters of a full circle — without moving their bodies and without cutting off blood to the brain. Two anatomical tricks make it possible. First, owls have 14
The rule for storing food in bear country is simple: nothing with a scent ever stays in your tent, your pack, or the open — not food, not trash, not toothpaste. Where you’re car camping, everything scented goes into a
Most owls do not migrate. The typical owl is a year-round resident that holds the same territory through summer heat and winter snow, because intimate knowledge of local prey and roosts is worth more to a night hunter than a
The great horned owl (Bubo virginianus) is North America’s most widespread and formidable owl — a two-to-five-pound predator with a four-foot wingspan, feathered “horns” that are neither horns nor ears, and the most varied diet of any raptor on the
The most effective humane way to get rid of moles is to make your lawn a worse restaurant: cut back on watering so earthworms retreat deeper, treat serious grub infestations with beneficial nematodes or milky spore, protect beds with buried
Yes — bears can climb trees, and black bears in particular are astonishingly good at it. A black bear’s short, curved claws work like climbing hooks, letting it rocket up a trunk faster than a person can run on flat
Owls live on every continent except Antarctica, in nearly every habitat that supports prey — forests, deserts, grasslands, tundra, farmland, and city parks. What they don’t do is build homes: owls make no nests of their own. Instead they occupy
Moles and voles are completely different animals causing completely different damage. A mole is an insect-eater that tunnels underground after earthworms and grubs, leaving raised ridges and volcano-shaped soil mounds — but it almost never eats plants. A vole is
The most reliable way to tell a black bear from a grizzly is not color or size — it’s shape. A grizzly has a prominent muscular hump over its shoulders, a dished (concave) facial profile, short rounded ears, and long,
Owls are strict carnivores. Every owl species lives entirely on animal prey — most commonly small mammals like voles, mice, shrews, and rats, along with birds, insects, frogs, reptiles, earthworms, and even fish. What a particular owl eats depends mostly
To donate venison, take your legally tagged, field-dressed deer to a processor participating in a venison donation program — most states have one, often under a name like Hunters for the Hungry, Hunters Sharing the Harvest, or Farmers and Hunters
Updated on September 7, 2026. This is a hunter how-to, not a diagnosis. Confirm drop-off sites, mandatory units, and carcass rules on your state wildlife agency page before you leave camp. Dates and counties below were last checked against the
If a wounded deer crosses onto property you don’t have permission to enter: stop at the line. In most states, a hunting license and a blood trail do not create any legal right to follow — entering without permission is