The snow was light and fine at first. The snowflakes danced in the air before they fell, like midges warming themselves in sunbeams. Then the freezing rain came down in earnest. Frozen pellets peppered the windows and the roof with a sound like bacon frying in a pan. Fog crept across the valley, blurring the black woods to gray.

In the morning, frost whitened the trees along Coal Creek. A sheet of ice covered the ground, cracking as I walked. Ice sheathed the hedge and locust saplings whose bark had been stripped by bucks, toning up their antlers for the rut. The dogs loped through the silvery grass like ghostly shadows, flushing a doe that had been bedding down in the cottontails.

The barrage of high-powered rifles during hunting season portended a drastic reduction in the deer population. But just north of the house, I saw 16 does and fawns dash across my neighbor’s field. They’d survived. Now they faced another challenge. The field where they foraged for beans was iced over. Grasses and weeds had been battered by the storm. Overnight, sustenance had become scarce.

The next morning, a group of deer stood in the middle of the field, watching me indifferently as I walked down to get the paper. Normally, they would bound away, showing their white tails in alarm. But hunger had overcome their instinctive wariness. The ice storm confronted them with a lethal choice between fleeing danger and conserving energy.

After the mating frenzies have died down, male deer revert to their secretive, nocturnal ways. A glimpse of one is rare. But there in the open pasture in broad daylight not two hundred yards from our breakfast room window was a majestic buck with an enormous rack, looking for something to eat. A doe was with him, weak from hunger, injured perhaps.

Just as she lay down on the frozen ground, four coyotes rushed up, famished themselves no doubt, sensing opportunity. They ran in circles, harassing the deer. But they had come too soon. The buck stood his ground. The doe got back on her feet and retired, the buck guarding her rear. A few more passes convinced the coyotes of the futility of their efforts and they ran off in search of more manageable prey.

West of here, men who hunt with coursing hounds complain about the scarcity of coyotes, but in our neighborhood, in spite of the decline in habitat, they’re common as dogs. Coyote scat litters the paths I’ve mowed and shows up in my wife’s herb garden. In the early summer, when coyotes are gorging on blackberries, these calling cards are vivid purple. Now in the dead of winter, they consist of gray braided twists of hair, the remains of unfortunate rodents.

At night, the coyotes’ operatic choruses fill the valley. This is no routine noise-making but a command performance of delirious enthusiasm. Individual coyotes take turns showing off their voices in mournful, wolf-like howls and siren wails, backed up by the younger animals’ wild, eerie yips and heckling chatter. It’s easy to imagine them leaping and pawing each other in some kind of pre-hunt ritual dance.

Encounters with human beings hardly impress them. They trot away unhurried, stop and gave you a look of curiosity rather than fear. You almost expect them to wag their tails and approach to have their ears scratched. One with a black streak of fur often hunts in our back yard. Unlike our dogs, who squander their energy digging craters in a vain search for mice, the coyote stands patiently, waiting and watching. Only when dinner appears does he pounce. But then, the dogs hunt for sport. They have their lamb and rice dinners served to them in the comfort of a heated garage.

Owls, hawks, feral cats, bobcats and fox are also plentiful in our neighborhood. These predators are hard on the quail I’m trying to restore. The covey that shows up at the deer feeder has been reduced from 15 to seven or eight birds. I’m tempted to intervene, but I’ve made a pact with a totem pole to shoot only what I intend to eat.

Though some wool gatherer has pronounced predation, the “flaw in creation,” they’re only doing what they must do. Although there are some 3,000 rats and mice per acre according to one estimate, predators must often go to bed hungry too. Many times I’ve seen a red-tailed hawk fly across the field, hit the ground and come up with empty talons.

The domestic world isn’t much safer at this time of year. On a recent goose hunt, I saw cows and calves who’d died of starvation or frozen to death. Even my tractor behaves like a dying beast, chugging and wheezing when I try to start it. Just as my hopes begin to soar – gasp, sputter, clunk it goes.

My daughter likes to call from Hawaii to report another sunny day in the 70s, perfect for “laying out.” Why would anyone want to live in Kansas, she wants to know. Here, the sun itself seems like a disc of ice. When I go to the barn to feed the chickens, I wrap myself like a mummy and jog to keep warm. I’ve executed a number of spectacular pratfalls on the ice.

Nevertheless, I enjoy the harsh weather. The truth is, I like to be miserable. I enjoy feeling sorry for myself. Recently, I acquired a technological aid to this pursuit. It’s an electronic weather station (made in China, of course) that transmits detailed information about the temperature, wind speed, direction, and wind chill. This ingenious device permits me to make my own personal misery index every day. It gives me a grim sort of pleasure to know, to the tenth of a percent, precisely how miserable I am.