I ranged far on snowshoes throughout May.
Like me, migratory waterfowl were waiting for lake ice to melt in order to move on.
Even in winter time I make sure to extinguish my fireplace. This was driven home to me years ago when I accidentally caused a forest fire well into winter. I was hunting in heavy poplar bush in north-central Saskatchewan with about a foot of snow on the ground. There were many pockets of muskeg and spruce trees. I left my lunch fire to burn itself out after I returned to camp. I can still picture seeing a huge whitetail deer buck walking through the bush nearby, heavy antlered head low to the ground, in a dense snowfall. I was seated on a bed of boughs sheltered beneath a spruce tree eating my lunch. He did not detect me but disappeared as quickly and silently as he appeared, fading into the falling snow. The next summer I was in the same area. By chance, I walked into a spot where the ground was sunken about a foot below the surface about 30 metres across. It was puzzling until I realized there had been a ground fire that burned into the soil, but in this spot in the middle of nowhere. Then I realized, "Damn, this is exactly where I had the lunch fire where I saw the nice buck. I caused this to happen." The fireplace had burned down into the humus and slowly spread out until being extinguished by the winter snows.