Opportunity

The quiet, slim hunter padded along on top of the snow with no particular destination in mind except to take stock of the prey remaining in the territory. Winter ground on, terribly cold. This was the sort of cold that caused trees to explode from the pressure of frozen moisture in them; he had seen it before, in places where there were more trees than this prairie-land. It meant that prey would be scarcer, since they would most be hiding to find whatever warmth they could, in a time when the pack needed more calories than ever as their bodies expended more energy simply to stay warm. Hares were common prey for solitary hunters, but the ultra-lean meat wasn't going to cut it during the winter when they'd need to keep their fat stores up or they'd freeze or starve to death. Beavers would be next to impossible to get this time of year. There was no way around it, he would need to gather a group of the hunters and seek out larger prey or the pack would not make it through the winter healthy. To that end, he was tracking the movements of the large prey that still remained here despite the deep snows and killing cold. There were pronghorn here still and mule deer, and he thought he might still find a few small bison herds that hadn't made the trek to higher elevations when the snows set in, but that was unlikely. Pronghorns weren't very well adapted to the unusual amount of snow the prairie was getting this winter, so perhaps they'd make a good choice to focus on.

Pausing, he lifted his dark head to sniff at the air for any scents that the wind might be carrying to him. The cold stung his nose horribly, but he persisted anyway. Tracks didn't last long anymore, with the constant snowfall tending to fill in long before anyone came across it, so he was relying on scent to find the prey, and as he learned these herds he would be able to lean on his own observations to learn their habits so he could predict where they would be found.