Hello, I am Jim Elizondo from Real Wealth Ranching. Today I will talk about a reflective, seasonal topic. Nature’s winter lessons: what wildlife can teach us about recovery and soil health.
There’s something about late December that invites stillness. The way the cold settles across the land, the way the sun hangs lower every afternoon, the way frost decorates every blade of grass—it all seems to whisper, “Slow down. Pay attention. Everything is teaching you something.”
Most ranchers think winter is the season when nothing happens.
But winter is actually the season when everything is revealed.
Grass growth slows, or stops, but the land’s communication speeds up.
Wildlife moves differently, leaving messages in snow and mud.
Fungi keep working quietly under the surface.
Livestock behavior becomes clearer.
Soil tells the truth about last summer’s management.
And manure—yes, even manure—disappears or accumulates in ways that tell you more than any soil test can.
This time of year, nature becomes the best professor you'll ever have—no projector, no slides, no classroom—just lessons written across your pastures if you choose to see them.
And today, I want to walk with you through some of those lessons.
Because winter isn’t here to punish us.
Winter is here to remind us.
Remind us of how nature’s grazing was designed.
Remind us of what real recovery looks like.
Remind us of how soil stays alive, even in the cold.
Remind us that wild grazers have been managing land long before livestock and ranchers ever arrived.
Remind us that nature wastes nothing.
This blog is a reflection—a quiet, end-of-year conversation about what nature is showing you right now, if you pause long enough to notice.
Long before we built fences, long before we synchronized breeding seasons, long before we thought about forage budgets or stockpile quality, wild herbivore herds were shaping ecosystems in ways we are still trying to understand.
And winter was always part of the plan.
When I talk about wildlife grazing patterns in winter, I’m not just referring to bison or elk—though they’re incredible teachers. I’m talking about everything:
• Deer
• Rabbits
• Prairie dogs
• Birds
• Insects
• Rodents
• Predators
• Even earthworms and fungi—yes, they’re wildlife too
In winter, every single one of these creatures adjusts its grazing, feeding, movement, and energy use in ways perfectly aligned with ecological rhythm.
Let’s look at how.
A. Wildlife naturally adjust pressure as resources change
In winter, wildlife do something brilliantly simple:
They eat what the land offers without forcing it to give more.
Most deer, for example, begin shifting from high-protein forage to woody browse, buds, acorns, and the remnants of forbs. They don’t fight nature—they follow it.
Elk and bison instinctively move more, not less.
Rabbits switch diets with remarkable flexibility.
Birds adjust their foraging patterns daily.
The important lesson?
**Nature never “demands” summer nutrition in winter.
But ranchers often do.**
Cattle scouring on lush regrowth in winter?
That’s a human-caused problem—because wild herbivores would never gorge on that kind of feed at this time of year.
Wildlife adapts instantly to what the season provides.
And in doing so, they thrive on balance instead of forcing outcomes.
Nature’s winter message here is simple:
Don’t fight the season. Work with it.
B. Wildlife never stay too long in one spot
This is one of nature’s most reliable rules:
Wildlife move.
Not because someone pushes them.
Not because they read a grazing manual.
Not because they’re trying to build soil organic matter intentionally.
They move because:
• food availability shifts
• predators encourage movement
• trampling pressure quickly affects comfort
• instinct guides them to avoid their own manure
The result?
They usually avoid overgrazing by design.
They may hit an area hard for a period, but they always move on, if allowed, before sustained damage occurs.
This is one of the deepest lessons ranchers need to understand:
Overgrazing is a timing problem, not a stocking rate problem.
Wildlife hit one place intensely—but briefly.
Then they don’t return, if allowed, until it has fully recovered, often a year later.
Livestock, on the other hand, will revisit the same tender regrowth every day if we let them.
That’s not a livestock problem.
That’s a management problem.
Winter makes this contrast even clearer because you can literally see the evidence in the snow or frost:
• where animals linger
• where they avoid
• where they graze lightly
• where they graze deeply
Nature’s message:
Move often. Rest deeply.
C. Wildlife willingly eat fiber in winter
Fiber is not the enemy.
In fact, for wildlife—and cattle—it’s the key to rumen function, gut health, and winter survival.
Watch deer or elk in winter and you’ll see them eating:
• cured stems
• dry grasses
• leaves
• coarse material
• woody twigs
Not because they prefer it over summer forage—but because winter demands it.
If you watch a wild herd in January, you will not see scours.
You will not see underdeveloped rumens.
You will not see digestive crashes.
Wildlife teaches us something crucial:
**Fiber is winter’s fuel. Protein is winter’s luxury.**
Cattle need the same thing—steady fiber intake, not the too-rich, too-tender regrowth that causes scours and ruins rumen function.
Wildlife is never “overloaded” with lush forage in winter because nature doesn’t produce lush forage in winter.
The land and the animals are designed to work together.
Nature’s winter whisper: Feed the rumen, not the eye.
You will never find a natural system, with enough área, where wildlife consistently overgrazes an area.
It doesn’t happen.
Not in the Serengeti.
Not in the Okavango delta.
Not on the prairies.
Not in savannas.
Not in brittle environments.
Not in humid ones.
Why?
Because nature operates with rules that prevent it.
Let’s break down the key ecological principles that wildlife follow perfectly—and that cattle depend on us to replicate.
A. No fixed boundaries
Wildlife does not recognize property lines.
They move until the land tells them to move again.
When food is abundant, wildlife spreads out.
When food is scarce, wildlife concentrates—briefly—and then disperses again.
This flexibility keeps the land from being overpressured in any one place.
Contrast that with modern ranching:
We create artificial boundaries and then ask the land to behave naturally inside those boundaries.
That’s fine—if we manage movement intentionally.
But if we don’t, we create the perfect conditions for selective grazing and overuse.
Wildlife’s lesson:
Movement prevents waste. Recovery prevents damage.
B. Predators balance the grazing pulse
Predators create healthy grasslands.
Not by killing prey, but by causing movement.
Wolves don’t have to eat every elk—they just have to encourage them not to camp in the same meadow for weeks at a time.
Coyotes push deer.
Foxes push rabbits.
Raptors push rodents.
Pressure creates a pulse.
Pulse grazing is what built ecosystems long before humans existed.
Cattle without predators become “campers” unless we mimic that pressure through thoughtful grazing management.
Nature’s message:
Pressure + movement + rest = growth.
C. Wildlife uses every resource—nothing is wasted
Nature is efficient:
• What one animal leaves behind, another consumes; ruminants and hind gut fermenters. Ruminants prefer leafy parts while hind gut fermenters thrive on stems left behind by ruminants achieving a complete or total graze
• What breaks down becomes soil food.
• What isn’t digested becomes organic matter.
• What dies becomes nutrients.
• What grows becomes habitat.
In winter, this efficiency is even more obvious.
Rabbits eat bark left by deer.
Birds eat seeds left by wind.
Small rodents gather stems and leaves dropped by grazing wildlife.
Fungi uses dung, woody material, and dead roots to keep cycling nutrients. Fungi create spongy soils and long-lived soil carbon by utilizing the fatty root exudates created by your grass when stockpiling.
Predators eat the weak, strengthening the herd.
Nature wastes nothing because nothing is “extra.”
But humans waste a lot:
• leaving uneaten grass behind because cattle were allowed to graze selectively
• letting regrowth get repeatedly bitten
• feeding hay too early because stockpiled acres were insufficient
• allowing manure to be trampled but not biologically cycled
• losing organic matter to oxidation instead of building it
Nature shows us that nothing should go to waste—not even mistakes.
Everything is a cycle.
Everything has a purpose.
Everything contributes to soil health, if we let it.
If I could take every rancher on a winter walk, I would.
Because winter walks reveal things you cannot see in summer.
Here are the specific things I encourage you to observe on your land this month. These are winter’s quiet lessons—subtle, but powerful.
A. Wildlife tracks: clues about movement and pressure
Snow, frost, and mud make wildlife traffic visible.
Watch for:
• deer trails
• rabbit paths
• coyote footprints
• bird ground-feeding patterns
• rodent tunnels
• cattle trails
• concentration areas
What to notice:
1. Where wildlife spends the most time
2. Where they avoid
3. Where they bed down
4. Where they cross repeatedly
5. Where pressure is naturally pulsed
These patterns show you natural corridors where animals prefer to move—and these often align with microclimates, moisture gradients, and soil fertility zones.
Nature is always mapping the land for you.
You just have to read the map.
B. Manure disappearance: your microbial health scorecard
This is one of the most overlooked winter indicators.
Go check your pastures.
Look for manure from late summer or fall.
Ask yourself:
• Is it disappearing?
• Is it crusted?
• Is it intact and dry?
• Is it breaking down rapidly?
• Is it being consumed by dung beetles?
• Is fungi colonizing it?0
Manure disappearance tells you:
• your soil biology activity
• your fungal-to-bacterial balance
• your organic matter cycling
• your moisture retention
• your carbon-building potential
• the health of your previous growing season
A pasture where manure disappears even in winter is a pasture with active, living soil.
A pasture where manure piles sit for months is telling you the soil community is weak or missing key organisms.
Nature’s message:
Healthy soil stays busy year-round—even when plants sleep.
C. Fungal sightings: winter’s underground workforce
In winter, fungal activity becomes visual in ways summer hides.
Look for:
• white fungal threads under cow pies
• frosty-looking mold on woody material
• mushroom remnants near tree lines
• mycelial networks revealed under leaves
• decomposing grass stems with fungal growth
Fungi thrive on carbon-rich food—especially the fatty root exudates that mature grasses release when stockpiled or cured.
Your winter fungal presence tells you how well your land is building long-lived soil carbon.
If you see fungi everywhere, your soil is on your side.
If you struggle to find fungi, your soil may be stuck in a bacterial-dominant cycle—which limits resilience, water retention, and organic matter longevity.
Nature’s message:
If fungi are thriving, your soil is thriving.
D. Stockpile condition: a mirror of your summer decisions
Winter stockpile don't lie.
Whether you have:
• thick, uniform cover
• patchy regrowth
• bare spots
• short grazed areas
• standing hay
• long stems
• thin forage with low density
…every inch of it tells you something.
Winter stockpile shows:
• how well you managed recovery
• how much selective grazing was allowed
• whether your grazing pressure was right
• how resilient your plant community is
• whether your summer decisions honored nature's timing
If the stockpile is strong, you created margin.
If the stockpile is thin, you created scarcity.
Both are teachers.
E. Wildlife presence: indicators of habitat quality
You can tell more about your land by the animals that show up than by any evaluation form.
If you have:
• birds flocking
• rabbits active
• deer grazing
• coyotes hunting
• foxes passing through
• diverse insects even in winter
• worms under manure
• dung beetles in warm spells
…your land is functioning.
Wildlife presence is a sign of ecological comfort.
Animals do not stay where they feel stressed.
Nature’s message:
**Wildlife follows health.
Health follows recovery.
Recovery follows good grazing.**
Winter can sometimes feel like a judgment.
But I don’t see it that way.
I see winter as a conversation.
A time when nature whispers truths we don’t slow down enough to hear in the green season.
Here are the key reminders winter wants to offer you:
A. You cannot rush recovery
Wildlife never tries to force growth out of dormant plants.
They wait.
They move.
They trust the cycle.
But ranchers often want spring results in late fall.
And that impatience is what damages land.
Winter says:
“Let things rest. Let things heal. Nature knows how.”
B. Fiber is not waste—it’s fertility
Those tall, overmature stockpiled grasses?
Wildlife loves them in winter.
Cattle need them in winter.
Fungi need them.
Soil needs them.
Organic matter depends on them.
Grazing them too early robs the soil of its long-lived carbon source.
Winter says:
“Let the plants finish their cycle. The soil will reward you.”
C. Movement prevents destruction
Wild herds move constantly.
If cattle did the same, overgrazing wouldn't exist.
It’s not about “stocking rate.”
It’s about stock density and recovery time.
Winter shows clearly where cattle camped too long—bare soil reveals everything.
Winter says:
“Don’t let animals linger where nature would’ve moved them.”
D. Soil biology never sleeps
Even when plants pause, soil life keeps working.
Fungi.
Bacteria.
Earthworms.
Dung beetles.
Microarthropods.
All these creatures depend on us to manage grazing in ways that feed them.
Winter exposes whether the underground herd is thriving or starving.
Winter says:
“Take care of the soil herd, and the soil herd will take care of you.”
E. Nature never wastes anythingEvery stem has purpose.
Every leaf has a purpose.
Every manure pat has a purpose.
Every hoofprint has purpose.
Every moment of rest has purpose.
Nothing is wasted
Winter says:
“There is no waste in nature, only cycles we fail to see.”
Here are the takeaways I hope you carry with you into the new year:
1. Observe before you decide
Wildlife watches the land constantly.
They respond to cues we often ignore.
This winter, walk your land with no agenda.
Just notice things.
2. Accept what the land shows you
Winter truth can sting.
But it’s also freeing.
Once you accept what the land is telling you, you can begin to change the right things—not everything, just the right things.
3. Recognize that nature doesn’t make mistakes
Nature doesn’t overgraze.
Nature doesn’t scalp the land.
Nature doesn’t stress the soil.
Nature doesn’t rush.
Only humans do.
But humans can also learn—especially in winter.
4. Understand that recovery builds soil, not rotation
Walking cattle in circles is not the same as managing recovery.
Recovery is the engine of regeneration.
And winter shows exactly how well that engine ran last year.
5. Let wildlife be your classroom
Wildlife behavior reveals:
• natural grazing rhythm
• natural movement frequency
• natural dietary adjustments
• natural responses to pressure
Their behavior is a blueprint for how we should manage cattle—with intentionality, not force.
As we approach Christmas and the end of the year, the land is quiet, but wisdom is loud.
Winter is nature stripped down to truth.
No frills.
No decorations.
No illusions of abundance or control.
It’s raw.
It’s honest.
It’s alive.
It’s generous.
And if we pay attention, winter teaches us:
• how grazing really works
• how soil truly builds
• how recovery actually happens
• how wildlife shows the way
• how resilience is created by rest, not pressure
• how to stop fighting nature and start learning from it
This winter, I encourage you to walk your land slowly.
Notice things you’ve overlooked.
Follow tracks.
Touch the soil.
Break open a piece of stockpile.
Flip over a manure pat.
Look for fungi.
Listen to the quiet.
Your land is speaking.
And winter makes it easier to hear.
Wildlife has been teaching these lessons for thousands of years.
They don’t lecture.
They don’t advertise.
They don’t hold workshops.
They simply live in rhythm with nature—and the land responds.
We can do the same.
So as the year closes, take this with you:
Nature is your mentor.
And winter is your invitation to learn.**
Merry Christmas, my friend.
May the quiet season bring clarity, humility, and a renewed partnership with the land you steward.
May God bless you and I hope to hear from you soon.
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