Dan_Mcl has a very good suggestion when he mentions the Daylillies. If it truly is the dead of winter roots and tubers will be swollen and prime.
The rice and chocolate lillies might be good targets if the snow is not too deep to find them. If you know how to look for wild leeks they would have full bulbs at this time of year too.
Of course this means you need to know what the plants with edible roots look like in winter, and then you need to be able to tell from just what is sticking up above the snow. It is a surprise to a lot of people that the ground in a forest or swamp usually does not freeze, not even if it is bitterly cold out. The snow and dead leaves of the forest are wonderful insulators from the cold and once you clear them you will find the ground easy to dig. Swamps will likely have open water in them. The cat-tail roots and such stuff will likely be reachable if you don't mind the risk of getting wet in cold weather. (I never liked cat tail roots much, they tasted muddy)
So have a shovel and dig roots.
The shovel will also be usefull for scraping basswood or poplar bark (not great tasting but it cooks up like noodles and is food)
You want to sort of shred the cambium layer under the outer bark off in shreds and boil it. It usually turns into a kind of gooey mess with varying degrees of bitterness. Basswood is the least offencive to my taste, poplar secind, willow worse and the rest pretty much inedible.
For animals you will likely get the best return from snares. Squirrel, beaver, muskrat, rabbits(hares) and so on.
Note that winter is the standard trapping season for most of these creatures, and a state trappers education course would be a decent investment of your time.
The training I was given included very specific instructions in how not to snare deer.
Basically do not set a wolf snare 12" higher than it should be.
Of course if the deer have yarded up you can just go to their yard and kill them.
Winter birds worth looking for include partridge or ptarmigan.
The type of partridge called a spruce hen usually does nor fly and will let you get close if it is in the branches of a tree. they can be killed with a well thrown stone or a stick.
The Cree kids at Karamat in Northern Ontario hunted them that way often.
Icefishing on ponds and lakes can be very productive, but remember that gillnetting is still illegal even under the ice.
You will want an axe, ice chisel or an ice auger to make your holes in the ice. Most of the time the ice will be fairly thick on a lake but still remember to test it before walking on it, especially on moving water like a river or stream.
Small streams are often bridged over just by snow and never even freeze.
You will also find some of the shrubs that hold fruit into late winter,
Mountain Ash for example. But you will not find much likely and it will not be a rich calorie source.
You can forget about reptiles in winter even if they are there in the summer. Turtles and frogs are down in the mud under the water, the snakes are under the ground.
You are not likely to be stumbling into many honey filled wild beehives in the northern winter either, but if you ever were so lucky you should eat the bees and their brood along with the honey.
If you are thinking about digging up the hibernating mammals it is usually a wasted effort. Groundhogs are usually too deep to be worth the effort.
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May set off to explore without any sense of direction or how to return.
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