Tracking wildlife transforms a simple walk outdoors into an opportunity to observe the unseen lives of animals. Tracks serve as a record of an animal’s presence and behavior, offering a narrative of its movements. Studying these impressions provides insight into the habits of local wildlife without the need for direct interaction. Learning to read these signs involves analyzing the environment, the individual print, and the overall pattern of movement.
Understanding the Tracking Environment
Identifying appropriate substrates is the first step, as the material the animal steps on significantly affects print clarity. Soft, yielding mediums like mud, freshly fallen snow, or moist sand near a water source are the most likely places to yield clear, identifiable prints. Hard-packed dirt or gravel trails rarely capture the fine details needed for accurate identification.
The ground material also influences how long a track remains visible, which is important when “aging” a print. Tracks in fine mud tend to hold their shape for a long time, while those in dry sand are prone to rapid deterioration by wind. Weather conditions, such as sun or wind, cause the edges of a track to lose their crispness and accumulate debris, indicating an older print. A fresh print will have sharp, defined edges and the exposed soil inside the impression may still be slightly darker than the surrounding surface.
Analyzing the Individual Print
Once a track is located, the next step is examining its individual features, which act as the animal’s unique signature. Check the number of toes and the presence or absence of claw marks. Most mammals, excluding bears and rodents, show four toes on their front and hind feet. The shape of the main foot pad, often called the heel or metacarpal pad, is also a highly distinguishing feature between different animal families.
The mode of locomotion provides further clues, defining the overall shape of the print. Animals like bears and raccoons are plantigrade, walking flat-footed and leaving an impression that includes the heel and entire sole. In contrast, canids and felids are digitigrade, standing and walking on their toes with their heels permanently raised. Hoofed animals, or unguligrades, walk on the very tips of their digits, which are protected by hooves. Measuring the print’s length and width, along with the distance between toes, helps narrow down the species by providing a scale for comparison.
Deciphering Movement Patterns
Analyzing the sequence of prints, known as the track pattern or gait, provides a behavioral context more reliable than a single print. The arrangement of tracks indicates the animal’s speed and body type. A common pattern is the diagonal walk or trot, where the animal moves opposing legs simultaneously, creating a staggered or zigzag alignment.
Many wild canids and deer use a direct register walk, where the hind foot lands precisely in the front print. This conserves energy and creates a nearly straight line of single prints. Animals with wide bodies and short legs, such as bears or raccoons, often use a waddling or pacing gait, leaving distinct front and hind prints close together. Smaller, long-bodied animals like weasels are bounders, placing their front feet down together and then landing their rear feet just behind or slightly ahead of the front prints. Hares and many rodents are hoppers or gallopers, where the larger hind feet land ahead of the smaller front feet, resulting in a characteristic cluster of four tracks.
Categorizing Tracks by Animal Family
The synthesis of individual features and movement patterns allows for categorization into broad animal families.
Canids
Canids, which include wolves and coyotes, typically leave a track that is more rectangular or oval-shaped, showing four toe pads and prominent claw marks. Their heel pad usually has two lobes at the back, and their preferred baseline gait is an energy-efficient trot or direct register walk.
Felids
Felids, such as bobcats and mountain lions, leave a more rounded print that is often as wide as it is long. The defining features are four toe pads, a three-lobed heel pad, and the absence of claw marks because their claws are usually retracted.
Ungulates and Rodents
Ungulates, including deer and elk, are immediately identifiable by their cloven hooves, which leave a distinct, inverted heart or pointed shape from the two primary toes. Larger species like moose leave prints that can be significantly longer than a deer’s, which averages about three inches. Small rodents, such as squirrels and mice, are characterized by a bounding pattern with a notable difference in toe count: four toes on the front feet and five on the hind feet.