How often have you heard the phrase, “Tracks read like a book?” The premise is correct, but don’t forget that you have to be able to read the book before you understand the story. Before you started school you couldn’t read at all. It took a few years of tutoring and lots of practice to learn, and then gradually you became proficient. The same is true when it comes to tracking. Reading tracks is much like reading a good mystery novel—each chapter provides clues that add up to the final conclusion.

Animal tracking seems to be of interest to many folks, but since most animals are very clever and evasive of humans, it is sometimes difficult to become proficient at it. Hence, it is very important that you learn the habits, size and other details of the animals you intend to track so you will have more clues with which to put together the final picture.

Of course, it will depend on where you live—whether in a small, localized area with limited species, or in a larger regional area with a wide variety of animals. But regardless of whether you are an urban or rural dweller you can start practicing in a park, under bridges or on nearby roads. There may be squirrels and gophers in the parks, along with an occasional raccoon, or perhaps a muskrat in the waterways or canals. In fact, you might be surprised to learn the variety of animals that live in urban areas providing a chance to start forming your tracking skills. If you live in an area with lots of snow you have ideal conditions to practice tracking in the early morning after a skiff of snow has fallen.

Bear tracks in sand (Photo: Ernest Wilkinson).

With a little practice you will soon be able to see that different animals have different sizes and shapes of feet. Animals with four toes include fox, coyote, bobcat and cougar. Animals with five toes include skunks, badgers, weasels, raccoons and bears. Then, to complicate matters, there are some mammals such as squirrels that have four toes showing on the front feet tracks and five toes on the hind feet.

Porcupines are similar except that the tracks are larger, with a very rough pad. The porcupine sort of waddles along with a pigeon-toed (toe inward) track, and leaves tail-drag marks. Badgers also leave pigeon-toed tracks.

Each animal also has a standard gait or step pattern to their track. The canine or dog family has different gaits such as walking, trotting and loping which you can learn to identify. Other animals have a hopping pattern. The rabbit track shows the back feet in front and to the side of the front feet tracks. The smaller, front feet land first with the back feet coming down in front and producing the spring for the next hop. Weasels and martins do not have a walking gait, but use sort of a bounding hop, with the front feet landing together at a slightly diagonal angle.

In addition to the size, shape, number of toes, gait patterns and other clues, it is important to learn the habitats of different animals to help you identify their tracks. For example, bobcats prefer rough, brushy and rocky areas, whereas coyotes prefer open slopes and meadows. This can vary and overlap somewhat depending on where you are.

Beaver would naturally be in wet areas with ponds or streams to provide a food supply, while the martin inhabits spruce forests which contain squirrels and rodents for food. You might find groundhog (marmot) tracks in the alpine country above timberline, but you would not find prairie dog (a close relative) tracks there. They would be at lower elevations in meadows and on the grassy slopes.

The location of various animal tracks will also vary according to the season of year. Groundhogs and prairie dogs hibernate during the winter which eliminates confusing their tracks with others during the winter months. Let me give you another example: you would not expect to find deer and elk tracks in the high altitudes of the western United States during the winter because deep snow buries their food in higher elevations. They are usually forced by deep snow to migrate long distances from their high summer feeding grounds to the lower valleys to feed during the winter months.

This brings to mind another family of tracks: even-toed ungulates such as deer, elk, antelope, big-horn sheep, peccary and other similar animals. Again, each species of ungulate has a generally distinctive track. For example, the deer’s track is sort of heart-shaped, while the antelope is a bit concave on the outer edge, and the toes a bit farther apart than the deer. An elk track is larger and more rounded on the toes than a deer track.

If the animal is running, the hoof tips will be spaced farther apart than when it is walking. That provides a clue to the rate of speed the animal is traveling. Of course you must take into account that the size of tracks of the fawns and females of the species are smaller and more trim than the older males.

Which reminds me of an incident that happened many years ago while I was guiding Bob Lee, President of Wing Archery Company. He shot an elk at about seven o’clock in the morning; the arrow hit high between two ribs and the arrow didn’t penetrate very deep. After the elk jumped a couple of times the arrow flipped out and fell to the ground. This meant there would be very little external bleeding, but we felt obligated to do our best to track the animal down even though we figured it was not a fatal wound.

After being hit, the elk ran off through the spruce trees. The impact of the hooves on the pine needles during the running gait made tracking very easy to start with. But the animal soon slowed to a walk as it continued across the slopes and grassy meadows. At one point it crossed through the tracks of another small group of elk, making it necessary for me to get on my hands and knees and search out one track at a time; but by this time I had the size and shape of the hoof print ingrained in my mind.

There was no blood in the tracks except for an occasional drop every fifty yards or so that might be spotted on a blade of grass or on a rock. This let me know I was still hot on the trail. Later, as the elk moved across the terrain, the external bleeding completely stopped and the only way I could verify that I was still on the correct track was to occasionally locate a bit of blood on an overhead leaf or tree branch that had brushed off as the animal passed by.

To make a long hunting story short, I finally found the elk dead in some willows. Apparently the arrow had just penetrated the lining of the chest cavity, which had gradually filled with blood. With very little visible blood on the trail, tracking had been slow, taking five hours. However, I was glad I persisted.

Now you can understand a little of how the art of tracking is similar to a detective game. You must gather all the possible clues before reaching a conclusion, since one track can sometimes create the wrong impression. Clues will include geographic locations, time of season, habitat, ground cover, tracks or partial tracks, scat (feces), hair, gnawed branches and any other information you can find that adds to your conclusion.

It is impossible to go into details on each individual species here, but if you’re truly interested in becoming more proficient at animal tracking, I recommend A Field Guide to Mammal Tracking in Western America. Check your library for books that offer specific information on animals found in your area. I also recommend Tracking, A Blueprint for Learning How, by Jack Kearney, published by Pathway Press, 525 Jeffree Street, El Cajon, California 92020.

Man tracking

Man tracking is another art, used mostly by law enforcement officers to locate children and others who have lost their way. If you have ever been associated with a successful search for a lost child, you will appreciate the value of man tracking expertise. In some of the standard searches there are sometimes several hundred ground searchers involved with no success. On other searches, a good tracking team gets involved and greatly minimizes the potential search area, which in turn makes for the best possible use of helicopters and ground crews.