Animal Tracking

When asked why I wrote Pacific Northwest Wildlife: A Guide to Identifying and Tracking Mammals, Birds, Reptiles, Amphibians, and Invertebrates, my basic answer is that there was no comprehensive field guide to wildlife and their tracks and signs for our amazing corner of the world. Pacific Northwest Wildlife is specifically tailored to help naturalists here [...]

There has been a recent surge of interest in the art of tracking and other primitive technologies and outdoor living skills.  Why is this?  What is drawing hundreds (thousands?) of people every year from their urban and suburban lives out into the woods to follow around wild creatures, make stone tools, or make fires with [...]

The morning was gray, and the group was full of tension and excitement. It was day one of the CyberTracker Track & Sign Evaluation with Mark Elbroch, one of the first in North America. So, perhaps it’s not surprising that I was a little on edge. At the three forks of the Snoqualmie River in [...]

Challenging a Common Perception of Tracking When most people think about “tracking” they imagine footprints.  But forested landscapes, such as the dense conifer forests of the West, often don’t lend themselves to recording the passage of an animal’s feet on the ground. Except during winter snows and occasional rare open grounds, the forest tracker cannot [...]

S.Ha.G. – Meaning: Slow, Harmonic, Gait. In the study of animal tracking it becomes extremely troublesome to beginners to try to wade through all the different language choices that trackers and authors on the subject of tracking and mammal studies have made in naming the gaits of animals.  You’ll find that while some of these [...]

Notes from a Tracker’s Journal… Like the excitement and energy of the arrival of spring, my last few weeks have been a month full of experiences with mustelids.  Also known as the weasel family (Mustelidae), they are represented by a variety of species in North America such as the long-tailed weasel, river otter, fisher, and [...]