Skunk Tracks and Sign: Sometimes Better Than the Real Thing It was not apparent at first that the two lean figures in the moonlight were avid trackers. But as their walk slowed, as their headlamps turned on, and as their bodies stooped to stare at the dusty ground, it became clear that these men were [...]
Animal Tracking
Learn about animal tracking and mammals…
Animal tracking lures us on an amazing journey into the world of nature, and encourages us to open all of our senses to its subtle clues hidden everywhere.
Where is your interest in tracking animals: animal track identification; trailing – following animal footprints over long stretches; track aging – discovering how long the tracks have been there; Gait interpretation – knowing how animals moved through an area without actually having seen them; and more!
Here we teach you to track animals as an interpretive art–one that sharpens our awareness of nature and deepens our understanding of our own behavior. The same routines that make for success in tracking can easily translate to the modern world, enhancing the quality of our lives.
Trackers speak a language which is based not only on a thorough knowledge of tracks, trails and sign, but also on a rich grounding in the natural history, anatomy, and behavior characteristics of animals and the ethnobotany of plants.
The Kamana Naturalist Training Program is an amazing program for those wanting to track. It gives the essential background for building sensory awareness and knowledge of land needed to track animals.
Black Tailed Deer Tracks and Sign
Black Tailed Deer Wake-Up It was an early September morning in Western Washington, and I was slowly migrating from animal tracks and sign dreamland to reality. I had slept in the pasture next to my house, taking advantage of the last warm nights before the rain and cold set in. Hearing a rustle to my [...]
Raccoon Tracks and Sign
Raccoons at the Dunes It was around midnight on the first night of a week of tracking on Oregon’s coastal sand dunes with the Wilderness Awareness School‘s homeschool teen program, and I was snug as a bug in a rug underneath my small tarp shelter. My dreams of clear fox prints and porcupine sightings were [...]
Identifying Animal Tracks: The Tracking Funnel
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 [...]
Wolf Tracks: In the Presence of Wolves
I have never seen a gray wolf in Idaho. In five years worth of leading wolf tracking expeditions, I have heard them and smelt them, read the movements of their bodies in wolf tracks they left behind, felt the electricity of their near, but hidden, presence and sat with them in my dreams. As I [...]
Tracking our Natural Roots
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, learn nature awareness, or [...]
Mountain Lion Tracks vs. Dog Tracks
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 [...]
Tracking in a Forested Landscape
Challenging a Common Perception of Tracking When most people think about “animal 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 [...]
Animal Tracking – Following the S.H.A.G.
Animal Tracking Basics – 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 animal trackers and authors on the subject of tracking and mammal studies have made in naming the gaits of animals. You’ll find [...]
On the Trail of Mustelids
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 [...]
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