If you’re an aspiring explorer who plans to go on a camping or hiking trip in the wilderness, this guide should serve as a one-stop spot for you to identify animal tracks. Identifying animal footprints or their pawprints does not require you to be in the wilderness. Animals are around you in your own residential or usual routine setup. Reading about animal print tracking or animal tracking, or just watching a documentary about it on your television, will not make you an animal tracker. Becoming an animal tracker requires physical activity. Only then will you learn and experience how the job is done.
We can only help you out with a few tips or tricks to get you to your desired place or an animal in this case. Now the question is where to look for animal prints? The answer is simple. The softer grounds, such as the muddy grounds or garden soil, are soft, sand, and snow. The prints will be deep and more defined on such grounds. Hence, easier tracking of the animal can be done. Animal tracking will get you dirty, as it involves getting down on your hands and knees to study the ground closely and adequately.
Now that you’re on the ground investigating the animal print, you can measure the track size and notice the shape of the edges of the paw, look out for the claw marks as well. Take a picture in case you need to keep it as a memory, or if you’re good with a pencil, you can draw the sketch.
The best time to go on your animal tracking is early in the morning or late in the day so that the shadows would make the prints’ visibility easier.
Wherever the animals pass by, they’ll drop their waste called the scat. It will also help you track the animal down. You can tell whether the print was left just recently or a while ago by observing the animal’s scat.
Walking Patterns of Animals
Anyone to find an animal print must always check up on the track pattern first as a priority. This will help shortlist the species of animals whose print it could be.
There are four particular types of walking patterns that will allow you to narrow down the list to a specific group of animals.
- The zig-zagged (perfect walkers),
- Waddlers,
- Bounders, and
- Hoppers.
Description of different pattern types are mentioned below:
Zig-Zaggers (Perfect Walkers)
The animals falling into this category tend to conserve or save energy by landing their hind paw on the exact spot where their front paw had landed, leaving behind a zig-zag pattern, so the spotting is pretty prominent. Animals such as deer, moose, foxes, coyotes, and bobcats fall into the category of zig-zaggers or perfect walkers.
Waddlers
Waddlers do not follow the walking manner of the zig-zaggers. Instead, if a waddler has left behind a print, there would be four sets of paws in print. The first move is on one side of the body and then the other side. Animals included in this category are bears, skunks, woodchucks, raccoons, muskrats, beavers, porcupines, etc.
Bounders
Bounders tend to place their first feet on the ground and take a leap ahead, lifting their front feet and placing their hind feet right on the spot where the first feet were placed. The bounders form a side-by-side pattern. Otters, weasels, and other mustelids follow this walking pattern.
Hoppers
The rear foot is placed a little bit ahead of the front foot. Now the animal pushes off to land their front foot first, and just like previously, their rear foot will land slightly ahead of the front one. Like rabbits, rodents like mice, red squirrels, and chipmunks are categorized as hoppers.
Identifying Track Characteristics
To gather further detail and reach the point where you can quickly identify which animal is responsible for the patterns. This is carried out based on a detailed examination of the size of each print, the number of toes, and many more.
Width/Length:
Closely related animal species can be identified using their paw size, i.e., the width and the length. For instance, the most prominent footprints are possessed by wolves. Fox prints are smaller than the wolf footprint.
Number of Toes:
Every animal has different toes; for example, a bear will have five toes, whereas the canines and the felines have four toes. The number of toes does another part of the job of dividing the animals into various groups with different characteristics.
Nails:
Nails can feature or highlight the different animal groups. The canines, for example, always leave a nail mark with their paw print. On the other hand, felines retract their nails and do not leave behind a nail print. But when felines are on alert, they tend not to retract their claws and leave a print. Further detail is to be looked at to keep the nail print to differentiate the animal groups.
Depth:
The print depth is not a valid factor to be used for identification. Because the depth depends on the weight of the animal and the type of ground on which the animal walked or ran. The softer the ground, the deeper the print will be. Similarly, the heavier animals will leave deeper prints.
Front/Rear:
There are guidebooks available that contain information regarding the front and rear paws of different animals, along with their measured sizes. The possibility of varying size and shape of both the paws of an animal is higher. An animal doesn’t need four triangular toes with identical front and rear paws.
Webbing:
The animals who have frequent swimming habits can have webbing on them.
Stride and Straddle:
The measurement from the heel of one print to the other print of the same side is called the stride. At the same time, the track width measured from the outsides of both the right track towards the left track is known as the straddle.
This is used to differentiate between closely similar paw prints.
Canine Tracks
For most people, a canine is a word used for dogs or species of the dog family. But to correct the concept, foxes, wolves, and coyotes can also be described by the word canines. The front and the hind paws tracks are alike and are oval-shaped, with a heel pad and four toes. You will observe there is a claw mark as well.
The front and the hind legs of a canine are on opposite sides when lifted and that too at the same time; therefore, they are diagonal walkers. Their tracks look like they were wobbling.
Wolves
If you find a single wolf print somewhere, you should expect to see more than that on track since wolves never move around or live alone; they are always in packs.
Wolf Tracks
The front and the back feet consist of four symmetrical toes. The front track would be longer and a little wider than the back-toe track.
Identification
Relatively the most prominent canines with the largest paw size. Their paw print measures around four inches. As mentioned earlier, they possess four symmetrical toes on both front and back feet. The track prints left behind by a wolf have been described in the above lines. The toe prints of other canines are smaller, while the wolves have more comprehensive and spread-out marks. The prints of a wolf’s paw will be in a straight line, unlike the marks of a dog which practically have an irregular pattern.
Precautions
The possibility of finding a wolf paw print in your residential area is low, but if you do find one, it could be because the wolves were simply passing by, and your home area happened to be in their way. The wolves could either be on a hunt or in search of shelter. The chances of the wolves running away on encountering a human are higher as they are not used to being around people. But just in case, the wolf seems to be unafraid and wouldn’t run away, they’re either habitual of having people around them, or maybe they are sick.
Coyote
Coyote Tracks
The prints are narrower than the wolf’s paw print and measure within the range of two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half inches in length.
Geography
Coyotes are found almost everywhere in the US. From the deserts to swamps, forests, and mountains, even in the suburbs and the cities. They are always hunting places for food; therefore, they will go anywhere they find it.
Identification
The first identification factor is the size of their paw print on the tracks and the fact that their print is smaller than the wolf’s. Their front paw print will be larger than the hind paw print with a smaller size on their back feet. The chances of their footprints and the prints of a dog being similar are greater considering the small size of coyotes, but the oval shape and width of coyotes’ prints is the main distinction.
Foxes
Fox Tracks
They have four triangular toes. On the whole, the oval shape of their footprint distinguishes their footprint.
Geography
The smallest paw size among all canines, i.e., only two to three inches in length. Every US state has fox habitats except for Florida. Other characteristics that distinguish a fox paw print and other canines include the fuzziness at the edges of their print due to the presence of hair, and also, their prints are dragged on the ground as they move while dragging their feet.
Identification
The identification is possible through the triangular toe shape and the fuzzy edges of the paw print.
Dogs
Dog Tracks
The only canines that leave behind irregular, zig-zag, or circular footprints are dogs. The rest of the canines walk in a fixed straight-line pattern.
Identification
Identification of a dog footprint is easy; the pattern of the prints will tell you if it is a print of a dog. Canines other than dogs leave footprints in a straight line while the dog prints will never be even. The prints are spontaneous and random, in zig-zags and circles when they walk. The nail marks in the prints are thicker and blunter than the thin and sharp marks of wolves and coyotes.
Conclusion
With the plethora of information provided above, we firmly believe that your future camping trip will be highly different and appropriately planned than an average hiker. Since the wilderness requires you to be ready for all kinds of mishaps and unexpected occurrences, it is only practical for hikers to be fully equipped with knowledge regarding the various aspects that might come up during their trip.
For this reason, we sincerely hope that this guide will fulfill its purpose and allow you to enjoy your trip without any unwanted/unexpected experiences fully.