Tracking Animals by Reading Tracks

By David Wescott
Published on January 1, 1989
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Tracking animals becomes somewhat easier when they leave their prints in freshly fallen snow.
Tracking animals becomes somewhat easier when they leave their prints in freshly fallen snow.
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Without even seeing the tail, a skilled tracker would know a raccoon passed this way.
Without even seeing the tail, a skilled tracker would know a raccoon passed this way.
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The parts of an animal track.
The parts of an animal track.
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Diagram shows distinguishing features of animal gaits.
Diagram shows distinguishing features of animal gaits.
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Signature tracks of nine animals.
Signature tracks of nine animals.

Blest with a Magic Power is he,
Drinks deep where others sipped;
And Wild Things write their lives for him
In endless manuscript.

-Ernest Thompson Seton
(“The Trailer”)

You wake on an unnaturally bright winter’s morning and, squinting, peer out your bedroom window. As unexpected as enchantment, a half-foot of snow has fallen while you slept, and you’re fairly pulled out of bed by the childish urge to be the first to mark the clean white sheet that’s settled over your yard. Ignoring coffee for once, you dress quickly, fired by the adrenaline high of dramatic weather, and rush outside … only to find that smaller feet have written where you’d hoped to scratch your name. Put your petty disappointment aside; here’s the chance to go to school on what master naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton called “the oldest of writing:” tracks.

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