So You Want to Learn the Ancient Art of Animal Tracking
By Terry Morse
“There is no branch of detective science which is so important and so much neglected as the art of tracing footsteps.” Sherlock Holmes, in A Study in Scarlet.
I first became interested in tracking in the early 1980s, when I happened upon a book called The Tracker (NY: Berkley Books, 1979; ISBN 0-425-07759-4). It is the early autobiography of Tom Brown, Jr., describing his childhood in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey learning wilderness survival and tracking skills from an aging Apache scout, Stalking Wolf. My initial attraction to tracking was no doubt partly from the romantic notion of growing up in wilderness with an Indian teacher, having been born and raised in New York City myself. However, it didn’t take long for me to get hooked on tracking for its own sake.
To preindustrial people, especially hunter-gatherers, tracking was vital to their survival. How else to locate game, or discover when enemies are about? In modern society, tracking is not so important to our immediate well-being, but it is not without value. If you are a backcountry camper, it will enable you to tell whether there are grizzly bears in the area. To the naturalist, tracking is a good way to develop your perceptual skills, and can be an important source of information about the unseen animals around you: I saw my first California ground squirrel at the Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC) estuary trail on 1 July 1990, three months after I deduced they should be there from tracks found on the beach. Even in this era of radio collars and satellite tracking, wildlife biologists still rely on evidence from tracks on the ground to learn about the lives of secretive animals, such as the fisher, a large member of the weasel family (see The Fisher, 2nd ed. by Roger A. Powell; Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1993; 0-8166-2266-3).
How can you get started tracking? It’s not as difficult as you might think. The main thing is to want to see tracks; your mind will train itself to find them. As you walk around, constantly scan the ground, looking for anomalies of color or texture that don’t quite match their surroundings. Start someplace easy, like the beach at low tide or a dusty road in the morning. Pick out the trail of a single animal or person and follow it as it winds among the tapestry of tracks on the surface. Don't be distracted by other trails crossing it. If the trail disappears, get down on the ground by the last visible track, and look around where you think the next track should be. Unless the animal has changed direction radically or the surface has become exceptionally hard, you will probably find some trace of it, though it may only be a vague disturbance on the ground.
As you wander about your neighborhood, seek out vacant lots and patches of dirt or mud along the street. You will at least see the tracks of people, dogs, cats, and birds. You may even discover that a raccoon or opossum has crossed that spot.
From this simple beginning, you can progress to a more sophisticated level. Go to the HMSC nature trail and look where people have beaten paths through the vegetation to the beach. See if you can’t find human tracks on the pavement (!) created by sand brought up from the beach adhering to people’s shoes. This is one way you can see tracks on seemingly impossible surfaces: by materials left behind. Disturbances in the dust that inevitably settles everywhere are another (see the discussion of tracks on floors below).
On early morning walks, scan dew-covered lawns for clear prints left when a person or animal crossed it earlier, dislodging dewdrops from the grass where they stepped. The brightness contrast should be striking. If you don’t find these things, create them yourself. Walk from wet sand onto pavement, or cross a dewy lawn, then go back and look where you just passed. You will likely be surprised.
If you have linoleum or wooden floors at home or at work, get down low (on your belly if necessary) and look at a stretch of floor between you and a light source, say a lamp or the sun streaming through a window. There’s a good chance you will see dusty footprints you didn't realize were there. If you are a compulsive cleaner, you will no doubt be horrified and go running for mop and bucket, but have no fear: They will only be visible from down low, with a source of light beyond.
When you are able to perceive sandy footprints on pavement, dusty prints on wood, and series of tracks on a wet lawn, you are well on your way to being a tracker. Whether you confine your study to places around town (and you can learn a lot at the beach or in your own back yard), or want to take it out into forest or meadow, the following books will guide you.
References for the Modern-day Tracker
If you buy no other book: buy Tom Brown's Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking, by Tom Brown, Jr. (NY: Berkley Books, 1983; ISBN 0-425-06177-9). What makes this book special is that, unlike most other books on tracking, it is less about the tracks of specific animals than it is about how to track, and how to learn to track. You will be taught how to find areas suitable for tracking (landscape tracking) and a technique for finding faint tracks (sideheading). There is advice on how to learn to age tracks with less than decades of practice (“the wisdom of the marks”), and how to interpret marks in and around the track created when the track is made (pressure releases) to infer what the animal was doing, thinking, and feeling when it passed that spot. I have never seen this method discussed elsewhere. You will learn ways to study tracking at home such as “coffee cup tracking” and building a track box in your basement. The philosophy of tracking is covered as well (“tracking and observation are one;” “every mark is a track;” “the ground is a manuscript;” and so forth). While seemingly esoteric, these ways of thinking will help your tracking.
Three other books for the beginning tracker: James Halfpenny's A Field Guide to Mammal Tracking in North America, 2nd ed. (Boulder, CO: Johnson Books, 1986; ISBN 0-933472-98-6), is a good introduction to the tracks of our native mammals. It has a particularly clear explanation of how animals move (gaits such as walking, trotting, galloping, and bounding), which is useful in translating from a pattern of tracks on the ground back to a living, moving animal. His section on animal scats (droppings) is also very good.
A Field Guide to Animal Tracks, 2nd ed., by Olaus Murie (Peterson's Field Guide Series; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974; ISBN 0-395-18323-5) is a useful reference guide to tracks and signs of North American animals. Though concentrating on mammals, it includes some birds, amphibians, and insects as well. Pay attention to the drawing on the endpapers. While, as Tom Brown observes, every mark on the ground is a track, not every mark is an animal track. Murie’s pleasant drawing is a useful caution.
A Guide to Animal Tracking and Behavior, by Donald and Lillian Stokes (Boston: Little, Brown, 1986; ISBN 0-316-81734-1). Like all the Stokes Nature Guides, a congenial and simple introduction to its topic.
Once you've got some experience under your belt: you will want to own (or at least read) Tracking and the Art of Seeing, by Paul Rezendes (Charlotte, VT: Camden House, 1992; ISBN 0-944475-29-9). Unlike the books mentioned above, this one doesn't cover the elementary aspects of tracking; it is your postgraduate course. With excellent illustrations and photographs by the author, it covers the fine points of distinguishing easily confused tracks, for instance coyotes and dogs or bobcat and lynx. I have seen no better treatment of the subtle signs animals leave, such as gnawings, scratchings, and scats. Like Tom Brown, Rezendes discusses the philosophy of tracking and its value in the modern world.
If you were born 65 million years too late: you will enjoy Tracking Dinosaurs, by Martin Lockley (NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991; ISBN 0-521-42598-0) and the more technical Dinosaur Tracks and Traces, edited by David Gillette and Martin Lockley (NY: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1991; ISBN 0-521-40788-5). Both contain useful information about how animals of any time period make tracks.
A word of caution (added 22 May 2004): The authors of many of the books mentioned in this article come from different tracking traditions (e.g., natural history vs. academic biology), and don’t always use technical terms the same way (especially the terms for animal gaits). They may also measure track and trail parameters (e.g., stride length, degree of “toe out,” etc.) differently. This can be confusing, and you may find yourself frequently referring from one book to the other to translate between systems. It would be nice if all the authors could get together and standardize the language, but this may be too much to expect. A standardized terminology is most likely to come out of academic biology, since those folks are pretty much on the same wavelength, and more of them are writing books on tracking now.
“No doubt it appeared to you to be a mere trampled line of slush, but to my trained eyes every mark upon its surface had a meaning.” Sherlock Holmes, in A Study in Scarlet.
Let this ambition be your goal.
First published:
Revised: 22 May 2004
Note added 22 May 2004: Since writing this essay in the early 1990s, a number of excellent books on tracking have been published. Here are a few of the most notable:
Tracking and the Art of Seeing: How to Read Animal Tracks and Sign, 2nd ed., by Paul Rezendes. NY: Harper Perennial, 1999. The second edition of Rezendes’s excellent book. ISBN: 0-06-273524-1.
The Science and Art of Tracking: Nature’s Path to Spiritual Discovery, by Tom Brown, Jr. NY: Berkley Books, 1999. ISBN: 0-425-15772-5). How to interpret pressure releases (gross to subtle marks near or inside a track) to infer an animals body position, state of mind, and physiological condition), covered in much greater detail than in his Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking.
Case Files of the Tracker: True Stories from America’s Greatest Outdoorsman, by Tom Brown, Jr. NY: Berkley Books, 2003. ISBN: 0-425-18755-1. Ignoring the possible hyperbole of the subtitle, this series of case studies gives excellent insight into the mindset of a successful tracker, as well as much practical advice on tracking.
Bird Tracks & Sign: A Guide to North American Species, by Mark Elbroch with Eleanor Marks. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001. ISBN: 0-8117-2696-7. As far as I know, the first comprehensive tracking book devoted solely to birds, at least in North America. It is well worth adding to your tracking library.
Mammal Tracks & Sign: A Guide to North American Species, by Mark Elbroch. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2003. ISBN: 0-8117-2626-6. This companion to Elbroch’s bird track and sign book is an encyclopedic treatment of the marks left by North American mammals, and should be a part of every North American tracker’s library.
There are also a number of excellent websites devoted to tracking. For links to a few, which will include links to others, go to my links page.
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