Animal Tracking Basics by Tiffany Morgan

Author:Tiffany Morgan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811742429
Publisher: Stackpole Books
Published: 2013-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

When your twenty minutes of pick tracking are up, wrap up the exercise by writing a reflection paper. What did you notice toward the end of the ten minutes in step 3 that you didn’t perceive at the beginning? Can you apply these observations to animal tracks? How would they be different?

TRAILING IN EASY SUBSTRATE

Where I live, there isn’t much opportunity for trailing an animal in easy substrate. So when I get the chance, I drive thirty minutes west to the sand dunes at the beach. If you can’t travel to a place with easy substrate, then an animal trail made visible by pushed down grasses, bare earth, or tunnels in brush will work as well. Follow the rhythms of that trail while practicing the following exercise.

EXERCISE

Find an animal trail to follow for at least three hours. While trailing, pay attention to the animal’s behavior: beds, lays, elimination, feeding sign, change in gait, stalking, escaping, and so forth. How does the animal behave when it approaches a road? Does the animal climb hills, or does it choose to stay low? If it does climb, how does it move, and what route does it take? You’re like a detective gathering clues, uncovering evidence of this animal’s passing. Carry a notepad to jot down your observations. A good detective always does some research ahead of time to get background information on the subject. Is it mating season? Might it have young? Is it preparing for winter, gathering food? If you don’t know what animal you’ll be trailing, these questions can be researched later. This is an exercise in learning animal behavior. It encourages to draw on your understanding of the needs and motivations of animals to help you to predict an animal’s direction of travel when you’ve lost the next track.

Write down all your observations. Even if they seem irrelevant or insignificant now, they may turn out to be useful as your questions about a place develop and change. If you’re unsure about a finding, document that in your notes and return to it when you have more information. It’s also important to write down the date, time of day, location, and weather for future reference.

DEER TRAILS

The esthetic value of deer cannot be measured. There are fully as many, if not more, people who just enjoy watching deer or photographing them as there are hunters. Both groups are sure that the world is a better place because of the deer.

—Leonard Lee Rue III (1968)

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