Becoming an expert animal tracker will take you years of training, which you hopefully have to spare. Because you may be having practice at home, but the real deal starts when you’re in the wilderness and have to track down a deer if you do not want to starve to death.
However, before you go camping or hiking, it is suggested that you get a field and fill it with soft soil and leaves. Then, start walking on separate paths in the field daily. This will help you to identify fresh and old trails in the wild when you come across them.
Tips For Becoming An Expert Animal Tracker
As already mentioned, becoming good at animal tracking will take time, but this doesn’t mean that it is difficult. In fact, you’ll be amazed at how much you can find out when you stalk an animal.
The first animal I trailed was a hare, and the funny thing was that I didn’t even mean to. I was merely on a campsite when I saw the fresh footprints of a hare. Following the trail quickly, I found the white bunny nibbling on the undersides of a balsam fir shrub. I continued following and noted its scattered droppings and stopping junctions, such as where it stopped to drink and how its footprints would be at places like that.
Anyway, by the time I found the hare under that balsamic shrub, I was keenly set on animal tracking. It’s been over two decades now, and I have tracked many animals, although that involved years of mistakes. Thankfully, I made those mistakes, so you don’t have to.
Now, let’s go through the common tips to note to become an excellent tracker.
Be Familiar With What You’re Tracking Beforehand
Contrary to what you may have always thought, you don’t just start trailing an animal. It is always best to have a predefined target and know relevant information about it. As a matter of fact, the better part of expertise displayed by an expert tracker stems from pre-existing knowledge.
The more you know about an animal before setting out on a trail, the easier it will be for you to predict and understand the signs that you come across outside. Thus, the first step before searching for animal tracks is to know what you want to track.
Behavioral cues are great pointers or where you should look. Some animals live just about anywhere; talk about habitat generalists. For some, though, they can only be found in specific regions due to their necessary need for water, deep forest, or grasslands.
- Where is its natural habitat?
- What landscape does it prefer?
- What does it eat?
- What are its daily & seasonal behaviors?
- Does it hibernate?
- Does it move seasonally for migration?
- How is it raised?
- What are its breeding behaviors?
- What weapon kills this animal most?
Know The Other Animals In The Region
Nature is interconnected, so it’s never a single animal in a location. These animals are social as well, they socialize and influence each other’s diet, movements, and habits. Therefore, an essential part of your skill set will be to decrypt these ecosystems of interactions.
If your target is a predator, it is necessary to study its prey as well. If your target is a prey, then it is necessary to figure out their likeliest enemies if you want to know where they’ll be hiding. This knowledge will also help to verify if the signs and tracks you’ve found are that of your target or are just similar to what you thought.
You want to answer these:
- What other animal in the targeted bioregion has similar signs and tracks? What are the differences between these signs?
- What influence is the predator-prey relationship having on the habits of the animal you’re tracking?
Finding & Identifying Tracks
Coming across a recent set of tracks in the field is always special. That’s a strong connection to the animal, and if you have a predefined target of the animal you’re looking for and the other animals in the field, you’ll eventually catch up with the owner of the tracks.
Fresh prints are not easy to find, but there are certain spots to check out in nearly every landscape that will be helpful. Search for fresh prints in the snow, mud puddles, soft soil, leaf litter, and areas with undisturbed dirt. These spots will hold the prints of any animal that walks across them.
To identify the tracks that you find, you have to be an excellent pattern identifier and a critical thinker. When you see a set of footprints, here are some questions to ask:
- How many toes do the tracks show? Do they look like the ties of your target?
- Do you see claws or not?
- How big do the footprints are? Can your target be as big or small as the prints?
- How many tracks are visible? How wide is the space between them?
- Does the heel pad look like that of your animal?
As you will learn, it will take time for you to familiarize yourself with how an animal’s tracks should look. I assume you have known all these in the first step, though. If you can answer these questions correctly, you can tell it you’re right behind your target or are after something else.
Sign Tracking
You will not always find fresh trails to follow, as some landscapes may not have any of the spots we looked at in the immediate tip. When this is the case, you’ll have to use sign tracking, which is the act of picking up more subtle signs left by your animal.
These signs typically are:
- Droppings: if you come across warm and strongly smelling droppings, they are fresh.
- Disturbed Vegetation: observe bushes and shrubs to identify which looks like they have been trampled or eaten recently.
- Hair/Fur: Depending on the animal, you may find hair or fur on trails either because they fall off the animal, or it runs against an object intentionally.
- Chews/Scratching/Gnaws: look at trees to see what kind of marks have been made on them. Animals can hardly travel without markings. If you’ve studied your target beforehand, you’d know what kind of scratches that it makes.
- Carcass: if you find the carcass of an animal, then there’s a predator nearby. You may want to hide.
Conclusion On Becoming An Expert Animal Tracker
As you have seen, becoming an expert animal tracker does not require much apart from consistent training and adventures. But no matter how adept you may become, you must be careful in the wilderness. You can’t predict what you may run into, so your firearm should be loaded at all times. Do not be taken by surprise. Jaguars are sneaky and patient predators, be watchful of them.