A Tracker's Journal
Linda Jo Hunter





October 17, 2008

"Brown bear pause"

As hunting season approached and berries were frozen and dried up, animal tracking became harder. Human tracking on the other hand became necessary.  My lastest adventures include a log truck coming downhill around a blind corner so fast I had to drive on the shoulder to miss his swinging trailer, elk and deer traveling alone and in deep cover, or coming into "town" to graze peacefully in neighborhoods. The bears here are loading up on calories by finding every wild fruit tree or orchard they can.  They will turn to "squirrel food" soon and spend time carbo loading on nuts and seeds. Bear tracking has been good when I went to the spot where the food was.  I have a new powerpoint course on bear tracking which will be presented next Friday night, the 24th of October at the Portland Audubon.  
 I had an interesting human tracking adventure which I included in my Red Room blog.  
You can read it at: REDROOM
Do an author search for Linda Jo Hunter and click on my blog.

September 9, 2008



In July I went back to Redoubt Bay Lodge with Amy Shapira to spend 10 days with the bears in Wolverine Cove. It was an incredible experience to be there and not be working so I could take in the habitat more fully, however, the bears and fish were so plentiful at the cove this year (probably because it was cold and rainy) that we didn't get out to any of the other habitat. Instead, we stayed in one spot, anchored in a "flatboat" and let the bears get used to our predictable behavior. It took them about two hours. As you can see from the photo above they fished and played close to us. This is a photo of the bear we call Baylee as she takes a big bite of air to get more scent of us.  Notice that her pupils are focused away from me.
For more of the story of my trip to Alaska go back to the first page and pick UPDATES.


July 15, 2008
Tracking by mountain bike can overload your senses by seeing so much so quickly. It's a good thing to go by yourself when you do this so you can concentrate.  I found some elk herds yesterday and was pleased to find three bulls laying down in the still flooded meadow. When they finally stood up, after an hour or so, they seemed to wonder how I got there and what I was. It was fun to practice my stalking skills.  Fortunately for me, I was able to slip away without making them run, which is one of my stalking goals.  These elk looked in good shape and were getting enough of what they needed in this lush meadow.  It was 85 degrees in the shade and I was surprised they spent mid-day in the sun.  There could be all kinds of reasons for that, but in this particular spot I haven't seen elk here in mid-day for years. I usually find them early in the morning or late afternoon.  I thought they would be in the background woods during the day.
I had to leave before I could explore the woods for tracks because, once again, tracking made me later for dinner.  


  



June 9, 2008

As I teach in my animal tracking classes, in order to track a particular animal you need to be so familar with the shape of the track that you can recognize parts of it at a glance.  Bear tracks are my favortie, so even on my mountain bike going about 10 miles an hour certain shapes call to me.  I found these bear tracks yesterday on a dirt road that was packed clay and not showing much in the way of clear tracks.  It was a sunny day after several days of hard rain, so when I saw a cresent shape of just slightly darker dirt out of the corner of my eye as I rode past it called to me.  I rode about 50 feet further while the image was making itself a nagging pull in my mind. It was near the end of the ride and I was already late for a dinner date,  but that shape would not let me go on without investigating.  I stopped, got off my bike and walked back.  Bear tracks!!  And, very fresh ones at that.  With my bike now laying down I grabbed my camera and tracked the indistinct marks until I found a set that were clear enough to photograph.  What a great find.





As you can see from the first photo, a bear track has a sort of cresent shape to it.  This shape is what made me stop. The lower photo has two perfect tracks . . on top is the back paw which landed just ahead of the front paw below it.
This is a typical walking pattern for a bear. The bear's paws were wet and these tracks were made from the dampness of the paws being placed on the hard clay.  No drying was detected so the bear was probably watching me as I photographed the tracks. Even though in the photos the tracks look like grizzly tracks, if you look closely enough the little toe is well below the straight line across the inter-digital pad.  The claw marks showing are also close to the digits. 









May 6, 2008
The spring season is very interesting this year.  The back country here has plenty of snow left over and not many roads and trails are open. As a result, both humans and animals are limited to lower elevations. This last weekend I taught one of my Woods Wisdom classes offered by Skamania County Facilities and Recreation Department.  I had a great group of students and we had some interesting finds.  The Saturday tracking part of the class were blessed with bear sign.  We found large ant hills which were recently torn up by a black bear with the milling ants just starting to repair the damage. Close by, in a muddy elk trail, we spotted clear bear tracks to confirm the ones we saw at the ant hills in grass. Yesterday, I went back by myself to the area to see if I could trail the bear.  I am currently nursing a sprained ankle so I couldn't follow exactly the path, but the bear did lead me to some more clear tracks a distance away. It was interesting to me that the bear seems to be sticking pretty close to the main part of the elk herd, at least these last couple of days.  Here are two tracks I found, some distance from each other but still in the main trail of the elk.






The track to the left is just about 4" wide, allowing for the depth of the mud and only measuring the minimum outline in the pad.  The white object
is one of my cards to give a perspective of size in the picture. This appears to be a right front paw as the small digit is inside, barely visible
in the vegetation. The track is a classic black bear shape with the little toe falling mostly below the line of the top of the interdigital pad.















The track to the right was in wetter mud and the paw seems to have been actually squeezed by the mud as the print came down at an angle.  The white line is my tape measure on which you can barely make out the four inch mark.  Although this track was a few hundred yards from the one above, the line of more indistinct tracks indicated it was the same bear.  If you look closely you can see the fine lines in the pad of the paw.





I did smell the bear a little further up the trail, but since it was a sunny warm day and getting warmer by the minute, I figured this bear was heading for a dark cool place.  I left the bear and the bedded down elk herd in peace.






March 27, 2008

Another way to track animals is to let them find you.  This squirrel was going about the business of making a living today by searching around an oak tree for last fall's acorns. I had come there earlier and found a comfortable place to sit.  At first when I sit to wait I have the "figets" - I look around, move around, get into my pack, scratch a foot etc. till finally I can sit quietly and only breathe.  Then I get into a state where moving at all is a chore.  As soon as I get to that state, animals show up. This squirrel worked its way down the hill in the tall grass making as much noise as an elephant as it moved twigs and rocks in a search for left over food.  This photo shows the result of the shutter noise of my camera as the squirrel looks up and gives me a direct stare. 









March 16, 2008

Racoons are incredible little animals . . they are sort of like little bears. This racoon is standing up to look at me as I take it's picture.  Just like a bear they stand up to smell and see better.  This one was eating cat food on a neighbor's porch when I caught up to it.  All three of it's friends took off when they saw me and this one just couldn't believe I was going to walk over to them and take pictures.  
Later, I tracked them to one of their temporary homes in a drainage pipe. They look cozy in there while they wait for spring to heat up so they can go back to sleeping in trees.


















February 17, 2008

Winter has left an abundance of snow at even relatively low elevations this year.  As a result the ungulate population has had to thread their way down closer to civilization and the Columbia River to find anything to eat.  The predators who depend on these animals have to follow. Where the snow is still three or four feet deep, in their usual winter range, I am only finding the tracks of smaller animals like racoons, porcupines, possums and coyotes. 


This tree has been chewed pretty well.  At the base of the tree the only fresh tracks were of a coyote who I had been following as it stalked between the trees in a scanning pattern. The clear teeth marks and the height off the ground indicated porcupine. The bark was still softly peeling off and falling on the snow, incidating very fresh activity. On closer examination of the area, I believe the quill pig who ate this cambian layer traveled to this tree via the overlapping branches of another tree and never really had to come down to the snow.  I will go back and check this site later for more clues.













December 28, 2007




Snow tracking is fun, but challenging.  Snow conditions change so fast that a tracker can easily be fooled, or the tracks register so clear and the story be so obvious it gives you a false sense of being able to see sign.  In the photo above there are deer tracks in several directions.  This photo, above,  was taken in crisp, cold snow with quite a bit of wind filling the tracks quickly.







The tracks to the left look interesting.   They are about 3" wide and have a "stride" of about 14".  However,  if the photo showed you what was right above the tracks. . an overhead phone line, you might conclude (correctly) that it is the pock marks made by the wet snow falling off the phone line.  Wet pock marks are a common thing in wet, heavy snow like we get here and one of the reasons why a tracker should always ask themselves for three reasons why a track is of a certain animal before making a decision.  










Racoons travel in groups in the winter, at least around here.  The teenagers seem to stay with the family through the cold months in this area because they all sleep together for more warmth.  There is food available to them 24/7 in our neighborhood, so they roam both night and day.











October 4, 2007





Fall colors have started to show in one of my tracking spots.  The tree on the right has repeated scratches in it of different ages. Considering the view, the habitat and the width of the scratches I thought there might be a cougar who leaves a scratch mark here periodically. There was a multi-use animal trail that was very well used, but recently rained on. It was about 12 inches wide and cut deep into the surface, showing that it has been used extensively for a while. The trail passed close to this tree and disappered into the high scree. There were a couple of pika's living in the rock and they were very vocal about my presence for a while. It is a climb to get to this spot, but I will check the trail again when tracks might be registered there.  There were tracks of elk on the trail, but noting else was clear enough to get an ID. The gaits going up a steep hill are not very easy to decipher.



The nearest mud puddle had coyote tracks in it. (I put the pen in for size reference.) They were 2 inches wide and 2 and 3/4 inches long, measured using Dr. Halfpenny's method of determining minimum outline.  This example to the left doesn't show claw marks and at first glance one would think of a bobcat.  The two middle digits are even and pulled together though.  The tracks were very fresh. The clear one, on the left is probably a hind paw coveing the front paw print which is slightly to the right. The other tracks were in wetter mud and quite messy, all showing claws in front of the two middle digits.



I suspect this second track is a double register of the hind foot landing right on the front track as the outline was messy, but the inner track was crisp. This track tells more about the animal than the clearer one. Even in this soft mud the digits are tight, a sure sign of a muscular wild canine paw on an animal that works for a living.











August 18, 2007
While laying tracks for my class on Saturday I found this Argiope suspended in the long dry grass. Every step I made flushed fifty grasshoppers, but I was surprised to see this spider about knee height and about the size, including legs, of a my flip cell phone. The yellow "eyes" on the top were facinating so I grabbed my camera and took this photo, in the process messing up my beginning line of sign.  I had never seen this spider before so I went back to my car and pulled out my insect field guide. Nothing like it was in there. When the class joined me to look at tracks, we found a second Argiope suspended a little lower in the grass, but the same size. It wasn't until later, when I had had time to do an internet search that I found the name of this impressive animal, and just a little bit about it.  The picture I found showed one eating a grasshopper. Humm. . do these spiders follow grasshoppers? Which came first the grasshopper or the spider? The area we were in is one I visit frequently and so far I had not observed grasshoppers there. . or spiders.  How do they know where to find each other? According to the University of Michigan it is a female pictured here and the squiggly white part of her web you see is called a stabilimenta and scientists speculate it is either for web stabilization or to attract prey.  Email me if you know more about them than I do and I will add your information here.  Keep tracking as you never know what you might find next!!