Mountain Lion Track in Mud

Mountain lion track in a muddy trail, early morning with ground frozen.

 

This is about as undeniable as a mountain lion gets. My guess is that the track was made in the evening, the day before I found it. The ground was frozen solid when I snapped this photo with my Iphone. An hour later, the morning sun had melted the frozen ground. In just an hour’s time, the track had become disfigured by the water.

Originally I wouldn’t have thought the track was so fresh, but after seeing how the water degraded the track, I was convinced that it was not very old.

When an animal makes a track in mud, the track deepens and enlarges. This is likely a mature mountain lion of average size. My Swiss Army knife is exactly 3 1/2 inches long.

I spotted this track along Arroyo Del Valle near the Del Valle Reservoir dam, just off the hiking trail. This is an area frequented by mountain lions.

Never seen a mountain lion along this trail, but there are other signs of their activity. Last year I found a carcass near the location of the above track. It appeared to be a lion-killed deer carcass.

My dog often sniffs out deer leg bones along the trail and rib bones litter the brush along the creek. Although deer are seldom visible, they can be spotted when disturbed while walking in the brush along the creek where they hide during the day. This is where I occasionally search for Pro V1 golf balls.

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Mountain Lion Track on Freshly Graded Road

My pocket knife is 3 1/2 inches long, about the length of this track.

This is not a large lion or a small one either. The ground is soft, which is why the track shows at all. On hard ground one seldom spots lion tracks. This lion track was found on a road that also held many deer tracks. Where there are deer, lions will follow.

Bucks are growing their antlers.

 

One of the benefits of predators is that they move their prey species around, protecting flora from overgrazing.

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Ranch Visit, Spring Maintainance

We’re considering doing some significant work on a key spring at the ranch. The project will include installing a new spring box and a couple of modern troughs. Of the two troughs currently in place, one doesn’t work at all and the other won’t last too much longer. This work will insure a longer life for the spring and help spread the grazing more evenly.

This trough is working, but we'd like to install a new concrete trough.

The project should qualify for matching funds under the Farm Program. We’ll know for sure once the plans have been finalized and approved. The spring currently has no spring box, just gravel and a pipe. The second trough will be installed down the hill a few hundred yards. There’s plenty of water to handle two troughs. We may install some type of wildlife drinker as well.

We came upon a sow and two juvenile pigs not far from the spring.

This sow and juvenile has been spotted before. They're living near the spring.

Here's where they were rooting when we came along.

Although many people call this damage, I’m not sure it amounts to much. Maybe it’s beneficial.

Here's a track from the biggest of the three pigs, the sow.

My guess is that the sow was pushing 200 pounds.

On the way home we saw buzzards cleaning something up. Another Ranch Road victim?

Looks like a calf, but I didn’t get out to get a better view.

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Observations While Tracking Mule Deer in Snow

On the BC deer hunt, my guide Wes Phillips recommended that we try to locate buck tracks along a road and then track the deer down. Although was made several attempts, we never quite caught up with the bucks we followed, but we came close. On one occasion we caught up to a yearling doe that had been traveling with another doe and the buck we were after. We must have just missed seeing the buck. It is an exciting way to hunt, but the noisy snow made it unlikely that we’d get in range of a shooter buck.

Here are a couple photos of deer tracks we found.

Deer tracks crossing each other.

 

At this track site, I measured the tracks of two deer. The larger had a stride of 25 inches toe to toe and a trail width of five inches from hoof centerline to centerline. The smaller, a trail width of three and a half inches and a stride of 18 inches. Because I didn’t see these deer, I cannot say for sure if it was a buck and doe or a doe and fawn, but the 18 inch stride of the smaller deer leads me to believe it was probably the later.

Here’s another trail where two deer apparently walked the same trail.

While trailing deer, we came upon deer urine in the tracks. Apparently the rutting buck was urinating on his hind legs, a practice that occurs as the bucks pursue does. On another occasion we came upon a drop of blood, a sign that the deer may have been gored while fighting another buck.

On another occasion, we came upon a site where the buck had jumped another deer from it’s bed. Wes believed it was probably a rival buck.  Signs in the snow made it clear that the bedded buck had jumped up in a hurry.

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Bear Tree and Black Bear Sign

As my cousin Wes and I watched the big bear, he walked into a patch of timber. He approached a tree and stood tall, apparently using it for a scratching post. He then turned and rubbed his back. It was a back scratcher as well.

We took note of the tree, but didn’t get a chance to visit it on that trip, but on the next trip (during the rifle deer season)we walked past the tree when following a nice buck. Although we didn’t find the buck, we did stop at the tree and check it out. Here is what we found.

 

We also found some hair and scat.

 

Here’s one of the bears. I’m not sure if it’s the one that scratched the tree.

He was a long ways away. In all we saw about ten bears between our two hunts in D6.

Above is a photo of a track of one of the bears that passed by our camp.

This is a sketch of a black bear track as I measured it on an X-12 archery hunt for mule deer several years ago.

According to biologists with the California DFG, the black bear  population in California has been on the rise for several years. The department will ask that the quota for black bear take be raised again this season. It is important that the bear population remain healthy, but not larger than habitat can support.

Others say that black bears are impacting deer populations. They prey mainly on fawns, but there is also a theory that black bears find mountain lion kills and because they eat the carcass before the lions can finish it off, lions are forced to kill more deer than they would otherwise.

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Tracking the Coyote

The coyote is the most visible predator in our region and probably in North America. Its tracks can be found in most wild places in California and elsewhere in the West. The coyote is a canine and its track patterns are very similar to all canines including foxes and wolves. The tracks below were sketched in my notebooks in 1986. The clear track is a bit puzzling to me, but its the way I sketched it on site. The size of the track is about right for  coyote, but I am surprised by the distance to the front nail print.

I don’t recall the circumstances of that track sketch, but I’m sure I was convinced it was a coyote at the time. One way to explain away the long nail print would be that it  was a domestic dog, but for now I’ll continue to believe it was a coyote track. Even if it was left by a domestic dog, the dimentions of the track are good for a coyote, except for the long toe nail. Such is the nature of tracking. You seldom see the animal to confirm, without question, your conclusion.

Canines are diagonal walkers which means that the right front foot and left rear foot move forward at the same time and the left foot falls nearly into the track of the left front foot (same with the right side).

I’ve read that the rear foot typically falls in front of the front foot when walking, but it didn’t in this case. The speed of the walk may be a factor here. This is probably a slow walking coyote.

In the stride-measured print, the size seems to be consistent with other observations. In this case the stride remained constant not only for the two steps shown, but also for several others that I had no room for. Therefore the coyote near Bogard Ranger Station, California was walking purposefully at a slow rate of  speed, but probably not hunting. If the wild dog had been hunting, I would expect that the stride would have varied a great deal as the coyote slowed to listen and look for mice or other prey.

For some reason, I didn’t measure the trail width of this series of tracks. My sketch has the prints falling almost directly in a straight line, but I doubt that they were, so it only is an indication of stride and not trail width.Coyotes prints are typically indirect register which means the prints are separate or over lap each other. In this case the print of the rear foot covers most of  the front foot. Unlike coyotes and domestic canines, foxes tend to place their rear foot directly into the track of the front foot. This is called direct register.

I found the coyote pictured below on a trip to Yellowstone Park about ten years ago. He was a beggar and hung out along the road waiting for a handout, much unlike most coyotes which are elusive and wary. I guess that’s why I couldn’t find any photos of coyotes from trips to the ranch, where they are often seen, but always with their rear to the camera – usually running.

When coyotes and other canines run, they leave a series of tracks where all four paws hit the ground near each other and the distance between the series of prints is greater than the distance in between prints. I’ve got some good track patterns of my Labrador running and I plan to include them in a later post. The track patterns of domestic dogs are very similar to wild canines, but the tame critters are probably not as athletic.

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Tracking the Black Bear

While archery hunting for mule deer in the Hoover Wilderness in 1991, I noticed that the well-warn trail leading into the hunting area was littered with animal tracks each morning only to be erased by human travelers during the day.

One morning I arose early and took a few minutes to observe, measure and sketch a beautiful and perfect pattern of black bear tracks in the deep dust of the trail. Carrying a notebook, pencil, tape measure and string is what one needs to make an accurate record of tracks. I keep these items in a ziplock bag when I’m in the tracking mode.

Note that when the black bear walks he moves one side of his body and then the other as is the case with other wide-bodied animals like porcupines, beavers, wolverines and raccoons. This is his primary mode of travel, but when he shifts into high gear, his gait will change to a lope or a gallop.

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Thoughts on Tracking

Our tracks and the tracks of the pursued are intricately woven into the land that we live on. We cannot escape from the mold that we have been placed into. Every creature leaves a unique trail in its path. The ability to decipher this trail and follow or learn about the one who left it is primarily determined by the skill of the tracker.

In 1991, my brother, Rob and I were hunting mule deer in Nevada. The hike to the hunting locating from the truck was about three miles over rugged terrain. We agreed that if we did not meet up by a half hour before sunset, we would return independently.

I was delayed while stalking a buck and did not reach our rendezvous point at the chosen time. Rob had already departed for the vehicles and the sun had nearly set before I began the hike back to our vehicles.

There were no visible trails in the shale and lava rock and the hike would be strictly crosscounty. Although open, the mountain had natural passages and it would not be unusual for the two of us would choose similar routes. The entire mountain was covered with trackless lava rock and shale. I gave little thought to my brother or the route that he may have taken.

In fact, at one point, I tried to climb a ridge that led me to an impasse. I was forced to back track and climbed down the open hillside to a shale-covered area. As I carefully navigated across the shale, lava rock and sage brush, I came to a patch of dirt only about three feet in diameter and when I placed my foot down, I realized I was stepping into a track left by Rob. Not only was I stepping in the same spot, but with the same foot and line of travel. It was over a mile from our rendezvous point to the dirt patch where we left our identical footprints. This did not  happen by chance.

This event sent me a powerful message. People are predictable. Most of us are not trained to figure out how to do the predicting. The same concept applies to all animals, including those we hunt.

Humans rely strongly on vision. Eyesight is the number one tool that hunters use to locate game. We have complete confidence in our vision and instantly interpret the images that our eyes perceive and never doubt the reliability of those images. However, our eyesight at one time or another has deceived us all. That does not deter us from continued confidence in the reliability of our eyes.

If we have complete understanding of the tracks that are all around us, the tracks would be just as reliable as our vision. Our ability to utilize tracks for our own benefit and understanding are only limited by our ability or lack of ability to read sign.

Much of this sign we do see. Some of it is quite obvious. However, most of us choose to deem it unreliable. We choose not to believe what is right in front of us. Why is this? There are several reasons.

Unlike the hunter-gatherers, we spend little time in the forest. The knowledge that creates a working understanding of tracks and sign has not been passion. Concepts that were accepted as truth by ancient man are now looked upon with doubt.

With some effort, a sliver of understanding is attainable. For most of us, we only have time to attain a small insight into the sign that is written all over the face of the earth. Even this trickle of knowledge is a source of wealth to the hunter. By developing skills seldom understood in the modern world, the hunter’s enjoyment of time in the woods can reach a new level.

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Mule Deer Tracks

I few years ago I took some notes in my notebook about the set of tracks described above. Later I transfered my sketch to piece of paper. The track was interesting because it showed more than just a set of tracks.

 The size of the animal’s stride indicated to me that it was a buck. The variation in stride indicated to me that the animal was either injured or had been injured in the past. In my notes I indicated that I thought it was probably a left shoulder injury. Now, in looking at this sketch, it seems that it could also have been an existing injury to the right shoulder.

As the buck stepped forward with it’s right foot on the ground the weight of it’s body would be shifted to the right shoulder. The pain of the injury caused it to limit the extention of its left leg. However if it was an old injury to the left shoulder, its possible that the injury limited extention of the left leg meaning to me it could also be a healed injury to the left shoulder.

Each species of animal has a distinct method of walking. Walking deer register their tracks indirectly to the same spot. Meaning that each track I sketched is actually the print where two feet hit the ground. If I had sketched the track in more detail you would be able to see that the edge of the tract shows where each foot hit. Left rear foot falls nearly on top of the track of the left front foot etc.

Canines are also indirect register when walking, but cats are direct register – meaning that the rear foot falls directly on top of the front foot and you cannot usually see any sign of the rear print.

 By studying and sketching many tracks and comparing them, one can develop a feel for the size of the animal and unique features of each animals tracks. This can be done for each species and eventually one develps the ability to read the ground and visualize what animals are doing. The ability to do this is called the art of “seeing”.

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