Do You Know This Toe? Tracking Animal prints in the Snow

Written By: Cassandra Gardocki

Humans have been tracking wildlife for thousands of years. For much of our history, tracking was a vital survival skill, helping people locate food, understand animal behavior, and move safely through the landscape. While tracking can still be useful for those seeking to hunt sustainably and ethically, it is also a rewarding way to simply learn more about the natural world around you. Today, tracking remains an important tool not just for outdoor enthusiasts but for scientists as well. By studying tracks, scat, trails, and other signs, researchers can determine where certain species live, travel, and raise their young. This information helps guide conservation decisions and identify areas that need protection. After all, we cannot protect wildlife habitat if we do not first understand where that habitat is and how animals are using it.

While tracking wildlife is often associated with hunting and scientific research, it can also simply be a fun winter activity and a meaningful way to connect more deeply with the nature surrounding you.

Tracking wildlife might seem intimidating at first, it can actually become quite easy if you know where to start. If you are new to tracking, here are the basic things to look for when identifying tracks:

1. Size: Start simple. How big is the track compared to your hand, a coin, or the sole of your boot? A large, heart-shaped print about the size of your palm may belong to a white-tailed deer. A tiny set of prints no bigger than a quarter might belong to a mouse. Estimating size helps you narrow down possibilities quickly.

2. Shape: The shape of the print will help us identify what family the animal is from. If it's a hoof, we know it's probably a deer or a moose. If they are webbed, then it's probably a beaver. If they look like a hand, it could be something like an opossum, muskrat, or woodchuck. Paw-like prints may be from coyotes, foxes, lynx, otters, and more.

3. Gait/pattern: We can also learn from the pattern the animal moved in. Do they seem like they were shuffling or waddling along like a porcupine? Or do the prints appear side by side, like they do when a mink jumps along?

4. Nails or talons: It can get tricky distinguishing similar-looking prints. These finer details can be helpful when identifying tracks that are similar across a couple of species. The front foot of a Muskrat has 4 toes, while a beaver has 5.  While coyotes and bobcats have similar paw prints, coyotes have nails and bobcats do not.

There are tons of resources on tracking wildlife in Maine. One that can be really helpful is the Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s Maine Animal Tracks. This is free online and printable! 

Here are some practice examples you can try before heading outdoors: 

What’s going on here? The three-toed prints with talons you can see closest to the camera tell us a bird was here. The large size, length, and narrowness seem to most closely resemble a wild turkey. While we can ID these tracks, we can only guess at why it was pacing here.

With changes in weather like warmer days causing melt or snowfall covering tracks, it can be challenging to ID tracks. In this image, the middle imprint almost looks like a deer track; however, we can use the depth of the imprint to infer the weight of the animal. Deer are between 80-200lbs generally, which means their hooves usually punch through the snow to the ground. This marking barely indents the snowpack, indicating that it is not a deer track. It may be another animal track, but without another track alongside it, anywhere, it is more likely just snowfall from the trees above. 

These prints are a little weathered, so we cannot use details in the shape, number of toes, or nails to identify them. However, the small size and jumping pattern, accompanied by the path to the tree seem to indicate that a squirrel was here, likely a small red squirrel. 

There are very few things that could have made these markings! These imprints lead straight into the Pushaw Stream, which indicates it is an animal that swims. These markings are smooth with no distinct footprints in them. This means something was sliding on the snow.  There’s only one mammal in Maine that has such definitive markings and that is the river otter! This carved out path is an otter slide.

Now it’s time to go outside and put these skills to the test! You can rent some snowshoes from Hirundo and explore the refuge’s trails or just take a look in your own backyard. It can be a fun way to spend the last snowy weeks of the season, you can even print Hirundo’s Tracks & signs scavenger hunt to bring along with you. Tracking is a great way to connect with nature and the more you practice the better you will get at IDing tracks and signs. Who knows what else you might see! I got lucky and saw an adorable gray squirrel!

---

References:

Klir Beck, & House, C. (2017). Maine Animal Tracks.

TRACKS | Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management. (n.d.).