Tracks and Tracking

1. What they did

Josef Brunner wrote this illustrated guide for hunters who had not had the chance to learn tracking by experience, and because, in his view, many guides were not competent. It draws on twenty years of outdoor life, about half of it hunting American game and half abroad. He found the foreign experience helpful because the same species show the same features in their trails the world over.

He explains that experts read not only single tracks and whole trails but also “signs”: how animals behave in certain situations, blazed trees, bear logs, beaver stumps and cuttings, droppings and more. He deliberately leaves out “microscopic intricacies”, warning that people who look for very fine details in tracks soon see things a sober-minded expert recognises as imaginary.

The book has two parts:

• Mammals, in four groups by body shape: (1) animals with bodies in proportion to their height (the deer, ox, bear, dog and cat families); (2) animals with long hind legs (rabbits, hares and squirrels); (3) long-bodied, short-legged animals (marten, ferret, otter, mink, ermine); and (4) short-legged, heavy-bodied animals (beaver, badger, porcupine, skunk). Each species has drawings of tracks and trails at different gaits, often at half natural size, with notes on habits and hunting.
• Birds: upland game birds, waterfowl and predatory birds, plus some non-game birds for comparison.

A chapter titled “What tracking means, and some hunting methods” sets out his idea of tracking.

2. What they found

How body shape shapes the trail

• Group one animals place their feet diagonally when walking and trotting, and the hind foot covers the front track on the same side. In the trot the trail becomes straighter. In the gallop the hind feet land side by side, ahead of the front feet.
• Group two animals (rabbits, squirrels) always land with the hind feet ahead of the front feet, at any speed, and their larger hind feet make it easy to tell which foot made which track.
• Group three animals usually move in leaps, with the hind feet landing in the front tracks, leaving pairs of tracks side by side.
• Group four animals leave tracks close together for their size, with the hind toes turned strongly inward, most of all in the beaver and badger.
• Except in group two and the beaver, the hind feet are smaller than the front feet.

Deer

• Where white-tailed and mule deer share the same country, their tracks become almost the same, and a small elk track may be taken for a white-tail’s. Brunner says he cannot always tell white-tailed deer tracks from those of other deer, and that hunters who claim they can are in the same position in the woods.
• He does not judge sex from track size or rounded toes, having seen many does with tracks as large as the largest bucks. The trail and other signs say much more than a single track.
• He lists seven signs that tell a buck’s trail from a doe’s: watching from cover (white-tailed deer only), dragging the feet, blazed trees, pawed-up ground, tracks set further from the centre line, toes pointing outward, and hind feet lagging behind the front tracks. He treats the last three as not always certain.
• He describes the small hillock and dust heap in the tracks of the fan-tailed deer, which he regarded as a smaller variety of the white-tailed deer.

Wounded animals

• How an animal reacts when hit, the blood (for example foamy, light-coloured blood after a lung shot), cut hair, torn-up ground and the pattern of its leaps show where it was hit. Drawings show trails of deer with a broken front or hind leg and with shots to different parts of the body.
• Animals hit in the heart or lungs, or with a broken leg, can be followed at once; animals hit in the gut or liver should be left for about two hours, or they may travel for miles.
• He tells of a buck in the Snowy Mountains, Montana, in 1904 that showed no sign of being hit and left no blood, yet lay dead about 200 yards along the trail with a bullet through the heart. His lesson: follow the trail even if you think you missed.
• He recommends a dog trained to follow a track on a leash for hunters whose eyes are not trained for tracking when there is no snow.

What tracking means

• Tracking usually means following a trail, but a hunter who relies on that alone depends on luck or endurance. Brunner calls the cougar the most perfect tracker: it uses the trail as a guide, following it only for 50 or 100 yards at a time, which he sees as the right method for people too.
• Tracking also means working out an animal’s preferred places, sometimes weeks before hunting, by comparing tracks, and then hunting there with care for the wind and the lie of the land.
• He describes circling a thicket downwind to see whether the trail leads out, and letting his own scent or pipe smoke move a deer out of a thicket.

Other mammals and birds

• A bear that leaves a thicket will pass the same spot again when next in that thicket; a fox always leaves a thicket at the same point.
• Cougars range more widely than wolves and return to a district at irregular intervals, from about once a fortnight to once in two months, usually exploring new ground each time.
• Many bird tracks look like those of domestic fowl, so where the track is found matters most. Wild turkeys are best found by their scratchings and droppings under roosting trees.

3. What they concluded

• A hunter should be able to read tracks, trails and signs, both to find game and to follow and recover any animal they have wounded, which Brunner calls a sacred duty and a matter of honour.
• Where a track alone cannot settle the species, a succession of tracks (the trail) almost always can.
• The trail and other signs reveal an animal’s activities, injuries and sex far better than a single track; fine measurements of single tracks would be too small and variable to be of use.
• He believed that careful study of the book and its drawings could give a reader the tracking knowledge of years in the woods.
• He also gives his own views on hunting: hunting bears with hounds is not sport and threatens bears with extinction; bears should be protected to some extent; wolves mostly take weak animals and should be partly protected in Yellowstone Park; hawks should be shot.

4. How tracking was or was not used

Tracking is the subject of the whole book. Brunner covers tracks and signs identification (single tracks, trail patterns at different gaits, droppings, beds, blazed and pawed sites, feeding signs, paths and slides) and trailing, including trailing wounded animals by blood, hair and leap patterns, and using the trail as a guide to locate animals and their preferred places.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Reported but not validated. The author bases the book on twenty years of outdoor experience. No test of his skill is reported.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• Detailed drawings of tracks and trails, many at half or full natural size, showing walk, trot, gallop and other gaits for each species.
• Hunting skills linked to tracking: reading wind, stalking, using scent or pipe smoke to move animals, calling with imitated cries, and using a leashed tracking dog.