TRACKING LITERATURE
The Tracking Literature library gathers research on tracks and signs, trailing, and animal behaviour and ecology, together with related fields such as human tracking, forensics, ichnology and taphonomy. Behaviour and natural history papers are here even when they never mention tracking, because understanding behaviour matters to trackers.
Search every field, or narrow the list with the filters. Each paper has its own page with a synopsis, keywords and the full citation. Where a paper is open access, or the authors or publisher have given permission, you can download the PDF; otherwise the page links to the publisher or a legal free copy.
1969Publisher link
Antler Morphometry in a Colorado Mule Deer Population
How much can a deer’s antlers tell you? Measuring more than 1,200 mule deer in Colorado through the 1960s, two researchers found left and right antlers almost always match, antler weight climbs by about 24 grams a month of age, and several drier years with less winter browse left surprisingly little mark. They suggest that weighing yearling antlers, or even shed antlers, could help managers read the age and condition of a herd.
1969Publisher link
Cemental Deposition, Tooth Succession, and Horn Development as Criteria of Age in Dall Sheep
How old was that Dall sheep? Working with skulls and horns kept by Nunamiut hunters in Arctic Alaska, this 1969 study showed that the rings on a horn, the order in which the incisors come in, and yearly layers in the tooth root can each tell a sheep’s age, sometimes to within a month. It also explains how to tell a true annual horn ring from the other ridges on the horn.
1969Publisher link
Movement Patterns of the Mongoose in Hawaii
How far does a mongoose wander? Over three years in Hawaii’s sugar cane country, 546 marked small Indian mongooses showed they are true homebodies: females usually stayed within about a tenth of a mile between captures and males within about a quarter. A female moved nearly five miles away was caught a month later heading home.
1969PDF available
Professional Knowledge Gained from Operational Experience in Vietnam, 1969, Special Issue, Mines and Boobytraps
In 1969, after mines and boobytraps had caused more than one in three Marine casualties in Vietnam, the U.S. Marine Corps concluded that the best detector was not a machine but an alert, observant person. This field manual shows how to read the ground: drying cut vegetation, small depressions, tripwires, and the regular patterns of sticks, stones and folded leaves that warned of hidden danger. It also describes scout dogs that followed the scent of the person who placed a device.
1969Publisher link
Qualitative Identification of Forage Remnants in Deer Feces
Can you tell what a deer ate from their droppings? In this 1969 study, captive mule deer and a white-tailed deer were fed one plant at a time, and every one of 17 plants left recognisable fragments in the pellets under the microscope. But even on a single-plant diet, only a small share of what went in could be identified, a warning for anyone hoping to measure wild deer diets from scat alone.
1969PDF available
The Field Artilleryman: Instructional Aid Number 43
How far can a soldier really see at night under a searchlight? In a 1968 test at Fort Sill, observers could not tell even tanks apart beyond 4,000 m, and a lit searchlight could be pinpointed within minutes. This 1969 US Army field artillery magazine also covers radar that spotted people moving in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, and step-by-step plotting on maps.
1969Publisher link
Winter Territoriality in Mountain Lions
Do mountain lions fight to defend their territories? After four winters of following lion tracks through the snow of Idaho’s wilderness, Maurice Hornocker found the opposite: lions read each other’s scrapes, turned back when another lion was near, and shared the same ground at different times. This classic 1969 study shows how solitary cats keep their distance without ever meeting.
1968Publisher link
Animal Activity in Uncontrolled Terrestrial Communities as Determined by a Sand Transect Technique
What if you could read every footprint left by a whole community, from beetles to bears, every two hours for a whole season? In 1960s Quebec, J. Roger Bider did just that with strips of fine sand, recording about 182,000 crossings and showing how mating, migration, rain and cold nights shape when and where animals move.
1968Publisher link
Symmetrical Gaits of Dogs in Relation to Body Build
Does a Basset Hound walk like a Great Dane? Filming 37 dog breeds in slow motion, Milton Hildebrand found that long-legged dogs walk with the feet on each side more closely paired, while short-legged dogs space their footfalls evenly, and that only some long-legged dogs pace. He also showed why many dogs trot with their body angled to one side: to keep their hind feet from striking their forefeet.
1966Publisher link
Winter Habits of the Lynx (Lynx lynx L.) and Wolverine (Gulo gulo L.) as Revealed by Tracking in the Snow
In the early 1960s, Swedish patrols on skis followed lynx and wolverine tracks through the snow for thousands of kilometres. Their trails revealed how lynx stalk and strike within 20 metres, how wolverines chase reindeer in deep snow and bury meat for later, and how wolverines follow lynx to scavenge their kills. They also put an old hunters’ story to rest: lynx do not carry off roe deer heads.
1965PDF available
Boobytraps
What does a 1965 Army manual on boobytraps have to do with tracking? Its detection chapter is a lesson in reading human sign: disturbed ground, broken vegetation, odd imprints, and anything that breaks the natural continuity of a scene. It also shows how soldiers were taught to hide their own signs, and how careful, continuous observation builds a sense of danger.
1965Publisher link
Sex Characteristics of Black-Tailed Deer Hooves
Can you tell a buck from a doe by their tracks? In 1965, a biologist who kept guessing right while following deer to their beds measured the hooves of 106 black-tailed deer. Adult males’ hooves were clearly wider towards the front, so most adult males, and the larger yearling males, can be picked out from their tracks with a high degree of certainty, though fawns cannot.
1965Publisher link
Some Sources of Error in Using Pellet-Group Counts for Censusing Deer
How many deer droppings do experienced observers miss? In a fenced Michigan enclosure, two game biologists missed or misaged enough pellet groups to cut the count by 22%, and some droppings still looked fresh two years after they were dropped. This 1965 study shows how habitat, diet and observer skill shape what we read from scat.
1964PDF available
Map and Compass
In 1964, Canadian Scouts learned to find their way with a map, a compass and their own paces. This 1964 Boy Scouts of Canada handbook teaches map symbols, contour lines, six-figure grid references, bearings and declination, then turns them into orienteering games and a home-made plane-table map. A clear, practical refresher on the navigation skills that keep a tracker oriented in the field.
1962Publisher link
Walking, Running, and Jumping
How does a cheetah’s walk differ from an elephant’s, and why does a mouse take up to 12 strides a second? In this short 1962 overview, Milton Hildebrand explains the body features that make runners and hoppers fast and sets out a simple way to describe walks, trots, paces, gallops and bounds from high-speed film.
1961Publisher link
Further Studies on Locomotion of the Cheetah
How does a cheetah change its stride as it goes from a lope to full speed? Filming a trained cheetah at 200 frames per second, Milton Hildebrand found that its stride grows from about 14 ft at 33 mph to about 23 ft at 56 mph, while hardly getting any quicker. He also describes how the cheetah stops within a single stride, spraying sand with all four feet spread out in front.
1961PDF available
Guerrilla Warfare and Special Forces Operations
This 1961 United States Army field manual on guerrilla warfare and Special Forces never teaches tracking, yet it takes tracks and signs seriously from the other side. Units leaving an area are to remove every trace of their activity and the signs of their route out. It also sets out layered early warning systems and a careful way to read terrain for routes, cover and obstacles.
1961Publisher link
The Logical Analysis of Animal Communication
How can we know what an animal’s call or display means without asking them? In this classic 1961 essay, Peter Marler argued that we should watch how other animals respond, and showed that a single chaffinch song can tell a female where the singer is, that he is a male chaffinch, that he holds a territory and that he has no mate. He also explains why some alarm calls are easy to locate and others are not.
1960Publisher link
A Thousand Miles of Fox Trails in Michigan’s Ruffed Grouse Range
Are red foxes eating the ruffed grouse? In the 1950s, Michigan biologists followed fox trails in the snow for 1,109 miles to find out. The foxes walked past grouse sign on two thirds of their trails but killed none of the grouse found dead; instead they lived mostly on deer left in the woods by hunters.
1960Publisher link
Animals in the Snow
Why do caribou crowd into some patches of forest and avoid others? In this 1960 classic, William Pruitt shows that the answer lies in the snow itself: its hardness, density and depth. He takes readers beneath the snow too, into a dark, quiet world where voles dig air shafts and red squirrels shelter from the deepest cold.
About the library
What is the Tracking Literature library?
A searchable collection of research papers on tracks and signs, trailing, and animal behaviour and ecology, gathered by Original Wisdom. Each paper has its own page with a plain-language summary, keywords, the full citation and a link to the paper.
Can I download the papers?
Where a paper is open access, or the authors or publisher have given permission, you can download the PDF from its page. Otherwise the page links to the publisher or to a legal free copy.
Who writes the summaries?
Kersey Lawrence of Original Wisdom summarises each paper: what the researchers did, found and concluded, how tracking was used, who did the tracking, and what it means for trackers.
How do I find papers on one species or place?
Type it in the search box, which searches every field including scientific names, or tick it in the Species or Region filter. Filters combine, so you can narrow the list to, for example, leopard papers from Botswana.
How should I cite a paper or a summary?
Each paper page gives the full citation and DOI of the original paper, and a ready-made citation for Original Wisdom's summary of it.