The essential kit for the animal tracks and sign enthusiast

Essential Gear for Animal Tracking. These recommendations come from years of experience and teaching, and I'll share stories along the way to make the journey even more engaging.

• Camera/Phone:
  • For photographing tracks with size references
• Plaster of Paris:
  • For casting detailed track impressions
• Flashlight:
  • Strong beam for inspecting cavities and holes
• Cue Cards:
  • Reference cards with species details and drawings
• Ruler/Measuring Tape:
  • For measuring tracks and distances
• Notepad and Pencil:
  • For sketching tracks and taking notes
• Small Plastic Bags and Tape:
  • For collecting and storing samples
• Magnifying Glass:
  • For close-up inspection of tracks and details

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Transcript

Welcome to the Reverie Nature Podcast. I'm your host Chad Clifford and today we're continuing the journey into the fascinating world of animal tracking with part two. Last week we delved into some of the best reference books for tracking providing you with invaluable resources to enhance your knowledge and skills.

So this week we're shifting our focus to the tracking kit that every novice tracker should bring along. In the Reverie Nature Podcast you can expect to find a wide variety of topics on the nature experience from bushcraft, survival skills, nature lore, animal tracks and sign, storytelling, nature soundscapes, and much more. These are the lessons and skills I've been teaching for decades.

So before we dig in please take a moment to subscribe and consider offering your support to the podcast. If you bring nothing else on your hikes especially in the winter time at least have a camera or your your phone that takes photographs and something you can put beside a track an object to give you a reference of size because if you do not later on it is going to be very difficult to identify this track for you or anyone else. So keep that in mind.

I've taken thousands of photographs of animal tracks in all types and conditions and weather and when I was taking photographs I was using slide film and you had to adjust the shutter speed and whatnot because taking pictures or photographs of tracks in the winter time is very difficult. You have bright white snow in a lot of cases with a track that's a little darker so you needed to adjust the shutter speed and otherwise your photographs would always wash out or or whatnot. It's a lot easier today your phone probably can adjust for this on its own without you having to adjust shutter speeds or whatnot and even after the fact you can probably edit it to get a nice clear photograph.

So you know settings on cameras isn't a concern like it used to be. However here's a really good animal tracking tip and also a good tip for taking photographs. Tracking is much easier when the sun is not overhead.

When the sun's high in the sky it washes out the tracks. There's no shadows. If you consider every track is a dent not always but usually it's a dent in the ground.

What happens is the sun when it's low it casts a shadow or that the indent in the ground is a shadow. When the sun is high you don't get that shadow much harder to see much harder to photograph. So keep that in mind even with the modern cameras that the lower the sun the better that track is going to pop out for you and even in the winter time too of course.

And you might be wondering from my mention that usually tracks are dense in the ground but not always the case. Now imagine you're tracking in the winter time and you come across some tracks where in the snow substrate these tracks are actually sticking out. They're not dense in the snow they're sticking out of the snow.

They're the bumps sticking out of the ground. This occurs when a track is made it compresses the snow and when that snow is compressed it takes longer to melt than the fluffy snow around it. So as the sun in the spring time or on a nice warm day lowers the snow these compacted areas actually remain as little islands and that's how you have tracks that aren't actually dense in the ground.

They're actually raised up. You see this on lake ice quite a bit. But let's now switch back to what you should bring when you're learning to track.

Well I'm not going to do this in any particular order except for the idea of bringing a camera and so the rest of these items yeah you can decide what you might want to bring. I always brought all of it and this kit I'm about to describe would fit into a waist fanny pack not a large one. So a fanny pack that would typically fit a medium-sized camera.

Let's start with plaster. Plaster for tracks. Where do you get plaster for tracks? Consider plaster of paris.

It is the so-called mud that contractors put on drywall to fill in those cracks. So go to your hardware store get some plaster of paris and I typically would use an empty milk bag. I'd fill that half full with plaster of paris.

I would bring a second milk bag to mix the plaster of paris in and this is just wonderful. When you come across a really good track often in the mud or or dried mud perhaps you can pour this plaster in there and wait for 20 minutes depending on your mixture and you'll have a nice cast of that track. There's a lot of things to talk about with plaster tracks so let me just give you some advice.

With that second bag what I do if it's a smaller track I pour some of the plaster of paris into the empty bag and I slowly add water and I want a mixture to be like porridge. I don't want it runny at all. Even a very thick mixture will seep into the finest detail of a track.

Other than that when I'm preparing a track for the plaster to come in I want the plaster of paris to be about as thick as one inch on the base of it and then the track protrudes from there. So what I'll do is I'll make a little I'll just find some sticks and I'll make a little frame around the track and I'll leave a good inch all the way around so I'm not so the track's not right on the edge where it could break later. So with these little sticks I make a little picture frame around the track.

I might add a little bit of mud. The plaster is pretty good at not seeping out too much. You don't have to be too specific here or too detailed.

Anyway so I have a little frame around the track. I pour in that plaster of paris and the reason I have it nice and thick is that it will dry more quickly. I can generally get a track to dry in about 15 minutes.

Good enough for transport anyway and even after a longer time if you have it to let that track or plaster of paris set you want to be very careful digging it up. You don't want to just grab the plaster and pull it out with your hands. What I do is I take a stick a stronger stick and I dig beneath that track to try and lift the soil with the track out of the ground and then later very gently dust off that dirt because you know your plaster is still setting and it'd be very easy to break a piece off at this point.

Okay time for a story. So I was with a group of of young people. They were wilderness camping and I was taking them on a tracking walk.

It was in the summertime so I took them to where the tracks were more obvious by a wetland area with lots of mud and sure enough we came across some great tracks and I had them plaster the tracks and they mixed their own mixtures and it's very easy to add too much water just like baking or anything else. So a lot of the mixtures were a little watery but they poured the tracks and I knew these were going to take a while to dry. So the group went ahead with the day's hike and I stayed behind which I figured would be about an hour waiting for these plaster casts to dry.

I was quite a ways back in the woods at this point and interestingly enough I was sitting there just what I do sometimes when cast plaster is drying on the underside the top of the your little plaster pile here that you poured into the ground that will be the underside of your track later. So sometimes I'll make little designs in the plaster as it's drying just out of boredom kind of thing and so this is what I was doing. I was naming I was putting the names of the of the people who's who'd poured the track onto the describing it into the plaster as it was drying and about 20 minutes in and not too far behind me and this was really thick brush this loud grunt and growl I guess emerged it's like it was like close it was only like 20 meters away if that and I'm pretty sure it was a bear and I heard no twig snapping it was a quiet day and I think what had happened we marched in there and the bear I think just remained quiet as we had this group of people all making these plaster tracks and that's unusual I think we must have caught the bear sleeping or something because they're usually long gone by the time people are anywhere near black bears of course and yeah so holy cow that's close and so anyway that was enough so I grabbed all the tracks kind of hastily put them in my bag and off I went that was the only sound I heard I didn't hear the animal walk or whatnot but you know how you can tell the size of the animal by its grunt or growl and how deep and you know loud it is yeah this was a rumble I'm pretty sure it was a black bear so anyway that's one interesting story when you're quiet and in the woods all kinds of things start to come out when you're not making noise and I think that grunt and growl it was just trying to figure out if I was even still there in the area I think it was curious because I was sitting there quiet for 20 minutes no sound and the bear was I guess getting impatient waiting or hiding and anyway that was that was a fun track tracking story when the plastering tracks I still have a bunch of plaster tracks you know that I have from years ago tracking and they're a nice little keepsake and a really fun activity for kids so get into plaster tracking even practice on your dog you know take your dog to a beach with wet sand get find a nice track make a nice plaster track get some practice in before you get out there of course plaster does add a lot of weight to your bag but you don't have to bring a lot of it I tend to bring enough for the largest animal that I'll come across because sometimes you just might come across a really nice moose track other times it could be a nice clear bear track that you really want to grab so you need enough plaster to fill a big track like that so you do need a fair bit of it let's move on now another item in that tracking kit should be a flashlight and I'm not talking about a little triple a battery size flashlight I want a good strong flashlight and this isn't for being out at night tracking at all this is for coming across especially in the winter time coming across little holes in the snow or little cavities or caves and you'll come across these all the time because animals are in and out of these things all the time so you want a flashlight that does offer a good beam you want some good light coming out of this because when your pupils are dilated or they're adjusting to the bright conditions of snow and winter it's really hard to see in these cavities so you need a really good light to you know to check out these little areas because you will find some interesting finds that are tucked away in such spots the next thing in your tracking kit should be cue cards yes those three by five cue cards and I would have I don't know how many cue cards I'd carry but it'd be about the thickness of a deck of cards or maybe a little thicker and what I would have on these cue cards is each species that I think I would come across mice voles shrews the different weasels on each cue card I would have all the details I could put in there a condensed version on these cue cards about these animals I would draw pictures of what their tracks should look like I would have their habitat I would write down things like each individual foot size and I get these from my reference books and so when you're out there you use these cue cards to help you decide what you're seeing but you know what I actually use these cue cards for more when I was at work I would often just have them in my lunch kit or or even in my pocket and when I take a little break some coffee I just flip through these cue cards and I'd start to memorize the things that were on there all these little tidbits of information that you come across so having cue cards both as a exercise in memory to get you more familiar with these different animals and also when you're out there instead of bringing a heavy resource book you have the information on a cue card now another thing you should bring and I already mentioned this is a ruler a six inch ruler is great just about the right size and it's convenient I just so have happened to have made my own ruler it's called a tracking tool the or animal tracking tool and it is a eight inch ruler and I have all these all this important information on it besides the scale and I use inches I'm old school but you know I guess I should modify this to be metric it's actually in the works having a metric ruler as well but what I do have on this animal tracking tool is I have three columns of text and one is it might not make sense what I'm talking about right now but I have the animals and their trail widths divided up by the way they walk if they are diagonal walkers and the resulting track pattern if they bound typically or if they're little gallopers like mice and squirrels so on this tracking ruler I have a very quick reference guide to doing a very quick measure on animal tracks and having the resource needed to identify it to a species level I'll be getting into how to do this this is a really important tip for you for another episode but anyway I'll have that tracking ruler because it's just a great resource on there it's from doing this for decades and realizing what you really need to learn the tracks and again it's not about just identifying it to a species it's nice to know but it's about the observation and just seeing what they're up to that's important I also have a bunch of photographs on my animal tracking tool across the bottom I have actual photographs of really good examples of different animal tracks besides a ruler a measuring tape is pretty important too I used to bring just a small steel measuring tape and the reason you'd need a measuring tape is for how long the distance between strides are or between tracks that an animal makes this is often a good indicator to help you identify it to a species level however I don't really think you need that so much there's lots of ways to help you identify tracks without using this when I was learning I was taking all the measurements every book would give me condensing it and I'd build a measured individual track sizes and the strides and the distances it would hop or run and I'd take all these things into consideration so having a measure tape was essential not only that what I would bring was a caliper you know for taking measurements of internal diameters and depths there's a thing called a caliper sometimes people use a dial caliper but it's taking precise measurements and it was especially handy because it has these little tangs that slide and you could kind of put those within the track the depression in the ground and measure that way yeah it's good to have I think if when I teach animal tracks now I don't typically advise people to bring that kind of stuff it's a little overkill however that that's how I learned initially was taking all these accurate measurements and in doing so you know this will help you solve a lot of mysteries out there I think I mentioned in the first episode I have mysteries that have gone on for over a decade animal tracks and it was by those precise measurements measuring the size of feet that solved the mystery later I'm thinking of one instance in particular with crow and raven tracks I didn't know what a certain track pattern was or not the pattern so much but what this bird track was I didn't know what species it was from and later I read a piece of information that described a group of birds that made this type of track and without getting into the details the only thing I was missing was the size I did not have any good reference to how big the track was and I could have got it down to the species level if I had taken better you know detailed notes on my tracks speaking of detailed notes that's another thing you need to bring a small pad of paper and pencil maybe a pen I like pencils because you can add shading and you can sharpen the pencil so when ink dries out or just a stubborn in your pen pencils are the way to go every good naturalist should probably have a journal well this can be your tracking journal but keep it small it has to be packable and if it's packable you'll be more likely to bring it and you will use it you'll be sketching in fact a great one of the best ways to learn about animal tracks and I'll get into this in another episode is by drawing a track the more time you spend staring at those minute details man I tell you you do that a few times and those minute details that took you maybe 20 minutes to see while you were drawing it will pop out at you later you're going to be a much better tracker if you start drawing animal tracks never mind just taking photographs and looking at them later no when you start drawing things you pick up those details as any artist will tell you so there you go tracking can be an art form and of course it is so let's move on to something else now well maybe I better spend a bit more time on note-taking let's see so you need your notepad just to take the notes if you want and you probably should do this is take into consideration the weather so in other words journal the day the time the weather the conditions recent weather all these things if especially if you keep a detailed daily journal keeping track of the patterns throughout a winter or summer will really help you do things like aging tracks later because when you come across a track and you can and you know what the weather has been you know for the last week month or year it's going to tell you how that track was aged and what you can expect to see in that track based on the weather so whether your journal that you take with you or your notepad that you take with you on tracking trips yeah you probably don't want to take all those details but this should be in a maybe your your tracking journal at home but for when you're out there yeah definitely taking sketches and making notes to help you solve that mystery later when you get home with your resource books and we're almost done here but I just want to go over what we already talked about we talked about bringing some plaster which is a fun activity for kids it is hard to come across a good track so yeah you're going to be don't expect to just go for a tracking walk and find a great track you'll see pretty quickly that you need a great track before it'll really turn out in the plaster so you need to have it with you all the time your flashlight your cue cards your ruler and measuring tape to get the camera and a notepad and pencil so what else can we bring how about some small ziploc bags and some tape why well if you're collecting things you want little baggies to store them in and tape you could be collecting hairs and just sticking it on the tape putting it in the bag and other evidence that you find along the way now you probably don't want to be collecting scat and if you do for identification later or you know showing someone else people do this kind of stuff you got to be very careful with scat don't go near dried out scat there's molds that can grow on there and you don't want to be breathing that stuff in so that here you know it's this dangerous stuff really to be playing with obviously so yeah research that if you're going to bother doing that I don't tend to to collect scat however there have been people who have made necklaces out of scat pieces of scat yes and if you are one of those people I'll let you look into the details on safety here but what some people do would they take those compact little rabbit pellets and the deer pellets and moose pellets porcupine pellets all those herbivores that tend to eat things and their scat depending on the time of year would come out nice little nugget sizes just ideal for a little necklace a little pearl necklace of scat and of course they treat the scat with whatever it was liquid plastic or whatever to seal it up properly but anyway you do have health concerns if you're gonna mess with scat stay away from it observe it and we'll get into a lot of insight you can learn from the scat in another episode but certainly for hair and maybe even little jaw bones and stuff like that that you come across there's a lot of little keepsakes you might come across owl pellets if you don't know what those are we'll talk about those later anyway you just got to be careful when you're collecting and handling stuff obviously I won't get into hygiene here what else can you bring how about a magnifying glass when you're looking at tracks closer you're looking at hair or scrapings on a tree magnifying glasses are wonderful so bring a little magnifying glass or loop I like to bring one that's you know two to two by four inches that kind of size but you know you can bring smaller ones but it's just nice to especially for kids right get right in there teach them to go look really close at things and when you're drawing tracks to definitely use a magnifying glass so have that in your kit as well you'll be surprised how often you use it if you have it and that about does it for what I consider to be great in an animal tracks kit like I said I would store all these things including cue cards and it will fit into a one liter fanny pack one liter fanny pack if you're not sure how big one liter would be that's you know about the size of the smaller fanny packs you'll see not those big ones you don't want to have something big and bulky ordinarily when I'm doing an animal tracks lecture an introductory one these are the kind of things I talk about in other words the things to bring at the end of the talk but because this series is going to be ongoing we're going to have lots of good insight into animal tracks and how to learn how to track I just wanted to get this out of the way now so you don't have to wait till much later you need to get out there tracking right away all right so as we move forward in this series you know there might be some other topics that I cover unrelated to tracking in between I like to mix things up a little bit but I guarantee you there'll be lots more on animal tracks and tracking it's been a major hobby of mine for a very long time and you will find of course when you get better at animal tracks and tracking all these things I talked about the little tracking kit that I would bring you don't need those later you're going to come across tracks and not that you need to identify things but you're going to pick up on stuff very quickly you're not going to need to measure stuff anymore you'll just know by the size of what you're seeing what it is however you're always going to find great things to take photographs of and bringing that flashlight and even the magnifying glass is not a bad idea thank you for joining us on the reverie nature podcast remember to subscribe for more captivating episodes exploring the wonders of the natural world until next time may you saunter forth embracing nature's song and may the whispers of the wilderness linger in your heart

Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.