Spring Cold Case...dead stuff of course

[British Red]

Well now, came across another "cold case" or two today when fossicking in the woods..if we can nail the identity, we could move on to cause

Anyone care to hazard a guess who this is?

Red

 

[wingstoo]

Well I would say that it is a Badger skull, looking at the cheek bone structure and the front end of the jaw.

Wings

 

[Shewie]

I'm gonna go for small fox ??

 

[JonathanD]

Too narrow for a badger. Fox, female. Cranium smashed in with evidence of scavengers.

 

[hammock monkey]

I'd also say fox, probably killed by an over-enthusiastic dentist?

 

[British Red]

ooh you are getting good at this. Purely as a matter of interest, did anyone notice the nut in the picture?

A slightly wider picture here

Now, I'm not certain what was going on but this is in private woodland which is a game shoot and this was with 20 yards

I think a certain degree of "human intervention" may well have been involved?

Not seen the bodies left like this before, but the last one looks "stopped in tracks" to me?

Red

 

[JonathanD]

Yeah, I noticed the nut. Difficult to be sure, but looked like squirrel

 

[British Red]

I did wonder if it might be purely coincidental or evidence of scavenger feeding?

 

[JonathanD]

We need more posts like this Red. I love investigating stuff like this when I'm out and about. Amazing what evidence you find when you begin to learn what to look for.

 

[poddle]

The Skull is that of a predator( look at the canine holes in the upper mandible) so it can only be one of a couple of things

Its a dead Fox.

Tail and legs are too long for a Badger, and so is the snout.
It probably ****** the game keeper off, and stopped a triple 2

 

[British Red]

Knowing the guy concerned that'll be a 22-250

 

[Melonfish]

fascinating stuff Red! love seeing stuff like this as its always a great way to learn animal skulls.

last weekend i saw fur and bones from a rabbit whilst walking through Delamere. and a freshly killed badger that had crawled off the road only to die beside it...

human intervention appears to be more common then i had previously thought

 

[Bushbuddy]

The Skull is that of a predator( look at the canine holes in the upper mandible) so it can only be one of a couple of things

Its a dead Fox.

Tail and legs are too long for a Badger, and so is the snout.
It probably ****** the game keeper off, and stopped a triple 2

hi m8 i have been interested in tracking skills for a number of years can you give me some pointers on where to start looking

 

[poddle]

Downwards is a good start
Get a well illustrated book for a start

simple things like the difference a fox print and a dog.
Here is a fox print (second one down in the photo is a fox print), the one to the left is a dog.

Notice how the print is clearly "longer than it is wide", also there will be hairs visible, dogs rarely leave hair marks in tracks(around the pads and the inside of the print)

Notice the hairs on the feet and pads, this fox had a broken leg, it must have been hit by a car(prior to my bullet) It had not done well since the injury, and I was pleased to put Clubfoot out of its suffering

I was also able to tell that she had passed there very recently as that footprint went down in a puddle or wet mud and it had not rained there for several weeks. The ground was hard, so she passed through when it was raining or just after, and that was just a few hours ago. Obviously a dog had also passed though at around the same time

I caught up with her later that night, shot her ten yards from this print

She was old and in bad condition, but had raised a litter


A dog print is much more square look at the distance from the far left to the far right of the print, its basically the same as the height, if not more, so dog, not fox

Here are fox tracks in the snow

Notice how straight the line is, a dog tends to track sideways slightly when it trots , foxes tend to put the back feet down on the same line as the front feet.

Here is a better view, the prints are in bunches of four which suggests that the fox was moving at a canter, as a straight slow walking action would just produce a straight line of equally spaced prints. The canter also suggests that the fox was very confident at that time, as he clearly was not moving with much caution, neither was he sprinting.

I took the fox from this muck pile a day later with the .243, the cocky git.

and this one is a hare
The hare was resting on its haunches and the two front went down as it moved off

Badger print has a thick bar going sideways and the four claws are usually visible, tends to leave a line between the foot prints in snow where the badger cannot lift its feet above the snow level.
Hope this helps a bit

Make the use of snow and wet conditions,it really helps.