Tough tracking

[nipper]

Good afternoon trackers

This recent bout of hot weather has turned out to be a real blessing for me.

I spend most of my time tracking deer through my local woods in Wiltshire. And, due to our British wet weather, coupled with the weight of the animal and their small hoofs it can sometimes make tracking easy.

But this recent bout of hot weather has really forced me to concentrate my efforts on other forms of sign.

Last night my daughter and I were nestled in a sit spot watching a small roe deer feeding in a clearing. He was totally oblivious to our presence and after 15 minutes decided to move on. We both wandered over to study it's feeding area, then we proceeded to track the deer.

The ground at the moment is so hard looking for compression shapes is quite difficult. However, with dry weather comes dry twigs and leaves and these snap beautifuly under the weight of a deer.

We managed to follow that deer for 500 meters just studying vegitation disturbance. This was a great revision excercise and something I will continue to do whilst the hot weather is with us.

If anyone is interested in tracking, and has a tendency to become preoccupied with just prints, now maybe a good time to get out there and hone your other skills and senses.

It can be tough going but it is very rewarding.

Happy tracking
Nick

 

[NickBristol]

Nice story - really interesting and positive

It's quite natural to get a bit preoccupied by prints, especially when you've got a good run of them to follow which you tend to zone in on. It takes practice, knowledge, some intuition and lots of patience to pick up the other signs apart from the track. Wish I had more time to practice these sorts of skills tho I did spend a nice half hour following an urban fox around an industrial estate Friday night, mostly by sound and sight

 

[Roving Rich]

Excelent - that sounds like a brilliant experience, and a great education for your daughter.
Now apparently these are creatures of habit, as most are. So it would be interesting to go back to the same sit spot around the same time, and see if the deer turns up again ?
Sounds like a great bit of tracking, I must confess I have been entranced by the track, and not neccesarily looking at the terrain & vegetation. IT was highlighted to me by Woody at the meetup - He employed a totaly different approach to tracking and opened my eyes further.

Just a thought

Rich

 

[nipper]

This last few weeks has been a real learning curve for me.

I am getting much better at using other forms of sign to track apart from the prints themself. But I still have much to learn. Thats the beauty of tracking, you never stop learning!

For some reason I find tracking over a bed pine needles a real problem. I have alot of pine forest where I live and I do practice there. Its like stepping on a sponge. They compress under foot and then spring back which tends to leave the compression shape under the needles.

I remember tracking in Devon on a course with Max from Shadowhawk. We were tracking a group of people through the woods and going great until we hit pine needles. Under the canopy of the trees when your losing light it is really tough. Plus we were tracking quite aggresively to try and close the time/distance gap.

I do however enjoy the challenge, and I will never stop trying to better myself.

Nick

 

[fastbreak]

This last few weeks has been a real learning curve for me.

For some reason I find tracking over a bed pine needles a real problem. I have alot of pine forest where I live and I do practice there. Its like stepping on a sponge. They compress under foot and then spring back which tends to leave the compression shape under the needles.

Tracking over a thick layer of pine needles is called "guesswork" Nick; rather like bare rock on a dry day. You can sometimes follow disturbances from large animals in the bed. If you have had some rain in the last few days, but it has dried up, then damper patches of needles can sometimes be seen (or felt) where an animal has kicked up the bed. In the absence of scat or any anything obvious, you can just look ahead and decide where would you have gone if you happened to be a Roe deer...

I must admit most of my tracking is done in African savannah habitats these days, so beds of pine needles are not a common problem.

Have fun

Mike

 

[leon-1]

Hi Nick good to hear you are keeping it going, there were a few of us tracking on pine needles on the ,ast course that I did with Max and it is quite a knack, but once you get the hang of it, it's a lot of fun

 

[NickBristol]

. In the absence of scat or any anything obvious, you can just look ahead and decide where would you have gone if you happened to be a Roe deer...

That's exactly the sort of intuitive understanding of animal behaviour that I wish I had... can do it with people up to no good but not often at all with animals. Will have to keep trying I suppose...

 

[bombadil]

Two things; one observation and one little story.
Where I am in Portugal it has been good to note the deterioration of footprints and scat in the heat, and I'm getting a lot better at determining the age of a print etc. In the heat dry vegetation is really useful, I've been really surprised by how obvious some things are when you have your eye in. (Admittedly, my tracking skills recently have been used mostly to determine how well used a deserted beach is )

Secondly, some years ago I was observing some Roe on the South downs in an immature plantation. After they had moved on, I got down on my belly and began a process which I suggest everybody try. First I closed my eyes and did nothing but listen intently to all of the sounds at every level; insects in the long grass, birds, air currents, aeroplanes, distant dogs etc. After about 20 minutes of this I switched to concentrating on smells, also with closed eyes, and repeated this process; smelling the odour of the deer on the trail, fungi in the soil, broken vegetation, the various subtle smells from plant transpiration, (at this point it becomes amazingly clear that to a deer, humans must have one of the strongest smells in the forest). After going through all of the senses, I then got up to my hands and knees and followed the trail. Having focused on all of the senses which we as humans pay so little attention to, and seeing the trail at the same level as the deer, I had a truly inspiring few hours of observing the world which it inhabits.
Go try it if you haven't already, it's a truly amazing experience and really helps with the understanding of a particular animal species, which obviously in turn is invaluable in tracking them.