Here's one for all you track lovers. Found on a well worn badger highway well away from human habitation and walkers. I go there regularly and the only people you see are the occasional serious mountain bikers....
TRACKS: Who dunnit?
- Thread starter JonathanD
- Start date
no claw marks so i'd have to say some sort of cat, but the print's 2 and a half inches long, that's not someones pet tabby.
stuart
stuart
I think I agree, it looks a bit cat like but I'm just not convinced
It's not one of the "serious" MTBers messing about is it ?
Print on the right was 8cm long, left was 7cm toe to heel. Nothing iffy here, these are the tracks as I saw them. They carried on for about 50 yards, then over a fence into a cordoned off area of pine forest where I lost the track. These were the best prints of the whole foot, the other where on drier parts of the path or on short grass, none of the prints had any claw marks with them. The last mountain bike track on there was at least 48 hours old, you can see it running along at the top of the picture. No human prints about at all apart from mine.
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There look like there are some faint claw marks. It may be just me, but it also looks like that part of the track maybe slightly sloping. The track is mainly round in shape so probably not a fox which is born out by the pads and how they align with the distal pad.
Apart from that the track looks like it's a dog, possibly something like a springer spaniel size.
Just a thought, some dogs have worn down claws like the ones you find on a hunt, stray foxhound.
Apart from that the track looks like it's a dog, possibly something like a springer spaniel size.
Just a thought, some dogs have worn down claws like the ones you find on a hunt, stray foxhound.
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Here's one for all you track lovers. Found on a well worn badger highway well away from human habitation and walkers. I go there regularly and the only people you see are the occasional serious mountain bikers....
Hi, these look like feline prints, round, pads close together & no sign of claws, but being 8 centimetres long & 8cm wide, that would be one big moggie, also the distance between the tracks is only around 15cm which suggests a cat walking slowly. was the ground very soft, if so then the animal was weighing in between 2 to 3 kilos. The tracks are younger than the tyre print (the ground was dryer when the bike passed as they are shallower) since they overlap..... A facsinating enigma, it will be interesting reading other suggestions......Thanks for posting
Definately not fox, badger or otter. I track those three every week. I got a cracking cast of the nicest and clearest badger print I've ever seen. It was whil I was waiting for that to set when I wondered off and saw these. Really really narked that I had no more plaster, But I will go back tomorrow as the ground around there has the best substrate I've seen for clear tracks.
No, only wild cats in the UK are confined to small areas in Scotland. (felis silvestris grampia)
And I would be highly surprised to come across a print that size from Felis Silvestris Grampia.
Not Felis silvestris grampia, I've seen these tracks, and although similar to domestic cats, certainly get nowhere near the size of these tracks. Usually on my tracking threads I post the tracks up knowing full well what they are. In this case I only know full well what they are not. To quote Holmes and following his doctrin “Once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be the solution." My conclusion is, I need to investigate more, because I don't like the answer. I wish someone else had of been present to record these as well.
It's remote enough to set up a camera trap. I am relatively free from meetings this week so can get up there a few times to get a good look around and get some casts, hair and follow the tracks back and forward. Unfortunately I won't be able to set up a camera trap as I'm off abroad for a while, but may leave it in the hands of another member on here if I'm able.
