Tracking | Leslie Patten Books: Wild Places, Sacred Spaces

Some Scat

Posted on May 9, 2009 by Leslie

I thought I’d post a scat entry with photos. Some I’m sure of, many I’m not. Not all have size references. Sorry about that. I’m now starting to carry around a penny which I’ll put with future photos. A penny is exactly 3/4″ in diameter.

Breaking up scat helps in identification and is a window into what the animal was eating. Smelling scat (do not smell raccoon scat as they can carry a parasite that is fatal to humans) also holds clues.

Animals communicate vast amounts of information through markings and scat. Many times I’ve watched Koda intently smell an area, then urinate on it.

Koda with his nose in a squirrel hole

One time he was smelling a log that had no obvious scat on it. Because he is still a pup, he started licking the log to ‘uptake’ the smell better. I got down and smelled the log and was overpowered by a extremely pungent smell. Other times he spends a lot of time smelling an area and when I put my nose to the ground, I can’t discern anything.

One time in California I was at the tracking club meeting. We were circling a large field and found mountain lion scat. The group leader advised everyone to get down and sniff it. One whiff of that scat and you’ll never forget it. It made the hairs inside my nose stand on end for a long time. Imagine your kitty litter box, then multiply that smell 10-fold.

Last year in the spring I had both my dogs with me in Wyoming. My old dog started making a beeline for the woods. I followed her to a fairly fresh turkey kill, probably from a coyote. The kill was in the nearby vicinity of the cabin and the magpies were already on it. The 2 dogs spent lots of time chewing and further demolishing it. Early the next morning, on the walkway in front of my house, a coyote left his fresh scat. My old dog smelled it, but before I could hardly look at it, the 6 month old dog gobbled it up. Koda was still learning about smells and scats, and eating it is another way to really remember it. (I, personally, will not go that far!) I had the distinct impression this particular scat was left for my dogs as a calling card, as if to say, ‘this is my territory and that was my turkey you fooled with.’

I’m a crazy beginner at this. I find it’s a fun way to explore what’s happening around me. Learning scat takes practice and lots of direct experience. I take photos, then go home and look at Mammal Tracks & Signs by Mark Elbroch. Elbroch’s book contains tons of color photos throughout. He includes photos of tracks, scat, as well as sign. The book is thick at over 750 pages. Too bad he doesn’t include ‘scratch and sniff’.

This one's unknown, found in the woods nearby

See Marmot scat at top of photo. Marmot's in his hole.

Years of pack rat scat.

Could be coyote or wolf. 25% of wolf scat is coyote size.

Smelled like a cat. Bobcat I think. Cat's digest 90% of the bones.

Owl on tree. Notice the white droppings.

Big pile of bear scat. All forbs/grasses. They clean themselves in the spring with grass.

Some kind of mustelid I think. It was skunky smelling.

Another mustelid, I think. On the same trail as the other scat.

Filed under: Tracking | Tagged: Bears, Bobcats, Coyotes, Owls, Scat, Wolf | 3 Comments »

The Bobcat

Posted on April 20, 2009 by Leslie

It was a beautiful morning. I walked outside around 9:30 and threw the ball for Koda. A large cat-like animal appeared out from the marshy meadows and stood next to the fence line. Immediately I recognized it as a bobcat. JB had told me several days ago that he saw a bobcat in his fields across the road. I called the dog and sat down to watch the cat. He was beautiful. Much larger and more muscular than a big tomcat. Bobcat watching a ground squirrel

The bobcat sat in the sun for a few minutes when something caught his attention. I looked across the meadows and saw a ground squirrel sitting on his mound. The bobcat crouched low and made his way slowly in the squirrel’s direction. He ran along the fenceposts, stopping behind one for several minutes. He crossed a short span of meadow, then ran low along the side of the nearby house till he was directly in line with the ground squirrel. At a distance of about 15 feet from the rodent, the bobcat sat perfectly still, watching and waiting. Bobcat stalking amidst grass

By now the squirrel seemed to have caught wind that something was going on and was back in his hole. The cat waited patiently though. I’d been watching all this for at least 15 minutes. I went inside to use my scope for a better view and try to shoot a few pictures. Finally, the bobcat got bored and ran off to find an easier meal.

About 5 minutes after the cat left, I glanced out the window and saw the squirrel not just looking around from his hole, but on top of the nearby septic clean-out pipe. I might be anthropomorphising here, but that squirrel seemed to be gloating to me. Gloating ground squirrel

When I was in California, I belonged to a tracking club. We met once a month at Abbot’s Lagoon in Point Reyes. That beach had lots of activity–coyotes, mice, otters, deer, opossums, racoons–but the most reliable tracks were of a bobcat. The bobcat had an obvious route. He started out from somewhere in the thick brush and followed a track alongside the lagoon. There were latrines along the way and always kill sites. Seeing that that bobcat had a regular hunting route, I wondered if my Wyoming bobcat had one too, and if I had observed him on it. I have been investigating how to use ‘track plates’ and maybe I’ll try and make some.

Half hour later as I was driving my dirt road, I started thinking about how that bobcat lost his meal. I wondered what made him give up on the ground squirrel, just shy of it reappearing.

Without warning, a Unita ground squirrel ran across the road. I tried to veer but he was too slow and I was too fast. Getting out of my car, I pulled him off to the side of the road, maybe secretly hoping my bobcat would find him. I was still pretty close to home still and the thought that it was so easy for me to kill this squirrel and so difficult for the bobcat, haunted me. There was something awfully strange in this synchronicity. Bobcat print

Filed under: Tracking | Tagged: Bobcats, Tracking | 1 Comment »

Grizzly and mud

Posted on April 10, 2009 by Leslie

Well, the first bear was spotted the other day. I talked with the fellow who saw it. He was driving down to the old bridge, no longer in use, to go fishing. From the road above he saw the grizzly walking across the bridge. It’s now a forest service campsite, rarely used except by a few fisherman. I asked if he went fishing. “Nope, just turned right around.”

The odd thing is that I was down there twice that week and didn’t notice any bear sign, and there was plenty of snow and mud for tracks. Grizzly track

And even though we’re still getting snow, the nights aren’t too cold and some of days are actually warm. The bears will be coming out and be hungry, so I’m keeping watch and starting to carry bear spray. Grizzly tracks near fishing bridge

Today!

The good news is that its still so snowy and muddy that tracks will be obvious. The bad news is that it’s so muddy. Hiking in snow isn’t bad, but the mud here is unlike any I’ve ever seen. In Northern California where I gardened, I spent lots of time working with tight clay. I dug in it, I hiked in it, and I tracked lots of it indoors. But that clay soil doesn’t hold a candle to the Bentonite clay soil around here. Its because of all the volcanic ash that was once here. That’s how it forms.

Just a few steps and your boots weigh twice as much. If you’re walking on a hill, you’re likely to be sliding towards the creek or cliff. Your horses will slip in it. If you’re in your car on a muddy dirt road, soon you’ll be spinning out. That sticky mud won’t come off your soles easily and it dries into a cake.

Another interesting annoyance I’ve learned about this mud is that after its caked on my car from driving along the dirt roads here, and then freezes at night, my back doors won’t open. The mud kicks up onto the wheel well forming a large muddy frozen mass that cements my doors tightly shut. I’ve driven into Cody where it warms up during the day, parked my car, only to come back and find mud oozing off the wells into large pools on the parking lot.

Humans looked at this mud and said “we’ve gotta figure out a way to make money with it” and they did. Big Horn Basin is a major producer of bentonite, used as drilling mud for the oil and gas industry, but also, and maybe more important, as a main ingredient in kitty litter.

Knowing that it’s helping indoor cats certainly doesn’t make it more appealing to me. But I’ve decided that it can be personally useful. My Jeep is so muddy there’s no reason to clean it yet. Until things dry out around here, the car will just get dirty again in less than a day. But I don’t want to wash it anyways right now. With that cakey mud you can’t read my license plates. Now there’s a way it could actually come in handy. Muddy unreadable plates!

Filed under: Tracking | Tagged: Bears, Bentonite | 2 Comments »

Tracks I need help with

Posted on April 3, 2009 by Leslie

We went down to the river yesterday, exploring, and came across these tracks. They ended in some sand by the creek, so I backtracked them, through the snow, to where the tracks jumped across the river by way of two large boulders. I suspected they might be fox, but wasn’t sure. They seemed too small for a coyote. They don’t have that classic elongated shape of dog/coyote. The front track was 3″x 2 1/2″; while the back track was 2″x 1 1/2″. The stride was about 11″. I’m not very familiar with fox tracks, but when I looked them up in Elbrochs Tracking book, they seemed to have the classic roundness of a fox, the ‘H’ in the center where they’d be more fur, and the flat line on the metacarpal pad. So, all you trackers out there with more thoughts on these, let me know.

With Koda's tennis ball for size

Flat line at metacarpal pad

Full set

Fox?

Hopped two boulders across river

And just to keep things rolling, here’s another set of questionable tracks, ones that I can’t find in Elbroch at all. I’ve seen these a few times. They are very small, smaller than squirrels and so they must be something like a vole. Got any ideas? Tiny perfect tracks