If we had the speed and senses of a dog, wildlife photography would be easy, but the truth is that almost everything out there knows we are coming long before we have even the remotest idea we are getting close to them. But, we have to work with what we’ve got, so when it comes to finding animals that are elusive, learning to track can be an invaluable tool.
The idea behind tracking is quite simple, you learn what tracks look like and then go out and find them. The reality, though, is slightly different; tracks may look obvious in a book, but in the real world they can appear to be almost anything but the thing that they really are. Take this print below; is it a cat or a dog, or something else entirely?
Fig 1
When I first spotted this track in snow behind a beach (Fig 1) I hoped it was a cougar. There were no claw marks and it looked more round than the typical dog track, but as many owners clip their dog’s claws fairly short, and the snow had melted and refrozen I couldn’t be sure. The shape of a track can very considerably depending on the substrate. To be certain of what it is that you are looking at, very often you need more than one print.
These types of substrate-related difficulties apply to all animals. A dog can look like a wolf or a coyote; a river otter can be distinct or like some other member of the weasel family, or at least confusing, such as with this track found on another beach (fig 2):
Fig 2
If there are many other examples of the track in question available, this may not be a problem, all you need to do is search wider and build up a full picture, but often one or two ambiguous tracks is all you are going to get. In this case, a second track (Fig 3) indicated that this was a river otter.
Fig 3
In some cases the animal’s behaviour becomes as important as its tracks. If you are tracking what might be either a big dog or a wolf, take note of the pattern of tracks. Dogs tend to move around seemingly erratically, going from one direction to another abruptly, whereas wolves are far more focussed, and always seem to know exactly where they are going. Each species leaves typical types of trail. The possible cougar track shown above, from its trail (Fig 4) turned out to be a canine moving with a typical side trot (as they go forwards they tend to move at a slight sideways angle):
Fig 4
There are more different ways of travelling than there are species to track. For example, members of the weasel family are a bit like dogs in that their trails switch direction often, but even these vary in extent. Mink are very busy dashing around everywhere, so much so that if you stay still long enough they may even walk run into you. On the other hand, river otters are more focussed. Those around my local beaches tend to leave the water and move more or less directly to the back of the beach, where they go to a den or to and fro between selected resting/playing locations. After a few days of studying the movements of one, I managed to locate its favourite log (Fig 5):
Fig 5
Other animals leave different types of trail, and most have more than one. The terrain and the speed they are travellng are important factors here, and learning these these differences is as important as track recognition.
Scat too is a good indicator of what animals there are around. We found this scat on a small island. It looked a bit like that of a bear, but it was too small and not quite the right shape. This appears to be scat from the red fox (Fig 6), even though this animal is supposed to be found only on the BC mainland:
Fig 6
Finding this meant looking for signs of foxes among the numerous dog tracks along the trail. Without the scat, We were unsuccessful, but the scate at least told us that foxes were in the area.
The most important element of tracking is being familiar with your local area. Knowing which local animals use which habitats is the first stage of learning how to photograph them. Next is teaching yourself what the tracks of each animal actually look like in ideal circumstances. Then practice, practice and practice some more. Take photographs of those you don’t know and look them up when you get home. Also, watch the same tracks change over time, this way you will be able to approximate just how long ago an animal passed by. Never miss a chance to learn something new.
You also need to understand animal behaviour. How do they search for food? How do they travel from place to place? Do they leave other marks, such as scratch marks on trees, distinct food remains or easily found scat? Some animals leave scat anywhere, whereas others, such as raccoons, use specific locations.
None of this will guarantee that you’ll get an enviable shot of, say, a cougar taking down a deer in the rainforest of British Columbia or South America, but it will help you narrow down the territory, and, most of all, becoming a tracker will help add significantly to your working knowledge of wildlife in your area.
To start out, all you need is a simple, local field guide to animal tracks, and a lot of patience, but thinking more broadly about wildlife photography in the wild, there is a growing range of equipment that can help you. Take a look at what hunters use for some of the best ideas of how to stay concealed.