I have always envied dogs their noses. Imagine being able to walk into a room and instantly know not only who was there but who just left.
Except when it snows. In freshly fallen snow, snow that has not yet been subjected to thawing and refreezing, snow that has not yet been blown about by the wind, even unskilled trackers can learn a lot about the movements of animals we seldom see.
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Deer tracks are the best place to start. The tracks are big and obvious, and since the white-tailed deer is the only wild hoofed animal in northeastern Illinois, it is impossible to confuse deer tracks with anything else.
Deer beds are easy to find in snow. They are circular or oval depressions where the snow is packed hard by the weight of the animal’s body. If the snow cooperates, you can follow a deer from the moment it arises from its bed. Keep your eyes open as you track it and you should be able to see what it is eating.
Tracking gets complicated when you try to identify some of our local digitigrade animals. For example, we have three species of wild canids in northeastern Illinois. Red foxes are widespread and common, gray foxes are scattered and rare, and, as you know if you have been reading the papers, coyotes are around in growing numbers.
The other digitigrade animal tracks you may encounter on a walk through a forest preserve belong to the family called mustelids: weasels, minks, otters, and others. Weasel and mink tracks can be told immediately from those of any canid because they have five toes instead of four. Skunks, which are also mustelids, put their whole hind foot down with each step, but they are digitigrade with their front paws. However, skunks spend the winter asleep in a den, so you won’t often find their little footprints in the snow.
