Wildlife Tracking at the Slickrock Gathering hosted by B.O.S.S.

Every spring Boulder Outdoor Survival School hosts the Slickrock Gathering, an opportunity for their staff and students to come together and learn primitive skills such as flint knapping, pottery making, and hide tanning. This spring, I was invited to join the gathering to teach wildlife tracking. During three days in the field with a group of instructors for the school, we visited several locations close to Boulder, Utah. We spent the first day focused on learning to identify tracks and interpret the stories left behind in the trails of wildlife.

A myriad of prints of small animals including mice, voles, woodrats, lizards, a snake, and numerous insects were found zig-zaggging across the sand protected under this rock overhang along Deer Creek.

BOSS instructor Lori Jonestrask and Apprenticeship Director and instructor Bryan Puskar inspect the tiny nest of a humingbird found under another overhang along the creek.

Trailing Elk and Mountain Lion

On the following two days we focused our attention on following the trails of wildlife. One day we spent half the day following the fresh trail of a mountain lion, piecing together the story of her hunt through clearings, aspen stands, open pine forest, and oak scrub over a couple of miles. On the third day we picked up the very fresh trail of a group of elk and followed them, determining they had been foraging above the creek we had been following, eventually abandoning their trail as the heat of the day set in, anticipating their trail heading away from the canyon bottom, was likely leading to where they were currently bedded down.

We first cut the trail of the mountain lion on an old road southeast of Boulder Mountain.

The left hind track of the mountain lion discovered on the road.

When the large cat left the road and began meandering through aspen stands, grassy clearings, and through open pine forests, the trail became much more difficult, forcing us to anticipate where we believed the cat likely traveled and search for clues of its passage along this route. This process of prediction and follow up allows the tracker to move much more efficiently across challenging substrates.

Trailing Workshop and Track and Sign Certification: Northern Arizona

In early May I had the opportunity to travel to northern Arizona to deliver a Trailing workshop and a Track and Sign Certification around Flagstaff and Sedona for a group of local naturalists, hosted by Earth Encounters LLC. While I was in Arizona, I also gave a slideshow on Wolves in the Pacific Northwest hosted by the Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project.

Trailing Workshop

During the two day trailing workshop, participants practiced various component skills which are required to effectively and efficiently follow the trail of an animal over challenging terrain. These include detecting tracks in grass, leaf litter and other challenging substrates, anticipating how an animal will likely move across the landscape, and stealth in movement so as not to alert the animal being trailed to your presence. After a morning of exercises we spent the afternoon trailing a group of mule deer for several hours, finally getting to observe them foraging as an afternoon thunderstorm rolled in. On the second day we spent the day trailing a small herd of elk through a forested landscape.

Rayne Zhaughsome on the trail of a herd of elk during a trailing workshop held north of Flagstaff Arizona.

Track and Sign Certification

Day 1 of the Track and Sign certification took place outside of Sedona, in a desert landcape and along the riparian corridor of a stream. Species whose tracks we encountered included kit fox, bobcat, kangaroo rat, striped skunk, black bear, river otter, beaver, coyote, cottontail rabbit, and lizard among many others.

Jill Cooper and Rebecca Fitzpatrick inspect the trail of a turtle under a rock overhang.

These tracks of a kit fox in dust where one of the first questions during the evaluation. Their small size, very slender shape of the hind foot and diminutive size of the metatarsal pads differentiate these tracks from those of a grey fox.

Local expert Matt Monjello, seen here discussing sapsucker feeding sign left on a juniper tree, organized and assisted with the evaluation.

On the second day of the evaluation we spent the day in a forested area outside of Flagstaff where we encountered a wide variety of signs of wildlife including acorn woodpeckers, elk, deer, bobcat, coyote, deer mice, and jackrabbits.

Rayne inspects the remains of a mule deer during the evaluation. It can be hard or impossible to definitively say how an animal such as this one died but several clues indicated that this deer may have been consumed by a mountain lion and scavenged by coyotes.

9 people received certificates from the evaluation:

Level 1: John Behrman, Adam Bailey, Rayne Zhaughsome

Level 2: Chris Dawkins, Emily Nelson

Level 3: Jill Cooper, Micaela Pomatto, Rebecca Fitzpatrick, Liz Snair

For a complete list of certified trackers in North America visit trackercertification.com.