How to Locate and Track Game

Finding where the game is located in hunting country is far more dependent upon an understanding of its basic characteristics and traits than upon an ability to follow each consecutive hoof mark in a trail.

An experienced hunter in strange country can often take one good look around and estimate fairly well just where any game is apt to be. And by climbing the first big ridge in that area he can also tell what species is there and its approximate abundance. Such skill is not based on magic or exceptional vision but on past experience and close observation.

PATTERNS OF MOVEMENT

Here are generalizations which will help the beginner:
Generally game is found higher in summer than in late fall and winter. Game goes high in hot weather to escape heat and insect pests. Also, summer feed is more abundant higher up than in the parched regions below.

An early fall brings game down sooner than a late fall. A sudden violent storm also tends to move most game downward, just as clearing weather tends to move it upward.

The largest males of most species are found at the upper peripheries of their range. When traveling in a band, the biggest males ordinarily come last, with the females and small animals ahead. This applies to elk, deer, antelope, caribou, and moose.

Most game feeds in the early morning hours and again at dusk, either bedding down, shading up, or moving to slightly higher elevations during midday. Feeding game will normally be more in the open than will resting game. All game common to wooded country likes "edge" country—that is, areas where foliage meets meadows and similar clearings. Browsing and grazing feed grows better where there is more sunlight, and the edge country offers immediate cover for concealment if enemies appear.

Many game species, when moving between patches of timber, stay just inside the fringe of such timber and will not cross openings unless absolutely necessary. Bears, especially, route their travels just inside the fringe of timber and through connecting timbered necks.

Game in wooded country will usually yard up and huddle during severe storm and move with increased vigor in clearing, colder weather.

Most game, if unmolested, tends towards a regular pattern of movement, often in a circuitous manner covering the majority of its current food supply. Molested game tends to scatter.

With a knowledge of the basic traits of game, the hunter immediately narrows down the area where it might be within a large region. If, for example, he knows that most game moves more at the daylight-sunup and dusk-to-dark periods, he'd best be hunting for it then—not during midday when it is shaded up. And if the hunter also knows that at those times game will be feeding in the edge country, then he will disregard other areas and look for it there—just as he will look for game at midday in shaded canyon apexes, north timbered slopes, and thick copses of foliage.

Any experienced hunter will tell you that game moves higher in the daytime and descends at night. One reason for this is that game descends to drink at creeks at night, and ascends during the day to escape insect pests. The major reason, however, is that the enemies of most game approach it from below, and game attempts to elude them by following the course of air currents.

Warmed by the sun after a cool night, air rises during the day into the mountains. After sundown the cooling air currents descend into the valleys. Game has learned to utilize such air movement for its own protection.

When game descends at dusk, it carries with it its own scent in one small area of descending air movement; when it moves upward at daybreak with the ascending air currents, it carries its scent along with it, leaving no trace below for the benefit of predators.

DETECTING SPOOR     

In order to survive, game animals must continue to do fundamental things. They must eat, excrete, rest, reproduce, dodge enemies, and remain within a habitat suitable for their species.

In doing this, game moves constantly about. Food, in game areas, is often widely spread. Also, the summer ranges do not always coincide with winter ranges. Resting places which offer concealment from enemies and pests are usually not the best grazing or browsing areas. The sexes of many game species separate during the summer months, and only find each other when the fall craze of reproduction is on. Places of concealment and cover constantly change as enemies threaten. This means game is always in a state of fluid movement, often overlapping as to species and habitat.

Any time game moves it leaves certain evidences which inform its enemies of its whereabouts. It must do so for its own survival and reproduc­tion. As an example, the minute traces of scent which deer leave upon brush from the metatarsal musk glands during the fall rut tell passing bucks where the does are. The "flashing" of an antelope, caused by raising its white rump hairs, can be seen with the naked eye for two miles or more in bright sunlight. It tells the hunter and predatory coyote where the antelope band is located, but it also alerts other antelope of the danger.

The most obvious spoor which game leaves is tracks and excreta. This is a by-product of the intricate patterns of movement necessary to its life cycle. But such spoor is often misleading. A hunter can locate game better by being able to unravel a pattern of movement than by following a single trail.

The utilization of spoor, however, is not unimportant. Often a country gives all the appearances of having a game population yet is devoid of game. It would be useless to look for game there according to its basic behavior patterns.

Experienced hunters, therefore, generally look for sign, then having identified it as to species, probable quantity, and possible age, begin to look for the game itself. The general pattern of such spoor, combined with known game characteristics, helps lead the hunter to his quarry.

TRACKS

In any tracking, the first necessity is to identify the spoor. The novice looking at the hoofs of such medium game as antelope, sheep, goats, and deer, is apt to say that they all look the same. There are, however, de­tectable differences; and these differences are not so much in the shape of the hoofs, as in the way the different animals strike the earth when walking or running. The resulting imprint, with its often minute differences in shape and contour, gives the observing hunter his cue to the animal's identity. Often the type of country helps to corroborate this. Tracks that only looked like deer tracks, in flat desert country might well be antelope tracks. And those big blunt "buck" tracks, far up in the crags and intervening alps, might prove to be a ram's tracks. The terrain does help to identify the spoor.

In a general way, deer tracks will be very pointed at the toe, with the hoof halves only slightly separated. Often the rear portion of the hoof pad fails to make an imprint. This is because deer step daintily when walking, punching the tips of the hoof sharply downward.

Tracks of a whitetail deer walking are pointed at the toe, and the hoof halves are slightly separated. Often, as shown here, the dewclaws fail to register.

Antelope tend to leave tracks in which the hoof halves are more parallel and more widely separated. Also, the outer edges of antelope tracks are a bit straighter and don't look as heart-shaped as a deer's. In mud, snow, or soft ground, a slowly walking deer will often show the imprint of its dewclaws (two small appendages above the hoof at the rear); but an ante­lope never will—an antelope doesn't have dewclaws.

The hoof of a Rocky Mountain ram is similar to that of a big mule-deer buck. But the imprint isn't. A big ram's track, due to the way it puts its heavy weight down, is almost square in contour. We measured several tracks of a big ram I killed this past fall; they averaged 24 inches wide by 2d inches long. Its hoofs were actually heart-shaped, but the toe points spread with its weight, wiping the earth at the hoof points into a nearly square imprint.

Antelope tracks are more widely spread than deer tracks and the imprint of *he hoof halves   are   more   parallel   to   each   other.

Tracks of a bull elk are roundish in contour. Only when walking in soft mud does the animal leave the im­print of its dewclaws.

Bull elk tracks are approximately the size of a coffee cup and quite roundish in contour. They resemble the tracks of a two-year-old steer. Cow elk tracks and those of calves are correspondingly smaller but also roundish. Only when walking in mud do elk show their dewclaw marks. Moose tracks are larger, the big bulls' running to 6 inches. Moose tracks have a tendency to splay out between the halves of the hoof, much as you would point two spread fingers. Also, the dewclaw marks, of the big bulls especially, often show. The general impression an observing hunter gets is that moose tend to plant their hoofs down farther back—not up on their toes like elk.

Tracks of the Rocky Mountain ram are rounded at the toes due to the weight placed on these points.

Moose tracks are large, and the hoof halves tend to splay out­ward. The big bulls, because of their weight, often leave the im­print of their dewclaws.
Caribou tracks are virtually round in outside contour, and unduly large compared to other species. The two big crescent-shaped halves of the hoof are something like' two miniature, kidney-shaped pillows.

Caribou tracks are nearly round in outside contour, and the imprint of the dewclaws usually appears.

Mountain-goat tracks resemble domestic-sheep tracks (in the few places where spoor may be found). They are rarely mistaken, simply because the cliffs and spires of goat country are not the habitat of other species.
Bear tracks are not hard to identify and, due to a bear's liking for trails, are often clearly imprinted in dirt and soft earth.

The forefoot track of a black bear will average around 5 inches wide and 3 inches long. The claw marks are set closely in front, each visible as a sharp, tiny V indentation. The rear tracks resemble those made by a man's wet bare foot. A 6-inch hind track is from a medium bear. Cub tracks are quite similar, and about the size of a large porcupine's tracks.
Grizzly tracks are similar in shape, except that the claws make their marks much farther out in front of the forepads than do a black bear's. A front grizzly track measuring 6 inches across the pad is a big grizzly. A hind track measuring 11 inches from heel to claw marks is also made by a big grizzly.

Brown bear tracks are like grizzly tracks only larger. Also, because of the weight of these large bruins, the imprints sink down deeply into moss and muskeg; and due to the animal's great width, a "ridge" is left between the

Tracks of the black bear are characterized by a hind-foot imprint resembling a man's bare foot and a small forefoot track.

The grizzly's tracks are larger than the black's, and the imprints of the claws are farther from the forepads.

right- and left-hand tracks in deeply worn trails. One outfitter calls them "buggy tracks."

Beginners often confuse domestic cattle and sheep tracks with those of wild game. Cattle tracks differ from those of moose in being round shaped rather than elongated and splayed, and they are larger than elk tracks. Domestic sheep leaves tracks that are far more blunt and more widely separated between the hoof halves than those of either deer or antelope. But a domestic sheep seldom gets into wild goat or wild sheep country.

Largest

of the bears, the full-grown Alaska brown leaves an enor­mous hind-foot track measuring 14 to 16 inches long.

EXCRETA

The dung of game animals is another fine way of identifying a species. Briefly, the kernels of deer dung are dark brown, almost black, are usually individually separated, and are about the size of a little fingertip. They are blunt on one end, sharp on the other, like a filbert.

Antelope dung is similar but smaller.
Elk dung is also dark brown with individual kernels which are almond shaped and elliptical, about the length of the first section of an index finger and about s inch in diameter.

Moose dung is larger, with kernels that are nearly an inch in diameter, lighter in color (almost olive), and pear shaped.

Sheep dung differs in that all kernels of a pile tend to stick together, resulting in a matted pile of flattened kernels.

Caribou dung tends to pile in a single mound, like that of domestic cattle.
Bear dung is in piles. During autumn, that of black bears usually shows an abundance of remaining berry seeds. That of grizzlies shows the purple coloration of a blueberry diet and similar seeds. An adult grizzly will unload up to 2 and 3 quarts of dung at a time.

The freshness of spoor, both tracks and dung, is misleading to most beginners. Hoof tracks in dry, dusty earth during clear weather often look as fresh after a whole week as if they were just made. The same track made during a rainstorm would look old and weathered down within ten minutes. Game dung several days old may look soft and fresh immediately after rain; conversely, dung left in below-zero weather may be frozen hard and look old in a few hours. But there's one infallible rule: if game dung is still steaming, the hunter is not too far from the animal that left it.

OTHER KINDS OF SPOOR

There are other signs left by certain species. Small spruce or pine trees of 2 or 3 inches diameter which are stripped of most of their bark to a height of 6 or 7 feet indicate that bull elk have recently rubbed off the velvet from their antlers there. Hairs and claw marks on sticky spruce trees show where a grizzly has rubbed the itch from its hide and marked the boundary of its domain.

Any kind of spoor, left by any species of game animal, indicates that the animal was engaged in some form of field behavior common to a pattern. Good questions for the hunter to ask himself: What was that animal doing here? Why? Correct answers are the key to its whereabouts.

If tracks meander aimlessly, the animal probably was feeding. If they head in a straight line, it probably was going to or from feed grounds, migrating, or changing areas. Great numbers of tracks of a similar species, all headed in the same general direction, mean the game was migrating. Fresh, bounding leaps mean the game was spooked, probably by the hunter's approach.

SPOTTING GAME

Two sensible approaches to the art of locating game are to move slowly, and climb the first available ridge and scout for game from above. Most game has extremely keen eyesight and will pick up the hunter far quicker if he moves fast than if he pussy-foots along slowly. And the enemies of most game stalk it from below. Therefore, game watches for enemies from below more than from above. Also, most game's vision is such that it is far easier for them to see straight ahead and below than upward. This is because the bony eye-orbit of most game animals hangs farther out over the eyeball than it protrudes from beneath.

Binoculars are one of the big-game hunter's most useful tools. In medium power, they give him vision equivalent to the game he seeks. Further, they allow him to hunt without moving and disclosing his presence. And if the hunter uses binoculars when hunting his game from above, dur­ing those hours when game moves and feeds most, he has the added ad­vantage of spotting his quarry as it moves upward and downward.

Another specialized tool for locating game is the spotting scope. Once such an instrument was a cumbersome outfit, usually left at camp because of its bulk and weight. Today there are lightweight spotting scopes of little more than a foot long. These can be toted in the rucksack or on the packboard and are worth the bother when hunting such keen-visioned animals as antelope and mountain sheep.

The best way to use high-powered binoculars or a spotting scope is to  approach a ridge, crest, or any rise which permits seeing into the next basin, flat, or canyon—without showing one's self. This is best done by crawling the last few yards up to the crest, after having removed hat and eyeglasses. Hats, especially colored ones, are quickly spotted by game if they show over a ridgetop. Eyeglasses often reflect the sun's rays like a heliograph, and fully advertise the hunter's presence. The spotting scope should be pushed up in front of the hunter as he peers over the crest.

With such an approach, and in such a position, any game within the basin immediately ahead is not normally alerted, and the hunter can make a minute, deliberate study. This should include everything. One of game's greatest protections is the coloration nature has given it to match the foliage and terrain of its surroundings. White "snow patches" with more scrutiny often become mountain goats. Black stumps are often black bears, immobile for the moment. And the gray shelving rocks of crag country often become mountain sheep or big mule-deer bucks after moments of hard study through the glasses.

Studying every inch of country thoroughly perhaps pays off best in ram hunting. A common complaint of even the most experienced sheep hunter is, "I glassed every inch of that country, and I'm telling you there was nothing there. Nothing! Then, right in front, almost under my nose, was this big ram. One minute nothing, the next there he was plain as the nose on your face."

Often with the more common species, and especially where excess weight would become cumbersome for the hunter, the rifle scope becomes a good substitute binocular for locating game, assessing its size, and identifying objects not quite plain to the naked eye. The scope is one of the finest aids in locating game.

STALKING

One reads and hears so much of "good tracking snow," or snow "so dry you couldn't follow a track," and similar phrases, that the notion of track­ing down game has become traditional, and smacks of the skillful hunter.
Actually, the tracking down of game belongs more in legend, history, and romantic literature. In actuality, it is a technique successfully used only in special situations, and in ninety per cent of the hunting will be found unproductive.

Most game animals have senses far superior to man's. They see, hear, and smell better. They are faster on foot, and because of their coloration are much better camouflaged. Moreover, their very lives depend upon out­witting their enemies, whereas man only practices stealth when he wants to sneak up on game.

Game animals, especially those that have reached trophy proportions, have not reached that size and age by being stupid. A six-year-old mule-deer buck has lived that long by outwitting enemies every day for six years.

All game knows that most enemies stalk it from its backtrack. Because of this, game tries to leave a backtrack that will be of least advantage to its pursuer. It plans this backtrack so that it can always look back from some vantage point and spot the enemy.

A big buck will cross small openings purposely but quickly enough not to be seen and hurry into cover for concealment. Once there, it will circle, strike off at a tangent or even sharply back, to some position from where it can watch that backtrack. If a pursuer crosses that small opening, its attention is focused straight ahead; but the buck sees it from a different direction and, unseen, continues with its zig-zag escape strategy. More deer have circled stalking hunters and spotted them from the side or from behind than have spotted hunters over their shoulders.

This is why a crafty old buck continuously moves back and forth across small canyons. A scarlet-clad hunter who can't see, smell, or hear as well as the buck and tries to unravel its tracks will eventually show himself— simply because the buck has left its spoor across a spot of plain visibility.
In tracking game, even in ideal conditions such as fresh snow, it is far more productive to parallel the trail 50 or 100 yards to one side. \¤ added advantage is that, if and when the game is approached, it will be in a quartering position or broadside, affording a better target than if approached from the rear.

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