Nature hikes aren’t just about looking for flowers, mushrooms, nuts, and leaves. Some people are adept at finding where and what kind of wildlife has passed through the woods. My nephew has dogs that follow bears by sniffing their tracks or picking up their perfume in the air.
But our sense of smell is not that keen. However, we are blessed with good eyesight and intelligence that can help us figure out things that would slip by us at a casual glance. Tidbits I’ve learned from my enjoyment of hunting enrich my life even when hiking apart from hunting. I’m going to share some of those things so your hikes can likewise be enriched.
Probably all of us have studied tracks in mud or snow. We know some basic tracks—the hoofprints of deer, the hop of a rabbit or squirrel, and the delicate fingers of a coon. One track tip that was special to me to learn was the dip or notch in the top lobe of a cat’s track that indicates the track came from a bobcat instead of a house cat. (Cougars also have the dip, but their tracks are much larger than a bobcat’s.)
But tracks aren’t the only signs you can read in the woods. What about that log over there—do you see where I am pointing? It looks like it was ripped open. There are several pieces of log lying around. Why do you think that is?
It looks to me like a bear was here first. He ripped open that log, no doubt looking for grubs or ants in the rotting wood. Sometimes you can see where a bear used its claws to “scratch open” the trunk of a dead tree still standing, in his search for a tasty treat.
Bears will also roll rocks, even large rocks, looking for beetles and grubs underneath. So, when you see a big rock “belly up” for no logical reason, if you are in bear country, you can assume a bear just may be the reason.
The presence of bears is easy to identify if the ground is muddy and you can see their tracks. Their hind feet resemble our bare feet—now isn’t that a neat pun? They have the same basic shape and they have five toes. Sometimes people come to the wrong conclusion and think a bear track is a cougar track. Cougar tracks, like a house cat’s, will only show four toes. A cat’s fifth toe is high on the leg and does not make a depression when walking.
Back to bears, besides tracks, they leave droppings or scat. It’s more clumped together and larger than that of other animals in our eastern forests. If the scat is moist, you know it’s been recent. You can tell if he was eating fresh berries, acorns, grass, or an animal carcass.
Finding a lot of scat or piles of it may indicate you’ve found a bedding area. Look carefully for trails going into a thicket. If you are brave and follow a trail into the brush, you may discover a nice mattress of chipped bark with smaller branches lying in it. Definitely there will be depressions where the bear lay, and likely trails out the other end of his bedroom.
When fruit and nuts are ripe, you might find claw marks where a bear has climbed up a tree for his meal. Broken branches are a telltale sign. If you are in a stand of hickories and you hear a gravelly crunch, look hard. You might spy a bear feasting on the nuts. A bear will sound like a boy eating a pocket full of hard candy, only louder.
Bears like walking old logging roads and trails. Along these, you may discover claw marks high on trees. In this way, bears mark their territories. Bear rubs may also be found on a tree where he leaves his scent. The bark is not stripped off in the same way as a buck rub, but rather looks worn, or “polished” from what looks to be a good ol’ back scratchin’.
You’d feel safer looking for turkey sign? A sure sign of turkeys is a lot of scratching in the leaves on the ground. Like chickens, turkeys scratch and pick up whatever food they, well, scratch up.
Years ago, I wondered if I was looking at turkey scratching or a deer scrape. At arm’s length they may seem the same, but they really are not. Turkey scratchings will be the same direction, leaving a rim of leaves piled at one edge of the small cleared circle. If the pile is on the south end of the circle, likely the turkeys were traveling north. This differs from the appearance of a buck’s scrape, which we will get to in a moment.
Look over there on that logging road. Do you see that dusty patch and the turkey feather lying nearby. That is where a turkey took a dust bath. The purpose of a dust bath is to smother parasites; it also helps to absorb extra oil when they preen their feathers afterwards.
In the spring, marks can be found on logging roads or in fields indicating where a gobbler has strutted. They typically let their wings drag as they strut.
Gobbler scat is shaped like a “J.” Hen droppings are more spiral-shaped. The scat is usually rods ¼-inch (6 mm) in diameter. To identify the difference between a gobbler and a hen by their tracks, look at the middle toes. Both have three toes pointing forward and one pointing behind. However, the male turkey’s middle toe is nearly double the length of its outer toes, while a hen’s middle toe would be closer to the length of its outer toes.
During the spring, a flock of turkeys will often roost in the same area, even in the same trees. There will be more scat under those trees and likely some feathers as well.
White-tailed deer have their own give-away signs. It’s easy to identify their tracks in mud and snow. In the fall, you can find trees where bucks have rubbed off the bark. Many smaller rubs are made when the bucks shed their velvet. But they also use larger “sign-post” rubs to mark their territories. You might find a line of these on a ridge or in a hollow. You may be able to tell which way a buck traveled, as often the bark is just rubbed off on one side of the tree—the side from which the deer approached the tree. A tree shredded on the north side might indicate a buck walking south.
Bucks leave scrapes on the ground and usually keep them free of leaves and debris. This is what some might confuse with turkey scratchings. Fresh scrapes will be free of leaves and typically will have a hoofprint in them. Above the scrape it is common to find a licking branch, another place a buck will leave his scent. Oftentimes this branch is broken. Bucks come back to scrapes periodically to check them for the scent left by a doe.
Deer droppings, those little black balls or clumps of balls on the ground, are a sure sign there are deer around. You can’t tell if the deer is a buck or doe by the droppings, but fawns have smaller droppings than adult deer. If the droppings are shiny and moist, likely they are only hours old.
We hunters know that harvested game does not always fall where we wish it would. Sometimes even a very lethal hit involves tracking the animal. We don’t want to waste meat, so a lot of effort is sometimes needed to recover the animal—a deer, in the following example.
Not finding a blood trail can be discouraging and is likely the most common reason hunters quit looking for a deer, but let’s not quit too fast. Let’s think about the situation and try to logically process the bigger picture. There are still plenty of “tricks” to try before giving up.
For one, a deer can be dead but hard to find because it, for the most part, hemorrhaged internally. That puts a big job on your hands.
What I’ve learned from this scenario has enabled me to spot where a deer walked (or ran) through the woods even when I’m on a summer afternoon hike. Tidbits like this enrich my strolls through the woods. If a leaf is pressed into the forest floor, making a small pocket an inch or three deep, my mind says, “hoofprint.” A deer came through here, and its hoof pressed down at that spot.
Do you see a second place that appears to be one bound length from the first place?
These bounding marks differ from a singular hoofprint pressed down on leaves. Those tracks are fun to learn to identify because knowing when you see them enriches any hike. However, the photos I’ve taken of them are hard to see well.
Photo © Dogwood Ridge.
A hunter who is intent on finding game at the end of the “tracks” will proceed slowly while looking for these indentations in the leaves, as well as for other clues. You may join me on this search. I know the deer ran out of the field back there by that log, and it came down this ridge somewhere. It sounded like it went the direction we are walking, but I’m not certain exactly where. Perhaps it went through these trees to our right, but it may have turned and headed down the ridge to our left.
Before I take any more steps, I’m looking around me for hoofprints, any leaf that has dirt freshly kicked up onto its top side, hair, and, of course, any specks of blood. I’m also looking for a “scuffed” trail through the leaves. With experience, the eye can often detect a disturbed path through otherwise undisturbed leaves.
Not finding anything where we are currently standing, I want to move to a fresh spot. That big tree about six or eight feet away is where I’m going next. What I know is that the deer did not crash headlong into it. So, by walking to its base, I’m not disturbing the leaves where the deer went. By hanging onto the tree, we can lean around and look for clues—and right there I spy one. Down to our left looks like where the deer’s feet landed in the leaves, and I see a small spot of blood on a stick, so I know these tracks in the leaves are from our deer. It looks like it went down the ridge on the right side of that log, so I’m going to walk up to that area from the left side. Again, I don’t want to disturb the leaves and thereby mess up any hard-to-find clues.
Not much is visible behind the log—this might be a bit tough. The deer was running, so I’m going to look 12-15 feet (3-4 m) away from where we know he hit the leaves. We are looking for where he landed next. By stepping onto this log and following it down to that rock, we can reposition without too much disturbance. Let’s go look from there.
You get the idea. Watching where you step is one key to finding hard-to-spot evidence because you aren’t walking all over top of it while looking for it. Hoofprints, scuff marks, a hair, a speck, fresh dirt kicked up, repeat, and repeat. I once followed a deer the first fifty yards by only the hoofprints I found in the leaves. While the hoofprints were the evidence I found, each time after finding a hoofprint I also found one pin-prick of blood. This confirmed I was “on the right track.”
Conventional wisdom says that wounded animals go downhill, and also may head for water. Don’t get “blinded” by thinking these tidbits are engraved in gold. I have found many animals that violated these rules. Whenever you run out of sign and cannot seem to continue on, circle. Many times you aren’t finding sign because you are convinced the deer continued straight when, in fact, it turned ninety degrees.
It’s a good idea to mark where you run out of sign so when you branch out in different directions, you do not lose orientation to where you last found sign.
There isn’t much white in the woods, so when you see white, you may well be seeing a belly or leg. I learned this on my first deer harvest. The one I shot in a field ran into the woods. I knew where it entered the woods, but I did not trail the deer before others showed up. I told the men what I knew. I still remember what Ed told me—“There isn’t much white in the woods”—as he walked straight to my animal.
You may never see the animals which have left their signs, but you’ll enjoy discovering interesting facts about them. You’ll know they were there!
Oh yes, one more tip. When you simply run out of sign and cannot find any more, maybe the deer (or bear) is under the leaves under the log under your nose.