Animal tracks?
Posted: November 24th, 2019, 10:46 am
Hiked up McNeil Point 11-24-19 and saw some strange tracks in the fresh snow. Not sure if they're animal tracks honestly. Any idea what made these?
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https://www.oregonhikers.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=28646
For track ID purposes, always try to take a zoomed-in photo from directly overhead, of a single track, with something in the photo for scale. In addition, provide a gait pattern, which you’ve done. Judging solely by appearance, these look awfully catty, and I think the tracks are coming toward the viewer. The gait starts out as a direct register (hind foot steps exactly on top of where front foot just was) walk, then the gait slows down and the feet no longer directly register (so you see more tracks) and the animal pauses and moves around a bit investigating something (or maybe it’s looking for good footing in the crust) then resumes walking and then stops and messes around again. Difficult to say more without a close-up pic and something for scale, bit I’m pretty sure that Nate is correct.Blazersin7 wrote: ↑November 24th, 2019, 10:46 amHiked up McNeil Point 11-24-19 and saw some strange tracks in the fresh snow. Not sure if they're animal tracks honestly. Any idea what made these?
Again, an overhead closeup would be helpful to see, in addition to the gait. However, this appears to be canine from the oval shape (cat overall shape is round) and the toe pad symmetry (cats lack this symmetry). The X-shaped negative space and closely-spaced small front toe pads (relative to other toes) fit coyote. The gait is a common overstep walk (i.d. RH steps in front of where RF just was) for a coyote walking slowly.retired jerry wrote: ↑November 24th, 2019, 3:38 pmThat looks sort of like mine, my foot for scale
I was thinking bobcat