Wild Canid Footprints

Another post? Yes. I wouldn't lie to you guys.

So this past fall it came to my attention that the DNR was looking for volunteer wolf trackers. I thought to myself, "What could be more badass than tracking wolves through the north woods in the middle of winter?" And after only coming up with a short list, including being Pat Andera, and making a full court shot, I decided it was for me. So I signed up for the class with Molly and we went to a short training back in December. We got to learn about RLU's (raised leg urinations), RLU's with estrus (raised leg urinations with blood indicating that a female will likely have pups), and double RLU's (raised leg urinations by a dominant pair in a pack). Aside from all the urine talk we also did learn about the acutal tracks of canids (wolves and dogs), mustelids (fishers, martens, skunks. etc.), and felids (cats, bobcats, lynx). It was all incredibly informative and Molly and I were able to get assigned a block to track near Conserve School so we could stay there (Thanks Rach and Polina).

Now this tracking is not what you think it is and certainly not what I thought it was when I signed up. It turns out you spend almost all of your time driving. Puzzling, I know. It does make sense upon further explanation. Wolves can travel 25 miles in one night pretty easily so a couple of people on skis or snowshoes couldn't possibly cover the necessary distance to get a good sample of the data the DNR needs. Wolves also prefer to travel on roads because they are plowed making easier for them to travel without the deep snow. So tracking consists of us traveling in Molly's rollerskate at a rate of 15 mph on backcountry roads looking for tracks.

So a couple of weekends ago Molly and I got our first chance to go tracking. We really didn't know what to expect or where to look. So we went to a random part of our block and turned down Buckatabon Road. One lesson that we learned not too far into our travels was that you don't need to stop and look at every track you pass. Stopping every 15 yards or so will drive you mad. But something did come from us stopping so often early on. Officially 1.1 miles into our tracking excursion we saw this:

That my friends is a bobcat track. It was a pretty awesome find but it wasn't what we came down Buckatabon looking for so we carried on.

After seeing a plethora of deer tracks, coyote tracks (not terribly interesting when you see it about 10 times in 3 miles or so), and snowmobile tracks making it impossible to see any of the trackable snow on the side of the road, we started to make better time down good ol' Buckataon. We were becoming a little more picky about the tracks that we stopped for and this almost did us in. I was driving for a while and there were some tracks on the side of the road but I just shrugged it off for about a 1/2 mile or so. Then were saw some tracks coming onto the road so we stopped to check those out. It turns out the tracks that I was foolishly shrugging off were these:

We found wolves! Well, at least one. So we followed these tracks about a mile and a half down the road until we got to a three way intersection when all of a sudden the one track turned into five! This was probably the most amazing part of the day. We learned in our class that wolves will often travel in lines and will place their paws perfectly in the tracks of the wolf in front of them. By looking at this one track not one of you out there would have guessed that five wolves stepped there. Amazing stuff.

Here are the totals from our day of tracking:
1 Bobcat
Countless Deer
14 Coyotes
Too Many Annoying Snowmobiles
1 Marten
8 Wolves

It was a great day. Filled with frustration, joy, RLU's (I peed over a wolf RLU), and lots and lots of tracks.