Tracking in the Snow - Animal Tracks UK

Hello there, welcome back. In this video I'm hopefully going to be taking a look at some tracks and signs. We've got a little bit of snow on the ground, and it's the first snow we've had for a good while. It has actually lain, so it's been down on the ground for about six to eight hours. Hopefully that's enough time for some wildlife to have come out and made some tracks. Let's see. Now here's an example of a human print. There you go, the snow is absolutely perfect for making prints, so I'm really hoping that some animals have left the prints. Just walking down this little path here on this more or less abandoned piece of land, right out in the middle of nowhere, and we've got two sets of fox tracks here. One coming up the path, which is that one. There's the back of the pad, there's the toes, and one going that way. There you go, we've got the back of the pad here and the front here. It's quite a big print, that, actually. There's my hand. It's just a single print, so that's a decent-sized fox. Okay, I'm just coming to a bit that's a little bit more open here, and we have two more sets of prints. We've got pheasant prints, which are here. The pheasant was going that way, the back of its foot, as its three toes. And we've also got some deer prints as well. These have thawed a little bit, but this looks like it was obviously heading that way, back of the hoof, front of the hoof. Shame I didn't see the deer, but at least it's left a print. Just coming up this incline and there's definitely some fresh deer prints here. One there, one there, one there, and there's some fox tracks up here as well. Obviously the deer's going that way, the fox is just mooching around. I won't point out where the fox print and where the deer print is there, hopefully you'll be able to see it. Okay, we've got a massive piece of tarmac behind me there, and that's left over from an abandoned tile factory. That would be an absolutely cracking place for seeing prints, because we've got very shallow snow, very open, so we'll come to that in a minute, hopefully we'll find something, but in the meantime, I'm going to wander up to a series of ponds, see what we can see on there. It's going to be difficult to see, but through those trees, there's an absolute nation of ducks, I think they're all mallards, a mountain of ducks on there, and they are all wild ducks, this is not a duck shoot, dozens and dozens of them, and as far as I can tell, they're all wild mallards. Hell of a collection. I'm kind of hoping that wandering around to where most of those ducks were will enable me to see some footprints. And it has. Get up there. By the looks of it, ducks jumped up here and walked away this way. You can see the difference between these tracks and the pheasant tracks. The actual toes are roughly the same size. There's been a definite wedge of snow flattened down due to the webbing between the toes, these two areas here. We've got more fox and roe deer tracks here, both heading in different directions. The surprising thing is I haven't seen any rabbit tracks yet. You would think this is perfect for rabbits. It's been a long time since I've been up here, so I'm not quite sure what's happened to the rabbit population. But the last time I was here, it was lifting with them. Hopefully, as I do my rounds, I'll be able to see if the rabbits are still here. Because we've got the perfect opportunity to see the prints in the snow. Here we've got some absolutely beautiful fox tracks. And if you think they look confusing... That's because there's been two together. Just look at this. See how the two tracks separate? And now they're walking side by side. prints more or less in a straight line. So it wasn't an eight-legged fox, it was two four-legged foxes. Finally we've got some different tracks. These are fox again, but coming off there are some rabbit tracks. And here's the one that's put a bit of a gallop on. Notice the tracks are a little bit more spread out. That's because the rabbit is running, or at least jogging fast. and here's some rabbit tracks that looks like it's been running pretty much full speed between this and this we've got a gap of approximately four feet just over 1.2 meters it's been going quite a speed this way actually there's been a deer running as well it's a deer track next to it crossing over it hardly surprising really because here here we've got more fox tracks rabbit tracks and deer tracks all together just look at that beautiful prints Now it's really good to be able to recognize tracks and in the snow that gives us our best opportunity for analyzing the tracks, identifying them and when we get comfortable enough with what made the tracks trying to predict what actually happened there as well obviously you might be able to see some kill sites where a fox has caught a pheasant or something like that but all too often it's just different paces so they might be jogging they might be running it could just be gently hopping it could be even creeping stalking so even though you don't see the animals the tracks tell you the story of what's gone on there Now here's a good example of one that's a little bit more difficult to read because we've had a little bit of blowing snow here. But there, we've got four tracks from a rabbit. If you haven't seen the prints that were really, really good and clear, that enables us to follow the ones that aren't so clear. There you go. There's some more. It is a lot more difficult, but if you know what you're looking for, you can track anything. I'm going to shoot off into this wood here because this camera that I'm using is not waterproof. I think it's actually got water on the lens there as well. I'd better get in there before it gets knackered. I've lent my waterproof one to a friend of mine. Um... I really could probably do with either getting another one or getting that one back for when I'm filming outdoors in the winter in the UK because it's seldom dry and sunny. Here, I've got a roe deer, another one down there but he's escaping. I don't think this one's gonna come out very well. There it goes, just gone through there. Here we've got a deer track in the mud. Going that way. Back of the hoof, front of the hoof. One, two sides. And the hunter's eyes in me noticed a sign here as well. It's not a track, but it's a definite sign. See if you can spot it. Okay, just in the middle of the frame there, we've got a bit that's just hardly got any leaves on. See, we've got leaves all the way up here, leaves all the way down here. This bit is all flattened down. There's been a deer lying here. This is about 10 yards away from where I actually saw the deer standing. I didn't see them get up but that tells me that they've been sitting here and on the next hill over we've got another one so we'll pan from right to left there see how all the leaves are flattened down and then they're not hopefully you can see it just there 100 deer now here's another very subtle sign you've noticed we've got hills and valleys here and they were put in when the plantation was planted up you'd plant all the trees along the high point you know in lines but just off to the There's a deviation in the pattern just through here. Hopefully you'll be able to see it. No prints but you can see where there's a well-worn track through here. Now the snow highlights that not because the snow's been worn off it but because here where it's flattened out the snow's laying more. So you can see it's a lot whiter here. So you're actually looking at the trail coming through here. Subtle but noticeable. Now here's a great place if you want to see a sparrowhawk or a Or a goshawk or something. See how the tree's been snapped off there? It's created like a little feeding table. Quite often predatory birds will take other birds up there and they'll use that as a plucking post. So in the summer you'll probably see bits of feathers lying all over here and the ends of wings and so on where they've been pulled to bits by the predatory bird. Now bigfoot investigators are probably going to have a field day with this one. We've got a snapped off, what's that, an ash tree. A bit more difficult to tell when it's got no leaves on but that's an ash tree. It's been snapped And in it, we've got a pair of woman's shoes. God knows why they're there. That is really, really weird and a little bit disturbing. Here's one that looks pretty much like a cat print. Just wondering whether this is a feral cat. We've got a print here and we've got another one here. We've got the pad and the toes, but we've got no claw marks. And it's quite broad. Not as broad as a badger print or as big as a badger print, but the fact that there's no claws makes me think that it's a cat. These tracks here of a fox are mega fresh. Absolutely mega fresh. Look at that. There's two together there but that is a really fresh track. Fox is probably sitting in amongst all that lot just watching me, waiting for me to go so it can get out hunting again. Thanks very much for watching. Hopefully if you weren't too up on tracking then you might have learned something. It's just good to get out and just practice the skills involved with tracking and recognition of of signs. Winter's a pretty good time to do that, especially when it's snowing. Makes it so much easier. And hopefully the tracks that you've seen in this video will come out well on the film, on video. I don't know whether they will or not. They looked okay in the viewfinder. Whether that translates to the screen or not, I don't know. You tell me. If this has been useful to you, hit the thumbs up button. See you next time.