On the Trail | Page 6

of the animal life that you know is lurking, unseen, all
around you; and you can begin to perceive the protecting spirit of the
wild that hovers over all.
To walk securely, as the woodsmen walk, without tripping, stumbling,
or slipping, use the woodsmen's method of planting the entire foot on
the ground, with toes straight ahead, not turned out. If you put your
heel down first, while crossing on a slippery log as in ordinary walking,
the natural result will be a fall. With your entire foot as a base upon
which to rest, the body is more easily balanced and the foot less likely
to slip. When people slip and fall on the ice, it is because the edge of
the heel strikes the ice first and slides. The whole foot on the ice would
not slip in the same way, and very often not at all.
Trailing does not consist merely in walking along a path or in making
one for yourself. It has a larger meaning than that and embraces various
lines of outdoor life, while it always presupposes movement of some
kind. In one sense going on the trail means going on the hunt. You may
go on the trail for birds, for animals, for insects, plants, or flowers. You

may trail a party of friends ahead of you, or follow a deer to its
drinking-place; and in all these cases you must look for the signs of that
which you seek.
=Footprints or Tracks=
In trailing animals look for footprints in soft earth, sand, or snow. The
hind foot of the muskrat will leave a print in the mud like that of a little
hand, and with it will be the fore-foot print, showing but four short
fingers, and generally the streaks where the hard tail drags behind. Fig.
4 shows what these look like. If you are familiar with the dog track you
will know something about the footprints of the fox, wolf, and coyote,
for they are much alike. Fig. 9 gives a clean track of the fox, but often
there is the imprint of hairs between and around the toes. A wolf track
is larger and is like Fig. 8. The footprint of a deer shows the cloven
hoof, with a difference between the buck's and the doe's. The doe's toes
are pointed and, when not spread, the track is almost heart-shaped (Fig.
7), while the buck has blunter, more rounded toes, like Fig. 10. The two
round lobes are at the back of the foot, the other end points in the
direction the deer has taken. Sometimes you will find deer tracks with
the toes spread wide apart. That means the animal has been running.
All animals' toes spread more or less when they run. A bear track is like
Fig. 11, but a large bear often leaves other evidences of his presence
than his footprints. He will frequently turn a big log over or tear one
open in his search for ants. He will stand on his hind legs and gnaw a
hole in a dead tree or tall stump, and a bee-tree will bear the marks of
his climbing on its trunk. It is interesting to find a tree with the scars of
bruin's feet, made prominent by small knobs where his claws have sunk
into the bark. Each scar swells and stands out like one of his toes.
When you see bark scraped off the trees some distance from the ground,
you may be sure that a horned animal has passed that way. Where the
trees are not far apart a wide-horned animal, like the bull moose,
scrapes the bark with his antlers as he passes.
[Illustration: Footprints of animals.
1 Caribou

2 Mink
3 Red Squirrel
4 Fore foot of Muskrat, Hind foot of Muskrat, Tail of Muskrat
5 Fisher
6 Canada Lynx]
The cat-like lynx leaves a cat-like track (Fig. 6), which shows no print
of the claws, and the mink's track is like Fig. 2. Rabbits' tracks are two
large oblongs, then two almost round marks. The oblongs are the print
of the large hind feet, which, with the peculiar gait of the rabbit, always
come first. The large, hind-feet tracks point the direction the animal has
taken. Fig. 1 is the track of the caribou, and shows the print of the
dew-claws, which are the two little toes up high at the back of the foot.
It is when the earth is soft and the foot sinks in deeply that the
dew-claws leave a print, or perhaps when the foot spreads wide in
running.
[Illustration: Footprints of animals.
7 Doe
8 Wolf
9 Fox
10 Buck
11 Bear
12 Sheep]
Fig. 3 is the print of the foot of a red squirrel. Fig. 5 is