Following the tracks of an animal can teach you much about what it eats, where it sleeps, and its daily habits. Your tracking skill may lead you right to the animal itself

Tracking is not limited to following mammals
Insects leave tracks, too. So do reptiles. You can spend an hour of careful tracking and not move more than a few feet. In fact, if you can track a beetle through the jungles of a grassy lawn, you probably have the skill to track larger animals across any terrain.

Tracking is a skill...
...that you can learn only by doing a lot of it. You can learn in your own yard, vacant lots, fields, and forests. The following guidelines will help you get started:

First, find some tracks!
You must find some tracks before you can follow them. Winter snows hold a surprising number of tracks. During other seasons, try the soft soil near ponds and streams. In dry country, scan the dust for prints and look for pebbles and rocks that have been disturbed.

Study a single track
Get down on your hands and knees to study the shape of the track you wish to follow. Fix its details in your mind. You might even measure it and make a sketch of it. That will help you find it later, even when other tracks are mixed in with it. Use a tracking guide to identify the tracks, and the animal that made them.

Track early or late
Tracking is easiest early in the morning and late in the day, when shadows cast in the prints make them more obvious.

Look for more than just the prints
As you follow a trail of tracks, keep your eyes peeled for other evidence of the animal. Bent grass, broken twigs, and displaced pebbles help you see the animal's path. Watch for places where the animal has scratched or rubbed against trees or rocks.

Droppings
Animal dropings or 'scat' give evidence of an animal's diet. Break scat apart with a stick. Hulls of seeds, skins of berries, and bits of leaves suggest the animal is a vegetarian. Small bones, fur, and feathers appear in the scat of meat eaters. Scat tends to dry from the outside in. If it is completely dry, you know the animal passed by some time ago. Moist scat was left more recently. The animal may be near.

Imagine yourself in the place of the animal
If you lose the trail, ask your self where you would go if you were the animal. Look in that direction. Mark the last track with a stick, then explore all around it until you find the trail again.

Notice important landmarks as you proceed
Don't become so interested in following a trail that you get lost. Be alert to your surroundings. Notice and remember landmarks that will guide you back to your starting point.

Don't disturb human artifacts
Over the centuries, humans have left traces of their passing. You may be fortunate enough to discover an arrowhead, broken pottery, or other artifacts of earlier cultures. If so, let them lie where you find them. Note the location very well and draw a map so you can find the spot again. Then alert local authorities. They will know if archaeologists should examine the site. The position in which artifacts are found can tell scientists a great deal about the people who made and used them. That's why it is important not to disturb them.