unknown track..?

[pete richardson]

is he breaking any brush- i hear ya---its only place soft enuff to leave a track--


sometimes tracks should be very obvious and theyre not-- sometimes you got to follow him by where you know he didnt go , lol i usually have to follow a track a long ways till i see a real glaring track to confirm what i was pretty sure of anyway -lol


just a smudge- toenail mark - bent over grass, etc - find n ole guy to show ya the tricks--- while your eyes are still good
- and hes not so old , he forgot

an old guy told me once
,, if you tip your head and squint just right , you can see a cat track on crust -

sometimes you got to watch them old guys --


he wasnt lying ,maybe stretching it a little

its happened --- lol cat making a dimpled pattern on the crust --


kinda bending it down but not breaking it .that kind of thing is just routine ,only takes 50 years practice -


what i learned from that one is----



sometimes i can see the pattern of a bear track a distance ahead of me in the road



i could get get out and stand on top of it and not even see it , never mind take a picture of it


its just a slight change in color ,,not a depression, the pattern gave it away , so hold your head sideways and squint, it helps

[arizonabeagle]

well i been thinkin about it all day
i showed a few guys at work and one of em, who dont speak no english immediatley said
OSO!, bear in spanish haha..kinda weird to me he'd know to thinkthat, then again we dont communicate too well, as my spanish is limited to mostly 4 letter words, as is his english lol
i've decided i'm goin back there tomorow, no dogs or nothin and i'm searchin that place top and bottom lol

[FullCryHounds]

I think Mike got it right, its where a bird took a dust bath. Your seeing where the feathers of the wings made marks that look like toes. That is definately not a bear track.

[Mike Leonard]

Right on Dean!

You see this all the time in the dust on roads and even if it is just a sparrow, wren or a dove they light fluff down into the dust a little and the boom away they go. One those small granular desert type roads around Cave Creek and Queen Creek in years past I have seen depression where the Gambels Quail dust along the roads, but it would be a little bigger if it were a quail and probably several together.

I have spent so many years watching for tracks on these dirt roads that you get immune to a lot of marks along the roads. But you sensory skills get sharper and when it is a varmint or a predator you will just know it. but this takes time and I had plenty of it because my job entailed working on and driving these roads for years so it become second nature to me.

I remember when I first really got started into bare ground lion hunting I just couldn't figure out how some of these guys could spot these tracks. I had hunted snow a lot before but as i moved further south I became more interested in hunting without the cover of snow. Guys like Hal Meacham, Bruce Nay,
Pete Gill, Cecil Ralston and a few others were just amazing at how they could be driving along talking pointing out landmarks or an elk or deer and then stop! stop! stop! there's a female lion track right back there. What? sure enough that second nature was tuned. I thought it was magic or an extra fine sense of sight, but after all these years I realize it is just practice.

[arizonabeagle]

i guess that makes sense what mike says
the place is crawling with qual lol
dove too...thanks i've never seen, nor heard or that to be honest
but i havent been at this game too long either lol
thanks alot again guys