How to Track Animals - How to read trail widths in animal tracking

Hi! We are Nick and Valerie Wisniewski on behalf of expertvillage.com. We are here to talk about animal tracks and for more information please visit our website at walnuthilltracking.com. Here on the ground in front of us we have the trail of a wild animal. We’ve already determined that this is a wild canine. We are still not sure if it is a red fox or an eastern coyote. What we are going to do is we are going to show you how to measure the trail width of this pattern. What trail width is how wide or narrow the trail is that the animal has made. Some people refer to this as the straddle of the trail. When we are measuring the trail width, we use two tape measures. We’ll take one tape measure use it as a straight edge laying it on the outside edge of track number 1 and number 3 in our series. Then with the other tape measure we will place it perpendicularly from the outside edge of the track number 2, the track in the middle of the other two and make a right angle with the other tape measure. Now what we are going to do is we are going to read what we have here and that should be our trail width. Here we have a trail width in a direct register of 6 3/8 inches. Now we can determine that this must be an eastern coyote and not a red fox because these measurements are outside what red fox will leave for a trail width in this particular pattern.