Ray Mears: How to track wildlife

 

I’ve been tracking wildlife since I first followed a fox’s prints in the snow one winter. More than 30 years later, I still consider myself to be a student of this fascinating art.

 

Tracking is a profound, life-affirming activity: I feel more at home in the woods than in my own front room. And, though I have been lucky enough to track many of the planet’s most exciting animals, my passion for British wildlife is undimmed. Tracking can be just as rewarding here as in the African savannah or the American Rockies.

 

 

If you want to learn how to track our foxes, deer, badgers and other native animals, where on Earth do you start? First things first: it’s vital to understand what this ancient craft actually involves. Spotting the prints of a dog fox on a muddy path is a far cry from being able to interpret the animal’s intentions, let alone being able to follow it.

Real tracking (as opposed to the fake version you so often read about and see on tv) is not a glamorous activity. In fact, it’s quite dull to watch. A tracker hardly speaks, must think deeply and use his or her senses to their fullest in order to read the mood of the landscape and pick up the tiniest of traces.

 

The most important attribute of a tracker is honesty. I never bluff. Well-meaning game guides sometimes try to impress their guests by inventing false interpretations of the spoor in front of them, but when this happens they become mere actors and their tracking skills are unlikely to improve.

 

It is the difficult signs and traces that have the most to teach us. All bluffing does is generate unnecessary scepticism about this ancient art.

 

Above all, tracking is a fascinating way to study animals – it gets you under their skin. It is a particularly useful skill in Britain, where so many mammals are nocturnal.

 

When tracking, my aim is to find, interpret and follow a trail of clues that record the passing of an animal through the landscape. In places, there will be clear footprints that can identify the species – and sometimes even its sex and age.

 

The creature’s speed and gait will also be recorded, revealing its mood and intention. Where the trail is located within the landscape – along the brow of a hill or beside a stream hidden within a valley, for example – may indicate purpose, confidence, fear or even status.

 

Most of the time, I will be following only partial tracks or the tiniest hints of the animal’s passing: a bent grass stem, a strand of hair, subtle disturbances in the leaves on the forest floor or minute changes in the colour of the soil (good trackers know their ground – how hard it is, and how it responds to rain and the pressure of a hoof or paw).

 

These traces are seldom left in a neat line. Moreover, often a mark or sign can only be linked to a particular trail if I am able to establish the precise time at which it was made.

 

 

To me, a trail is rather like music. Its rhythm and tempo can tell me a lot about the animal’s state of mind. For instance, the fine details in a footprint can tell me how tired or fresh the animal I’m following is.

 

When I examine a track, I don’t just see a footprint; in my mind’s eye, I have an image of the animal that made it. The longer I follow the trail, the more layers of detail I can add to my mental picture.

 

To do this, you must first spend as much time as possible watching wildlife, and watching it closely. If you see a fox or deer, don’t just stop there – scrutinise how it moves its hips and haunches. How does it respond to the various objects around it?

 

An animal moving through a landscape has to contend with all manner of obstacles, from fallen branches to ditches and steep slopes, and this can be seen in its trail.

 

 

One of the tracker’s most vital skills is to be able to interpret any droppings that you find. There are many practical guides full of delightful illustrations of scats, spraint and dung, but looking at pictures and reading descriptions should be just your starting point.

 

As well as considering a dropping’s shape, colour, texture, smell and location, you need to think about how these characteristics might have changed over time, and why the dropping was deposited there in the first place.

 

With practice, it’s possible to age and sex a deer from its droppings alone. Not only that, a hind’s faeces can look different at different times of year. It’s amazing how much information is stored in poo.

 

By now, it should hopefully be clear that tracking doesn’t involve dashing around – it’s a sober activity that demands a deep inner calm. You need an almost meditative state of mind to piece together the jigsaw of clues. If I actively hunt for signs, my focus of attention narrows and I’m more likely to miss something. Instead, I prefer to let the trail reveal itself to me.

 

I sometimes imagine that I’m holding a Geiger counter that’s taking readings from my surroundings. If the ‘signal’ from the landscape gets stronger, I know that I’m heading in the right direction.

 

It is essential to look at the landscape itself, seeing it as the animal that made the trail would have seen it. Ultimately, my goal is to get into the mind of my quarry. This was particularly important when tracking leopards in Namibia last year, during the filming of my new tv series, because it enabled me to differentiate cats and even predict their future whereabouts.