SNOW TRACKING FOR WOLVES IN THE CARPATHIAN MOUNTAINS

By Richard Desborough

Following the tracks left by passing animals in snow isn't difficult.  Providing, that is, that the snow is fresh and soft.  Tracking in the Carpathian mountains of Romania however does bring a number of problems.  The snow is often frozen on top, forming a hard solid surface on which a passing animal leaves little sign.  What are signs are left can soon be covered by wind-blown powder snow.  Warm winter sun soon melts the snow on the south side of mountain ridges, while on north facing slopes a chill wind soon freezes fresh snow forming an ice crust on the surface.

Other information such as, did it snow then freeze during the night, after the animal passed that way, or before?  What time did it freeze, snow or start to melt?  Different snow conditions yield different types of prints left by the same animal.  Melting snow for example will cause a print to change shape, becoming larger, longer or losing the imprint left by long claws.  This can often make a print from one animal look like a print from another.  Some knowledge of these facts can help establish when the animal passed that way and at roughly what period of the day or night.  These factors and many more have to be taken into consideration when attempting to establish what animal it was, where it was going and at what time.

Most of the carnivores tend to leave a distinctive trail: their footprints forming a trail almost in a straight line.  Prey animals such as deer and wild boar leave a parallel trail.

We came across the tracks left by quite a number of different animals apart from the wolf and lynx tracks we were looking for.  These included pine marten, squirrel, bear and wildcat as well as domestic dogs and cats.

The most important part of tracking is to read the other signs that are left by the animal.  this helps to establish identification and often provides more information about the animal than can be found by just the prints alone.  These signs can also assist to build up a picture of what that animal was actually doing, a story of events.  We cam across a number of such signs: the lynx following the roe deer trail; a fox hunting mice that were hidden under snow (it had left a muzzle print in the snow); the two sets of wolf tracks where the larger of the two animals had suddenly turned causing the other to jump to one side.  The tracks of this second smaller wolf became much closer together, almost touching.  The story we can only guess: it could have been a yearling wolf pestering its elder or a younger lesser ranking male trying to 'chat up' the alpha female.

There are many other indicators that will help in the identification of the animal being tracked: scent-marking places of a lynx for example which once smelt are never forgotten; scratch marking on trees; scats or droppings.  These latter not only give an indication as to the animal but can also show what the animal had been feeding on.  In the case of the wolves that we were tracking, they had been eating wild boar.  Some of the lynx scats found contained roe deer hair.  We also came across the tracks of a number of different birds, raven, hooded crow, and capercaillie.  Many of these tracks started or ended with the imprint of their wing feathers left in the snow.

The most intriguing set of track found were those left by a hunting weasel which had been hunting for prey in and around fallen trees and tree roots and had left behind a U shaped channel in the snow which terminated and resumed again some short distance further on with a number of small round holes in the snow.  It would have been fun watching this fearsome little hunter, but we had to make do with the story left y the tracks in the snow.