By Richard P. Smith
Available from:
National Book Network
1500 NBN Way
Blue Ridge Summit, Pa. 17214
Price: $18.95 plus shipping
This 271 page soft bound book is a wealth of information on the various animals of North America and their tracks and signs.
These obviously vary from animal to animal and even the best hunter will find this information useful when he undertakes the pursuit of a new species in unfamiliar territory. The size of the prints is told and there are good photos of the tracks. It is not easy to get good photos of tracks that will show up clearly in print. I have a bears on my property yet I never seem to find a track that will show up in a photo despite seeing the bears themselves often. It takes perfect conditions for a photogenic track to be laid and most tracks leave just a disturbed place in the leaf litter on the forest floor. There are also good pictures of the wildlife that made the tracks and a discussion of the animal in question and it’s signs.
Popular game animals such as the deer are covered in extreme detail with everything the hunter needs to know about the signs left on the ground. The deer section alone will be worth the price of the book to many hunters. Sadly, with the passing of the frontier most hunters have no one to teach them how to recognize and interpret wildlife clues so a book like this may be their only source of reliable information. While deer, bear, elk etc. may be your quarry who among you lacks the curiosity to want to know what the distinctive sign every different animal leaves that you may encounter? Bird hunters will benefit from knowing just what bird tracks they are looking at and your curiosity will be better served when you can identify frog tracks and anything else you find. The sounds of the different animals can be a big help and some of the mammal and bird sounds are described clearly. That can be important to the uninitiated. I well remember the horrible clang and clatter of a heavyweight boxer dropping all the pots of water he was carrying at a simple mountain lion’s scream in the dark. The sound of the mountain lion didn’t bother me but the awful racket he made dropping everything sure did! Perhaps if he had known what to expect he would not have over reacted.
There is a useful chapter on tracking and another on how to tell the age of the tracks you find. As anyone who has ever had to track a heart shot deer 100 yards to find it knows, tracking is an essential part of hunting. Practicing it under favorable and unfavorable conditions is not only pleasurable but a necessary skill for hunters. All in all this is a very useful book for any outdoorsman’s library and a must have reference book for anyone learning to track.—Jim Dickson
