Night Tracking

The eyes have it – understanding how the human eye adapts for night vision

Canadian survival expert Mors Kochanski – the author of “Bushcraft”, really doesn’t like flashlights at all. This is even more remarkable when he discusses the merits of walking at night instead of the day on his famous 100-mile walk-abouts. Kochanski’s common-sense reasoning includes the energy saved by not having to have a fire at night to keep warm; then being able to sleep well during the heat of the day – without concern for nocturnal predators. Through a lifetime of experience without a flashlight in Northern Canada’s boreal forests, Mors knows a thing or two about night vision. Walking through the evening dusk into the darkest night, Mors simply lets nature do its magical adaptation, morphing daytime vision into the remarkable ability to see at night. 

      

Third generation tracker Fernando Moreira, started tracking when he was eight years old in his native Portugal. Decades later, living in Reno Nevada, Fernando is a dedicated (and respected) tracker recognized throughout the United states for his tracking skills. To acquire night vision, Fernando states that you must get the human body to produce and release the chemical associated with good night vision. To make this happen, he suggests that you sit in a dark room (or with a light proof shroud over your head) and using a red filtered light - look at the surrounding red shine being careful not to look directly at the light for about twenty minutes. Fernando suggests that you may have to repeat this exercise a few times to fully activate the chemicals in your eyes.

 In the book “Manhunter – a “must read” for trackers, Ian Maxwell goes into detail about “vision”. Maxwell describes the actual physiological functioning of the eye and explains how night vision works. Remarkably, the parts of the eye that allow us to clearly focus when there is a source of light, changes over to a support role in the darkness.  Basically, there is a small area at the back of the eyeball where lighted vision is concentrated on specific sensors called “cones.” These sensors allow us to detect colour, details, and distant objects. In darkness, the eye primarily uses different sensors called “rods.” Dispersed over a larger area, rods are located away from the central, cone rich area at the back of the eye. The result is that if you look directly at an object in darkness, the eye has difficulty seeing it… you must train yourself to use your peripheral vision to see things at night.  This is called viewing “off center”.

According to Maxwell, to gain “night vision”, there are four basic adaptations. When entering a dark area, the pupils enlarge allowing more of the available light to reach the sensors at the back of the eye; an area called the retina. Within about five to ten minutes of being in the dark, the cones become accustomed to the dim light and the eyes become a hundred times more sensitive to light. During the night vision adaptation process a chemical called rhodopsin is produced, which gives us night vision in about thirty minutes. During this adaptation process, the rods adjust to the darkness becoming 100,000 times more sensitive to light. Maxwell warns that fully adapted night vision can be lost with just a flash of white light. He recommends that to maintain night vision that strict light control is maintained. In one of our next posts we will explore what Ian Maxwell recommends for illuminating tracks at night.

The take home message from these three experts is that if we understand how our eyes adapt to low light conditions, we can continue to function at night...albeit at a diminished capacity. As night tracking is such an important topic, we will continue to explore more on night vision including what illumination to use. We may even be able to challenge some longstanding core beliefs about what lights are best.

See you on the trail,

Bart.

 

Tracking the Deer Family

Tracking the Deer Family

Tracking animals is thrilling, especially when you close the gap to where you can see the animal you are tracking. The thing to remember is that big or small, everything that moves leaves signs of passage… if you know what to look for.  In this article, we will discuss tracking members of the deer family.

The deer family are classed as ungulates. Ungulates are hoofed animals such as deer, moose, elk, and caribou. According to scientist, at one time in ancient history, ungulates had five toes on each foot, but through the ages have evolved to walk on just two toenails. While looking at your hand, imagine the thumb disappearing and the little finger and the index finger shrinking back into the position of the “dew” claws. The middle finger and ring finger remain as the primary toes, but also shorten up leaving the animal walking on the remaining enlarged toe nails.

Normally, the only time you will see the dew claws register in the tracks of the deer family will be in soft matter like mud and snow, or when the animal is running or going down a steep incline. The single exception is the caribou, where the front dew claws can be seen in the track even when they are walking normally on even ground.

Another adaptation with caribou is how big the hooves are in comparison to the animal. For woodlands caribou and their northern “barren land” brothers to survive a winter's deep snow and summers in marshy areas or muskeg, they need large hooves. Scientists suggest that the large hooves are the evolutionary equivalent of growing snowshoes. Because of the oversize hooves, the caribou exerts about two pounds per inch at the hoof in comparison to a moose at eight pounds per square inch. The caribou’s elongated dew claws also help distribute the animal’s weight, hence the dew claws registering in the track even while walking.

When tracking fresh “sign”, watch for a change in the track pattern…you may be getting close and spooking the animal. Make a point of always being aware of the direction of the wind. Ungulates will often circle back into the wind before browsing so they can scent any predators approaching along their track.

Once, while trailing fresh elk sign, I got so absorbed in following the tracks that I overtook a small herd of elk bedded down in the afternoon heat. I can remember noticing a horrible gamey smell a split second before all hell broke loose with half a dozen panicked elk scattering all around me. It’s a good thing that nobody was there to witness my startled little girl dance. 

While tracking ungulates, it is often important to know what gender you are following. Due to the frequent exceptions that happen in nature, there are few indications of gender in the tracks or sign that are 100% accurate. Urine puddles may be the most conclusive sign. Male ungulates tend to produce a stream of urine with the puddle in front of the hind hoof tracks. Females tend to splash urine behind the rear hoof tracks. However, unless you find a urine puddle, you need to recognize the numerous small differences that taken together will indicate gender. 

Before we get into specifics, it is important to know that when walking, ungulates tend to step with their rear hoof into the same place that their front hoof just vacated. This is called “a direct register”. The result is the rear hoof print directly on top of the front hoof print.

Aggressive young male deer will often slightly overstep their front hoof track with their hind hoof. Older males will often do the opposite where the hind hoof falls a bit short of the front hoof track. Does, being prim and proper are more inclined to place the rear hoof track directly into the front one.

The primary way to tell if you are tracking a male or female is that in most cases male ungulates walk splay footed (toed out) whereas females have a neutral foot fall or are pigeon toed, (toes turn in). An exception to this is when a female ungulate is in later pregnancy, where the female’s rear hooves will splay out. To be able to check the orientation of the print you must first figure out whether you are looking at the right or left track. This is easier to see with whitetail deer tracks as the outside toe is slightly longer than the inside one.

Mature male ungulate rear hoof tracks will often register slightly inside the front hoof tracks due to a wider, more muscular chest and neck which supports the added weight of the antlers. Conversely, female ungulate’s hind hooves often register slightly outside of the front hoof track due to the wider hips required for birth…basically they have a bigger backside than the male.

While in rut, bucks of all ages will often drag their front hooves. During the rest of the year, only young bucks tend to drag their front toes. This is especially noticeable in shallow snow.

Except during fall breeding season, elk herds tend to be all female or all male. The exception may be a couple of juvenile males in a female led herd. From spring to early winter, small calf tracks will indicate a female led herd.

Tracking is a perishable skill that requires practice to remain good at it. Tracking also requires knowledge of the characteristics of the animal that you are following. Understanding the unique information in this article will go a long way in helping you “read” the tracks made by members of the deer family in North America.

See you on the trail,

Bart 

You never forget your "first"

Tracking – When it counts

You can never forget your “first”… first love, first car, first solo adventure. These “firsts” usually include places, events or people that stick in your mind; often having a significant impact on future interests. During a “debrief” in a local pub after a tracker training event, a fellow tracker asked me about my first real tracking mission.

Three o’clock Sunday afternoon - the radio squawked...”Bart, this is Command, report to SAR base immediately”. Recognizing a tense edge in search and rescue manager Mike’s voice, I hurried to the mobile command truck. So far, as best that I could tell, the weekend exercise for our search and rescue team seemed to be going well...except we hadn’t met our objective of finding the three lost hikers...yet.

On entering the command van, Mike wasted no time in explaining the situation. The three person team that was sent out to act as lost hikers for our search teams to find, were two hours overdue. The exercise was supposed to end one way or the other at 1pm. The “lost” team was supposed to have either been found by then or to return to base on their own. It was now 3pm and the SAR management team was about to declare a “no duff” emergency. The primary problem being that the people who would be tasked with finding the lost hikers in this real emergency would be the same SAR teams who had been unsuccessfully searching for them since Saturday morning when the exercise started.

Mike summarized that as well as being two hours over-due...all communication was lost with no area cell phone coverage and the team not answering their radio. Further...they had missed their last three scheduled “check in” radio calls.

Remarkably, while setting up the search scenario, Mike had not anticipated any problems with the search teams finding the lost threesome. He had dropped them off at the side of a logging road with the instructions to “get lost” and if not found by 1pm on Sunday – to return to the road for pick up. Mike had no idea where they were.

 

Back at the command van, I couldn’t help but wonder why Mike had called me in. Just what did Mike want me to do about the missing members that our trained search and rescue teams hadn’t already done?

About six months earlier Mike and I had attended a weekend “tracking” course put on by Universal Tracking Services. Although we both enjoyed the experience, it just wasn’t Mike’s thing. However, I was hooked. I had attended one other weekend course in the interim and was looking forward to my third tracking course in the coming months. With this in mind, Mike asked me, “ Bart, do you think if I showed you where I dropped the team off, you might be able to track them?”... I really didn’t have an answer. I know that with just two tracking courses under my belt and some dismal practices, I certainly didn’t feel confident, but all I could say was "let’s go take a look.”

The relatively short trip up the logging road was made in silence. The concern for the well being of the lost team was palpable. On arrival at the drop off, Mike simply said “good luck” as I exited the truck.

Once on the ground, I cut for sign along the loose dirt on the road side. Surprising myself, I almost immediately found three sets of tracks and disturbances where the team had unloaded their packs. Frankly, I was excited about just how quickly I was able to confirm the “point last seen.” 

Continuing with basic tracking protocol, I searched for (and found) three distinct signature prints in the roadside dust, then took the time to draw the details of each print on footprint cards. Although this maybe only took ten minutes in total – the emergency responder bias for taking immediate action, made it seem to take an eternity. My tracking instructors’ voice kept repeating in my head...”always take whatever time is required to draw accurate footprints."

Once on the trail, I finally fully understood the importance of accurately drawing the footprint cards. It is all about building up patterns in the brain so when you observe partial prints, the details are recognizable. I was finding just enough patterns in some of the disturbances to prove to myself that I was on the right track. If I hadn’t taken the time to draw the tracks I would not be confident that I was following the lost team members.

As much as I would like to tell a story about an incredibly brilliant chase...once on the trail, the reality is that except for a short moment of indecision where the game trail forked and I found myself having to figure out which route the team took, I was generally able to track at a fairly fast walking pace. The whole tracking segment probably took less than twenty minutes. It was almost anticlimactic when I found the team.

I actually heard them before a saw them...the three team members were just finishing packing and preparing to hike out. Remarkably, not a timepiece amongst them and with their radio battery long dead, they had guesstimated that it was probably about time to call the exercise quits.

 

With my radio, I called into the greatly relieved SAR management team that I had found our lost group and requested a pick up vehicle to meet us at the road.

During the exercise debrief, it was not lost on the SAR team that a single, very inexperienced tracker was able to locate the lost group in about a half hour where numerous, well trained search teams working hard all weekend were unable to find the group. This realization was a game changer for future search operations.

Spurred on by the success of this first real use of tracking, I couldn’t get enough training and experience. Through the subsequent years there has been many successes where tracking played a part in a positive outcome. But there has also been enough failures to keep me honest. One thing is for sure, “by using teams of trained trackers early in a search greatly improves the chances of a successful outcome.”

See you on the trail

Bart

Tracker Trains 250 Canadian Soldiers

Local Man-Tracker Trains 250 Canadian Soldiers

Creston Search and Rescue member Bart Bjorkman recently trained 250 soldiers over a nine day period in the science of counter-tracking during an exercise put on by the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright. Counter tracking is how to avoid, deceive or deter trained military canine teams and combat trackers from active pursuit.

Bjorkman commented that it was an honor to be selected to provide the training seminars. The current military philosophy is “Train to Excite” requiring “a publicly recognized individual in the field of tracking to provide distinctive training and expertise to the Canadian Patrol Concentration”. According to the military guidelines, “the purpose of bringing in a public figure of renowned status is to amplify and excite the participants”.

Bjorkman, a professional tracker, is a regional resource for the Provincial Emergency Program. He was featured last year with fellow tracker Darcy Fear in the nationally televised Search and Rescue reality show “Call Out”.

Over the past two years, Bjorkman, who is ex-military himself, has been training Canadian soldiers in “tracking” with fellow instructor Kelly Carnochan from Vernon.

For his work with the Canadian Patrol Concentration, Bjorkman was honored by Colonel Paul and Regimental Sergeant Major Colbert with a “Recognition of Service” to the overall success of the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre’s Wainwright exercise.  

Tracking Dinosaurs

The problem with tracking dinosaurs is “what happens when you find one”?

 By our very nature, “trackers” track. We can’t help it. For some, it is an obsession. Some groups such as search and rescue, law enforcement and military trackers, track people. Others, such as naturalists, biologists and hunters track animals; but did you know that there is a very specialized group of trackers who actually track dinosaurs? These scientists study fossilized dinosaur tracks. Their mission is to sleuth out not only what dinosaurs actually looked like, but how they lived.

There are a number of sites in the world where dinosaur tracks are found, and Tuba City Arizona is just such a place. The tracks are located 6 miles east of highway 89 on Route 160. I couldn't help but notice a large home-made sign on the south side of the highway that said, "Dinosaur Tracks" (right around mile marker 316). Actually the word "dinosaur" was misspelled on the sign but I got the message. The track site is located about 600 feet down the dirt road to Moenave that heads north from highway 160.  At the site, there are crude kiosks manned by indigenous Navajo native Americans who are more than willing to show visitors the tracks as well as fossilized dinosaur remains.  A tip is expected - and with my guide...well deserved.

The day that I was at the dinosaur track site, the wind was gusting to over 40 miles per hour. As the area is sandy desert, this amounted to being painfully sand blasted. I would really like to return to the site to study and measure the tracks in more detail – hopefully, it will be a day without the strong winds.

The first thing about the location that caught my attention was the lack of controls or security for the fossils. I suspect that there are very few dinosaur track sites where one can actually walk among the artifacts. The second thing that becomes immediately apparent is the number of fossilized tracks; there are literally hundreds of them.

Dinosaur tracks are considered to be “trace fossils”, also referred to as ichnites or ichnofossils. Trace fossils are formed while the ancient animal is still alive.

As a tracker, it was exciting to see a number of successive prints just waiting to be followed. One set of prints I found had at least seven consecutive footfalls. In the jargon used by the scientists, a series of two or more consecutive tracks is called a “trackway”. While we are discussing jargon, “Paleoicnologists” is the term used for the scientists who study these ancient trace fossils.

While checking out the stride and straddle, it is quickly observed that the stride is quite long. According to formulas developed by R. M. Alexander and others (Alexander, 1989) the estimated speed of travel can be calculated by comparing the length of the footprint to the pace distance. Basically, if the length of the pace (distance between successive prints) is approximately four times the length of the actual track print, it indicates that this animal was running. Although this trackway’s prints were not quite the four to one ratio, it is close enough to consider that this animal was moving quickly.

Subsequent research indicates that the tracks were made by a three toed, bipedal, meat eating Theropod from the lower Jurassic period (between 199.6 and 175.6 million years ago). There were a number of similar tracks of varying sizes in the area ranging from eight to fourteen inches long with strides reaching up to about four feet. It was interesting to see that there was not much straddle. This would indicate a fairly narrow pelvic girdle.

The foot falls were neutrally aligned (no toe in or out). It would be interesting to find out if a dinosaur’s gender can be indicated by “toe-in” like with gender differentiation of ungulates - such as deer.

Although technically a four toed beast, the fourth toe of the Theropod is more like a dogs dew claw and not part of the track. According to Tracking Dinosaurs, by Martin Lockley (1991) the odd number of toes in the track indicates that the dinosaur did not have any horns - or if it did - the horn (or horns) would be located midline on the skull such as the horns found on a Rhinoceros. I didn’t notice any sign of tail drag although I suspect that all bipedal dinosaurs would have had a tail for balance. In a couple of tracks, a distinct claw on each of the three toes is observable. I wonder if claws are found on all dinosaurs or just on the carnivorous species?

With so many unanswered questions, the field of dinosaur tracking is certainly worth investigating further.  However, it really doesn’t matter what your specialty is in tracking.  If it is true that “trackers” track, then we should be able to study any track and get a better understanding of what made the “sign”. You don’t have to be a scientist to study fossilized dinosaur tracks, just a tracker.

Just imagine tracking something that existed 200 million years ago…unbelievable. But after all…Adventure is where you find it.

Bart Bjorkman

Northern Tracker

One of the best sites that I found on the internet about tracking dinosaurs is by Glen J. Kuban www.paleo.cc/paluxy/ovrdino.htm

Finding Rock Art - Tracking Hopi Petroglyphs

Adventure is where you find it. On a mountain biking expedition to the southern United States and Mexico, I found a small US Park where there are Hopi Indian petroglyphs. Petroglyphs are pictorial carvings in rock. The meaning of the pictures are open to speculation, but have generally been lost in time.

I have been fascinated by native rock art for most of my adult life and have spent a great deal of time researching the pictographs of my local tribe in the southern Kootenay region of British Columbia.  So faced with the opportunity to see the rock art of the people who are responsible for the most recognized petroglyph in North America – kokopelli – the humpbacked, flute player, I couldn’t resist.

After visiting the Park’s “rock art” sites, I marveled at how the US Park Service was able to protect the petroglyphs while still making access as easy as possible. Paved roads and groomed trails allow for basically anyone, at almost any age or physical condition to view the sites. However…that was not the experience that I was looking for. 

Chatting up the Park Ranger, I asked her if there were perhaps more remote petroglyph sites that a motivated person might view. The Ranger carefully considered my request and was clearly having an internal debate whether or not to tell me. Thankfully, she decided to let me in on a couple of well guarded secrets. After getting me to promise that if asked, “the information that she was about divulge did not come from her”, she told me about some petroglyph sites outside of the park boundaries… on the Hopi reservation. She warned me however, that the Hopi people do not take kindly to trespassers.

The Park Ranger explained that a couple of weeks earlier, a small group of researchers from a nearby University had been studying the petroglyphs. Apparently, the permission to undertake the study was difficult to obtain from the Hopi people and the expedition was done under stringent supervision and rules of conduct.

Following the crude map provided by my co-conspirator, I navigated across the parched badlands until coming to an erosion that my four wheel drive couldn’t cross. With a small pack and my tracking stick, I continued on foot. For a person accustomed to hiking in the lush mountains of southern British Columbia, the desert was awe inspiring.

Contemplating what I was trying to do, it dawned on me that I didn’t know anything about the Hopi people or where to look for their petroglyphs. It also flashed through my mind that I didn’t have the first clue about safe travelling in the desert... A shortfall that I was about to get my first lesson in.

As I walked along, I occasionally crossed the tracks of the researchers from two weeks before. I marveled at how well the desert preserved the sign. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a seasonal anomaly, or if there were times of the year when weather conditions aged the tracks quicker. While observing the signs left by the researchers, I also noticed some ungulate tracks that looked like small deer prints. This was a bit of a shock….how could deer possibly survive in an area devoid of anything green to eat?  Checking my field tracking card, I found that the tracks were actually caused by pig like beast called a “Peccary” or “Javalina”. As the many tracks indicated, these nasty critters roam in small herds. They can also pose a considerable threat to humans, and in fact have killed people. Wonderful…and no tree in a hundred miles to climb.     

Continuing on, I was faced with the reality that if I was going to find Hopi Petroglyphs, it was going to be more by luck then by design. I just didn’t know where to start looking. Then it occurred to me….the University researchers would have known where to look.

While cutting for sign, it didn’t take long before I found the researcher’s tracks. Even though the sign was at least two weeks old, it was not difficult to follow. My hypotheses proved correct. The results were that I was able to visit more petroglyph sites in a day then I could have found in a month left to my own devices.  As an added bonus, I observed ancient pottery shards that the researchers had uncovered.

The feeling of observing ancient artifacts and rock art – especially in the context of the natural surroundings - cannot be described. The outcome was a life altering experience. Although I have no idea if the petroglyphs have a religious connotation to the Hopi, I acted on some sage advice that when in doubt "act as if you are in a church."

After a delightful day of discovery and adventure, I dragged my worn out carcass back to the truck, literally driving off into the desert sunset.

Contemplating the events, sights and experiences of the day, attempting to understand what I had observed, I realized, as I so often do, just how ill equipped I am to understand the wonders of the experiences I encounter….what a life.

Adventure is where you find it.