Tracks near the house.

Opossum tracks in the yard. Both front and hind feet are in the picture. The under step walk of the Opossum. He or she had checked my front door, found it closed and moved on. A squirrel tried to get away with this apple.

A Raccoon sat and ate this apple very recently, the water from the old apple was still unfrozen.

Some more Raccoon tracks, leaving the apple feast. This one has a routine of checking all the buildings on the property.
A nice, somewhat atypical Cottontail bounding pattern.

Another good tracking day.

Beaver Bog Swamp at Great Hollow Wilderness School in New Fairfield. Another day of perfect tracking conditions out on the swamp. Raccoon Tracks. Front track on the left, note the crescent palm pad shape.

Raccoon in their typical pacing gait. Close up of Bobcat tracks, front is to the left, hind to the right. Over step walk of a bobcat indicative of a faster walk, covering some distance quickly and efficiently.
Another overstep walk, this time a little slower.
Deer out on the ice.

Bobcat and raccoon tracks New Fairfield CT

Bobcat in as far as I can tell an overstep walk. It is possibly a rotarty lope. The conditions could not have been more perfect. Here is a raccoon coming towards the camera in its typical pacing gait.

Bear at Great Hollow.

Here are some bear tracks we found at work. They were a little old and effected by melt.

In this one you can clearly see some of the toe and claw marks. An over-step walk/pace. A classic bear thing to do.

A length of a more or less direct register walk. The bear traveled quite a distance in this gate alternating with the over-step walk above.
Some bear poop.

My friend Mal and I got out a couple weeks ago up in Wells Maine to do some tracking. Here is a White Tailed Deer skull we found left by hunters and scavenged by a smallish bird. I have guessed its size to be about that of a Jay. Only the tail marks were visible to us as it had landed and taken off right there beside the skull. There are the tail marks in front of my fingers.
Mal showed me where there has been some extensive Porcupine damage to a stand of Douglas Fir. Here is one example.
And, in my book, the coolest find of the day, as it elicited much discussion between us on gates and behaviours, are these tracks of a Coyote descending a hill in a trot on the right then ascending in a bound/gallop, depending on who's terms you use.
The two tracks on the right side are the trot down and the four on the left belong to the up hill gallop track group. The uphill movement would have used the power of the animals rear-end hence the large space between track groups.
Andy

Tracking in Maine

I had the pleasure of going tracking while visiting some dear friends in southern Maine this weekend.

My girlfriend Deneen and I went to look at a spot she had seen deer bedded down in earlier in the day and we (by that I mean I, Deneen is much less clumsy) startled seven deer up out of their beds but not before getting a good look at a couple of them 30 or 40 yards away. They were so graceful as they bounded off.

Here is Deneen alongside one of the many beds we found. I did not count but there was more than a dozen.
Here is the most beautiful bed we saw. It is easy to see how the animal lay there and quickly rose at our disturbance.

In another area we found what I am pretty sure was a Ruffed Grouse landing and take-off. the Tail is clear in the landing and delicate wing marks are to either side of the take-off along with the body prints.

More pictures to come.

Andy

Maine Primitive Skills School of Connecticut

I am pleased to announce that I will be teaching workshops as a satellite school of the Maine Primitive Skills School here in Northfield Connecticut. Workshops and dates are on their 2008 calender now. Please check it out, there is also information about the facilities I have access to here in Northfield as well as tons of information on the Maine school.

There is a link to the Left side of this page.

Maine Primitive Gathering

I participated in the Maine Primitive Gathering three weeks ago in Bowdoin Maine. This is the big event of the year for me and well worth the seven hour drive. My friend Chris and I had a great time and learned a lot. Below Bob Berg of Thunderbird Atlatl is teaching us primitive fishing techniques. Later I took an atlatl making workshop with him and came home with three finished darts, three blanks and a finished atlatl. I have had a lot of fun throwing them.

Here we are straitening our atlatl dart shafts.

I also took a debri tracking workshop with Mike Douglas of MPSS which showed me how much more dirt time I need in that department.

I got reacquainted with many old friends and made some new ones. Most special of which is Deneen B. Special things are always found in the woods.

Andy

Latest Firemaking

In the last week or so I got a coal from White Ash on White Ash bowdrill and several handrill coals with Horseweed on Basswood. The Horseweed is great, the best I have experience with the possible exeption of Yucca and Mule-fat but has the added bonus of growing around here.

My co-instructor Chris and I harvested a dozen or so Horseweed plants from along a railway this week as well. They are drying now.

Andy

This years bounty and eating a little Wild.

This year has been amazingly bountiful in New England as far as wild plant food goes. The nut trees have been dumping acorns, walnuts and hickory nuts by the bucketfull, so much in some places that I have watched people slip on them like so many marbles dropped on a floor. I have observed many other plants as well, such as Indian Cucumber, grapes, jewelweed, and more. Almost everything I am familiar with seems to be doing very well.

To take avantage of the excess I have been trying to eat more wild plant food. I boiled some acorns and had them for breakfast with an apple (which I picked from the old orchard at work). My intern made wonderfull acorn bread that she shared with us, and one of my co-instructors brought back a raccoon struck by a car after he eased its passing (ended its suffering, for the less squeemish). He cooked it up and we ate it for dinner.

My next step is to save some acorns for further use this winter and try to keep wild things in my diet. Not easy since my time is short and I anticipate some failure to keep it up but its worth a try.

Andy

Tupelo

Found what turned out to be Tupelo, aka black gum (Nyssa biflora). Never seen it before. Found it in a wet bottomland area with hemlocks and sphagnum moss.

Summer Day

Classic front and hind tracks, side by side of Raccoon ( hind on right side in picture below).

Skull of Great Horned Owl the kids found at work.

Owl feathers. We found the whole skeleton, what a great teaching oppertunity.
These are the small bones that surround the fixed eyes of owls.

Rattlesnake Plantain.