Who's Been Walking in the Snow?

A Pocket Guide and Smart Phone App to Help You Identify Animal Tracks

​Are you wondering who made all those tracks in the fresh snow? If so here's a great pocket guide to animal tracks. It shows both the track pattern (e.g. how the wildlife walks) and what the front and hind footprints look like. It even has a ruler so that you can measure the prints. It's a lot of great information on a single page.

​If you want even more information about animal tracks - here's a link to the iPhone app that we use - "iTrack Wildlife Pro" by Jonah Evans. The app has detailed photos and information for 70 common mammals of North America, to include over 700 high quality track (with precise front and hind track drawings and detailed track, gait, and “similar species” descriptions for every animal), sign and animal photos with detailed captions.  It even has 120 detailed skull photos for 41 of the species just in case you run across a skeleton during your adventures. The app also stores the Wikipedia page for each species so that no internet connection is required to obtain even more details about the animals. 

​The app allows you to search by the following criteria:

• Common and Latin Name
• Track Length and Width
  
• Number of Toes
• Shape of Toes
• Claw Size
• Track Symmetry
• Mammal Family
• Location by US State, Canadian Province, or Mexico

​The 70 animals currently covered by the app are:

• American Badger
• American Beaver
• American Bison
• American Black Bear
• American Hog-nosed Skunk
• American Marten
• American Mink
• Bighorn Sheep
• Black-tailed Jackrabbit
• Bobcat
• California Ground Squirrel
• Canada Lynx
• Chipmunk
• Collared Peccary
• Cottontail
• Cow
• Coyote
• Domestic Dog
• Eastern Gray Squirrel
• Elk
• Feral Hog
• Fisher
• Fox Squirrel​
• ​Gray Fox
• Gray Wolf

• Grizzly Bear
• Groundhog (Woodchuck)
• Harvest Mice Species
• Hispid Cotton Rat
• Horse
• Housecat
• Jaguar
• Jumping Mice Species
• Kangaroo Rat Species
• Kit Fox
• Long-tailed Weasel
• Mole Species
• Moose
• Mountain Lion or Cougar
• Mule Deer
• Muskrat
• Nine-banded Armadillo
• North American Porcupine
• Northern Raccoon
• Northern River Otter
• ​Nutria
• Ocelot​
• Pocket Gopher Species

• Pocket Mice Species
• Prairie Dogs
• Pronghorn
• Rat Species
• Red & Douglas’s Squirrel
• Red Fox
• Ringtail
• Rock Squirrel
• Shrew Species
• Snowshoe Hare
• Spotted Skunk Species
• Striped Skunk
• Swamp Rabbit
• Virginia Opossum
• Vole Species
• Western Gray Squirrel
• White-footed or Deer Mouse
• White-tailed Deer
• Woodrat Species
• Wolverine
• Wyoming Ground Squirrel
• Yellow-bellied Marmot

You can learn more about the app, and see more information about tracking, at the “Nature Tracking” website: http://www.naturetracking.com/

If you want to purchase this app you can get it at the Apple App Store or Google Play store.​ You can download the “iTrack Wildlife Lite“ app for free, the “iTrack Wildlife Basic” app for $4.99 or the “iTrack Wildlife Pro” app for $14.99. The Pro app may seem a little expensive – but if you’re serious about animal tracks you should spring for the extra cash because it's good.
 
Here’s the link to the Apple Store for iTrack Wildlife Pro:
     https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/itrack-wildlife/id478516226?mt=8
 
Here’s the link to the Google Play Store for iTrack Wildlife Pro:
     https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.itrack.Pro&hl=en