By Sherry Ritter
I love winter but sometimes its short days and overcast skies depress me. On days with fresh snow, I’m lured outside by the chance to track wildlife. My mind always quiets as I focus downward to look for tracks and interpret their stories.
I’m fortunate to live close to so many trails and forest roads providing ways into wild country. One January day I walked up a Bitterroot National Forest road looking for fresh tracks. As I followed the road, I was puzzled by a jumble of bird tracks on the road’s edge. Some bird had spent a lot of time hopping around at the base of a big Douglas fir.
Remembering the ravens and magpies I’d heard calling nearby and studying the size and shape of the tracks, I decided a magpie had been searching for something in the snow. I couldn’t see any evidence of food, so what was it looking for? It never bothers me that I don’t know the answer because I like deciphering clues.
I continued upwards and at a sharp switchback I came across a series of tracks: tire marks and footprints where someone had parked and gotten out of a truck; a rope-like drag mark heading up the road next to more tire tracks; wider drag marks heading off the road; human footprints, blood spots, and drag marks leading to a steep drop-off; and then a deer carcass lodged against small trees 20 yards downhill.
I finally had all the clues I needed to put together a sequence of events. It all started with the parked truck where a hunter had unloaded a deer carcass onto a sled, then pulled it up the hill. One deer leg had dragged in the snow leaving those rope-like marks, but tire tracks had obscured the sled marks until the spot where the person pulled the sled off the road. The hunter then dragged the carcass to the edge, leaving scattered blood droplets. A little push, and the carcass slid down the hill.
What about those magpie tracks I’d found earlier? Were they part of this story? Thinking about how far I’d walked before and after the switchback, I realized those tracks were directly downhill from the carcass. My guess is that one of the ravens I’d heard earlier scavenged some meat from the dead deer and ate it while perched at the top of the big fir. The magpie was searching for dropped bits of meat at the tree’s base. Those magpie tracks I’d seen were the end, not the beginning of this particular story.
While I hadn’t found evidence of a rare animal or dramatic event, this tracking expedition was a success. By focusing on tracks, I’d temporarily suspended the everyday clutter of my mind and with that new clarity I’d uncovered a story in the snow. I continued up the hill and widened my focus to gaze at the beautiful Lost Horse Valley spread out below me.