Home Investigators:

To practice your tracking away from the forest preserve, scour your neighborhood after a night's snow. Search for where those yowling sleen fought last night. Or look for tracks around the tipped-over garbage can, which could lead you to urts, or other scavengers which will attract larger predatory game.

Where to look for tracks:

Most people see tracks first in the snow alongside the trail, or perhaps in the wet mud and sand of a riverbank. A little research about winter animal behavior can help a tracker think more like a wild creature:

· Start where you are: because animals usually try to save energy, many animal tracks appear on manmade trails, other animals' trails, and other easy terrain such as logs and frozen lakes.
· Follow the tracks: a tracker can virtually recreate an animal's experience by following its tracks and looking for other signs, such as scat, fur, feathers, or more tracks, along the way.
· Think "basic necessities": animals are always in the game of survival, especially in winter. Since necessity often drives an animal to move, a track will usually lead to and from places of food, water, shelter, or a hiding place.
· Notice animal interaction: crossed paths, places where an animal hesitated at the possibility of danger, chase scenes, high-traffic pathways to common resources.

Optimum Conditions:

-A fresh blanket of snow that stops falling in the sunset hours gives an entire night's history of nocturnal animal activity the following morning. Even a light dusting of snow can provide important tracking clues. Damp, cold "snowball-packing snow" can preserve detailed tracks for weeks.
-Staying Healthy on the Trail
-Snow-covered ground is like a giant mirror, reflecting the sun into the eyes of trackers. limit the amount of time spent staring at the snow. And don't forget to drink plenty of water, too. Even though it's cold outside, your body is still perspiring.
-Using Light
-Low light angles that persist throughout the winter months (until about mid-March) can expose intricate details left behind in tracks. Keep the track between you and the sun to view the greatest detail. Not enough light? Use a mirror to reflect sunlight into the track, or use a torch.

Pseudo Tracks:

Be careful when reading prints in the snow Sunlight can cause tracks to "grow" or expand over the course of the day giving a false size of an animal and distort a track. Also the way a animal carries itself wether its wounded can often be mistaken for another type of animal. Practice looking at tracks is the only way that one will know the difference.