Some Fun Tracking Illusions

Description

If you are new to tracking, this video will share some interesting "illusions" that can fool you if you don't know what you are looking at.

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Tags: Kenton Whitman,ReWild University,Human Rewilding,personal rewilding,mindfulness,how to,bushcraft,survival,wilderness survival skills,how to survive in the woods,tracking

Video Transcription

well it's a cold one today I'm out here doing some tracking and I want to dedicate this video to my nephew's Sam and Oliver who are learning some tracking with their father my brother Nathan and really cool how you two are out there in your woods and exploring and seeing what you can find with the tracks all those animals leaving stories right there in the snow and a day like this is just a beautiful time to go out and see the tracks their stories everywhere written in a special language that all of us can learn to read today I'm just going to share a couple little tricks or well there's some illusions that we can experience when we're out tracking and we take a look at a couple little common mysteries that happen in the winter woods and hopefully it will add a little bit to everybody's tracking adventures this one will often fool people you can see these odd tracks are small

you're moving along and there's not exactly any real distinguishing print as in footprints but something's obviously moving along here if we follow it it comes through here I can see it move along this branch what do we have there's our creature you can see some of the Marxist left if we'd set it free next time I wind blows it's going to leave these odd tracks is that oakley makes its way one of the most common illusions that we're going to hit is track seeming to disappear here we have a weasel moving along and none its tracks seem to disappear and reappear that here

what's happening of course is that because of the angle of the Sun coming in these guys just pop out and this is a beautiful track right here because half of it pops out and how is shaded this tree the shadow is doing the same thing that's going to happen on a very cloudy day or when the Sun is directly up above us things aren't going to cash shadows in the same way if you look carefully there's a track in here there's no big mystery didn't jump from there to there but that track seems to disappear when you're just focused on what our eyes can easily see here's a wonderful example a good really fool people you can see two prints here two prints here two prints here to Prince here it looks like we have a nano that's bounding in a very regular way especially if we look at these three and that's something they could throw people and think okay we've got a larger animal and look at the width of its body I'm kind of wider but what what's bigger and wider and hops like that looks a little bit like like weasel marks but the stride isn't right for the foot size but if we follow up here a little bit with TVs the climb up here do this track now I can get us into the correct light might be able to see let me come up here but it's no longer two tracks but one so what we have is actually two mice that have come down and here you separate out in such a way that their tracks can make these two small animals jumping next to each other look like a much larger animal here's a fun and strange one what is this

step back a little bit ah wind and a barely hanging branch just at the right height to draw some pictures on the snow the many people especially if they first started tracking this looks like one foot fell here and one foot fell here one foot fell there you go very clean tracks now when you look up here is a little more confusing because there's two next to each other then just 112 huh what's going on and then back here we're back to one and one and one what this is called is a direct register in this animal in this case a fox steps directly into its own track so we're not seeing one print there but a place where a throw a four foot a front foot has fallen and then the rear foot has fallen so all we're really seeing here is the rear track which is impressed upon the front track now direct register animals like this fox that really almost always like to step directly in their own track it doesn't always happen one hundred percent of the time so you'll be following along and you'll see how it stepped off a little bit here and then went back to its usual direct register pattern another interesting thing about the direct register is that what i told you is not completely true because the trick is with cannons like this Fox the front foot is usually quite a bit larger than the rear foot so although I said you're only seeing the rear track here think about it for a moment if that front foot is larger then we're seeing the outline of the front foot the bigger impression with the smaller hind foot landing in it so though we say that we're only seeing the rear track we're actually seeing route the rear track enlarged a little bit because that first outline that was put down was the larger front foot mice in a big oak leaf it leaves almost bird-like tracks

this one's also in the mix if we follow it back it was leaving some strange straight-line slides in the snow because of the way it was structured it slid along more than it tumbled head over heels there's a fissure moving through the woods always a fun one this is one of their many gates the squirrel again displaying the power of shadow where we have a clear track and a clear track with the one in between just one part of it is popping out and the rest is invisible so the things i'd really like to point out are met the Sun the angle of the Sun has a profound effect on how tracks appear they can seem to pop out the Sun is at a sharp angle if the Sun's right up above they can seem to disappear also it's not only animals leaving tracks sometimes leaves and sticks others

thanks for watching and please share any tracking adventures that you've had lately love to hear from you in the comments