Scat: the tracker’s clue to who

“What are you taking pictures of poop for?” asked eight-year-old Nicholas Foley as I photographed deer pellets on a recent hike in Pike County, PA. By walk’s end, Nick was scouting for scat, wondering what animal might have deposited it and asking other questions about the lives of these unseen animals.

Scat, or animal feces, is one of the forms of sign read by trackers. Others are dens, digs, lays, slides, dive holes, kill sites, food caches and scent posts. All of these are pieces to the puzzles placed throughout the forest by animals. “For much of the year, the forest is far richer in sign than it is in tracks,” notes master tracker Paul Rezendes. “The forest is speaking to us all the time.”

In “Tracking and the Art of Seeing,” Rezendes writes, “Tracking an animal is opening the door to the life of that animal… The more intimate we become with other lives, the more aware we are of how those lives connect with and affect our own.”

Rezendes tracks wildlife in order to photograph and increase his knowledge of these animals. The process of tracking and reading sign provides an opportunity to broaden our understanding of what animals do and where they go, while increasing our understanding of ourselves, he notes.

In winter, scat from wild canines is comprised mostly of fur. Summer scat can vary quite a bit, containing seeds and other evidence of fruits and grasses. Placement of scat is also significant, as in the case of canines such as the coyote and the fox, which often deposit scat in the middle of a trail, typically on a high point such as a stone or other elevated object.