Reading the Snow

by Raymond S. Spears

READING THE SNOW

BY RAYMOND S. SPEARS

A light fall of snow on a strong crust is a thrilling page, furnishing narrative on narrative, with conclusions in many instances transcribed in the Book of Doom. Fluffy, ephemeral, matchless in its precision, and endless in its detail, the snow page displays the ways and whims of the great and small, of the thrifty and of the careless, of the roving hunters, of the home-abiding rodents; in fact, acting the part of a good newspaper, with partiality for the runners and walkers, while on rare occasions taking a short paragraph from the higher realms of the sky-fliers, quite like newspapers which men make of wood-pulp, plastered with ink. One might carry the analogy a step further. There are snows which are as brief-lived as an evening paper, flashing before the eye an edition of world-news, but burying it under other editions with fresher news. Then there are staid snows, whose records are so valuable that one finds pleasure in consulting back numbers. Thus my brother once observed a skunk track in a Thanksgiving snow. In April he found the same track in raised letters, proving beyond doubt that this skunk had something to say, and had said it. In this instance it called vivid attention to the fact that there are editions and editions of snow. Every layer of snow falling in the forest is written upon by fisher and ermine, mink and mouse, squirrel and rabbit, and by all the other creatures which roam the deep woods in winter.

In the Adirondacks one finds more red-squirrel tracks than any other kind. Rabbits, deer-mice, fox, ruffed grouse, porcupines, and ermines follow in decreasing abundance. Then come the rarer prints of deer, mink, marten, fisher, otter, and bears, the treasures of snow classics. It is something to be able to recognize the track of a cat or dog; there are some less varied trail-stories than those of a field- or woods-roaming house-cat; but to go on with the study, learning to recognize the muskrat, the weasel, the fox, and the other animals by their footprints in the snow, and then to divine what the creatures had in their minds by these same tokens, that is, indeed, very much.

In reading the trail of a wild animal in the forest, one is brought close to the heart of the trail-maker; how close depends upon the reader. One may glance at the trail, decide that "It's only some little animal!" and pass on, seeking a livelier tale; or he may stop, take the first methodical step, and find out which animal made it.

Here is a moment when one brings all his previous knowledge of nature to bear upon one point. Two dots in a thin layer of snow upon a hard crust may be the starting-point of a long and wonderful dip into stream and forest lore. One sees the prints of two little paws; the heels came down lightly, while the claws dug into the crust under the snow, and when the animal sprang forward, the toes tossed a few crystals back across the heel-marks. Two footprints are almost side by side, the toes of one foot beside the heel-marks of the other. Something more than two inches long and a third as wide, the footprint is in itself a little problem, as close inspection will show. For instance, in each of the two footprints one may find distinct traces of seven or eight claws, perhaps ten little scratches in the crust. As the claws show the way the animal traveled, it is worth while to follow up the line of tracks, the italic colons (:) so to speak. Such a line of tracks one may find almost anywhere: in forest depths, in fields, in brier patches, traversing a pass on a wooded ridge, or along a flat land beside some stream or pond. Sometimes the track enters a barn, or circles around a hen-coop. Usually, however, it is seen beside a stream, running up to brush and drift piles, dipping under cakes of ice, and at some point the trailer will find where the animal walked, like a cat. Perhaps the walk will call vivid attention to the remarkable fact that while the animal ran, it apparently used only two paws. But a moment of consideration will show that the seven or ten scratches in each footprint meant that two paws used each impression, that the animal's fore-paws landed, leaped, and went on, after which the hind-paws struck in the same place and sprang ahead.

Now, one must follow that track to the end, if need be, to learn the maker's name. The end may be in a hole in the ice, in which case it is not difficult to surmise that the trail-maker was a mink. But there are other animals which make a similar track: least weasels, ermines, martens, and fishers, for instance. They vary much in size, the least weasel having a paw less than an inch long, while the fisher or pekan has a hind-foot nearly, sometimes quite, five inches long. The trail and its course indicate the name of the maker, usually beyond doubt, at a glance. Beside a stream it is probably a mink; it is still a mink, though on a mountain-top in marten country, if the animal slides down an incline on the snow. There is a "look" to the track, too, which a practiced eye recognizes, an appearance which even a partially trained eye may distinguish, should a crossing of the mink track and a marten track, say, be discovered.

There is always this problem of identifying the track of an animal. It is sometimes easy; frequently one will find a track which it is not possible to identify surely, an old track, much defaced by snow, thaw, or evaporation, being unrecognizable long before its last trace visible to the eye is destroyed. Few trails survive a fall of six inches of snow, even in a wide, windless forest. Yet a bear track made in loose snow, or a fox track, say, made in wet snow, will remain weeks and even months. The new snow, however, is a new page which is soon filled with natural history.

When one has learned to know the fresh trail of one animal, say that of a mink or fox, a far stride toward reading the snow has been taken. If one takes that trail and follows its wanderings for even an hour, the delight of discovery will quicken the observer. The "sameness" of nature is in the eye of the unlearned and unobserved only. No two fox trails were ever exactly alike. In fact, every fox has its own character, its own habits, and each day its own divergencies from all the other days of its life. A folding four-foot rule discloses variations in the length of steps. I have seen around a trap the tracks of a fox which averaged three inches apart; stepping off down grade, they will sometimes pace twenty-eight inches to a step. On a stiff snow into which they break only a line, make a bare impression, an eighteen or twenty-inch stride is common. Mere measurements disclose significant facts. Thus, when a fox suddenly changes its stride from sixteen or eighteen inches to six or eight inches as it approaches a nub of the thin snow on a knoll, it can mean but one thing, a mouse-nest may be under that nub. Again, one finds a fox track leading back and forth through a swamp, from side to side. The steps are twelve or sixteen inches long; the fox is a wild still hunter, seeking rabbits or grouse.

Measuring tracks is a pretty practice. It is a profitable task for the determined student of snow-reading, worth all the backaches and cold fingers the stooping and jotting down of the figures produce. A careless way is to measure two or three rods of track, count the footprints, and take the average; but when one reads in his notes. "Fox tracks, wet snow, 24 ft. 12 strides with right paws, 12 with left—varied from 14 to 28 inches," though far better than no measurements at all, they are unsatisfactory. The figures should tell whether they were growing shorter, longer, or merely happened to vary so much. A short stride commonly means "going slow," along stride, "going fast."

On Little Black Creek there is a hunters' camp. As near many an Adirondack camp, there were last winter trails of an ermine leading in all directions from this little bark-roof shack. The ermine likes a camp. It builds a nest under the floor, and hunts mice among the bark layers; I have seen a bark roof rain mice when a weasel was hunting in it. An ermine crossed the old sleigh-road, and I measured some jumps:" Inches, 29, 32, 34, 24, 26, 24, 21, 14, 20, 15, etc." This was up and down hummocks, and had no particular significance, save that the average jump was about 23.9 inches. But along the side of the road, after the ermine had been hunting in a brush heap, the figures read: "Inches, 8+¹⁄₂, 6, 11, 10, 8, 4." On the left side of the track was a broken line in the snow, showing that something had been dragged through it. At the end of the 4-inch jump, the animal dropped something on the snow, and then, picking it up, started on again; "Inches, 12, 17, 14, 10, 9, 8, 9+¹⁄₂, 11, 7, 6, 14, 14, 9, 8 (new hold), 7 (hit some twigs, new hold), 8, 7," etc. Here the decreasing length of the jumps showed that the animal was losing its grip on its burden, which it finally took into a hole in the snow out of sight.

Discovering, by measuring the tracks, whether an animal is going fast or slow is another long step toward reading the snow. Of course, it is not possible to tell always by the distance it jumps whether an animal is going fast, yet it is fairly certain that the farther it jumps, the faster it goes. The exceptions are long jumps made to clear brooks, or other obstructions, or perhaps to try the muscles.

Probably the first time one lays a rule to the pad-marked snow, an inkling of the thought of the animal will slip into the mind of the observer. Certainly, after one has measured a dozen trails, the perception will quicken with most gratifying speed. If one follows an ermine trail, for example, little differences of appearance will quickly be observed. These differences may tell much.

My brother and I were snow-shoeing along an Adirondack ridge well back in the forest. It was an ideal morning for observing tracks, for there were four feet of snow, with a crust that would almost bear a man's weight without snow-shoes, on top of which was a quarter of an inch of fluffy snow. We discovered a weasel trail just below the ridge-crest. The track was fresh, and led straight away through the woods, as ermines usually go when they are traveling. Around camps, they wander back and forth. The measurements showed " Inches, 23, 23, 13, 16+¹⁄₂, 20, 26+¹⁄₂, 33+¹⁄₂, 35, 23+¹⁄₂, 12+¹⁄₂, 30 (and up 13 inches), 15+¹⁄₂, 26, 22, 30, 28, 19, 24," etc. It was the ordinary hunting gait of the animal. One jump, the longest observed, was 41 inches. But there were particular features which measurements did not show. Ordinarily, the ermines and many others of the mustelidæ strike the ground with their fore-paws, and land in the same print with their hind-paws. But this one did not do that. It "sprawled," so that all four prints were plainly seen, there being intervals of nearly three inches between them. The hind-paws nearly always over-reached the fore-paws, making "gain-speed" tracks, as woodsmen say.

For four days the woods-going had been very bad. Hard showers had swept over the mountains, wetting down the snow, keeping all the animals "close." Rabbits, squirrels, foxes, weasels, and all the other creatures were compelled to remain inactive. Then came the freeze of zero weather, bright sunshine, and the crust. We men felt the exuberance of the release from inactivity—so did other animals. The weasel's track showed how it rejoiced in the release. Away it leaped exuberantly, but not jumping any farther than usual, save now and then a spring of 40 inches, or thereabouts. But sheer muscular delight in the freedom of "good going" was shown at every jump in the careless landing of the feet, and once with a beautiful and striking display of strength. The ordinary jump of a weasel is a curve, very graceful and "full of life." This ermine ran apparently with the exuberance of the day in its heart, but mere running was not enough. Suddenly, instead of jumping in a curve with a high trajectory, as it had been doing, it dug its claws into the crust and shot straight along the surface of the snow. Its knees dragged in the quarter of an inch of snow throughout the 29 inches of the jump, the impression being faint over one very shallow depression and almost to the crust over a slight elevation. It had shot straight ahead, like a projectile, apparently for no other reason than to try its strength. This was one of the "finds" a trail-hunter delights to make. Almost any track will disclose a "treasure" of similar value.

On this same ridge, but on the other side, a red squirrel's track showed a squirrel trait of mind. The little fellow was running with wide jumps, one of 47 inches, for instance. Its tracks were sprawled out only less remarkably than the weasel's. One track covered a length of 10 inches and a width of more than 3 inches. The tracks led from tree to tree, apparently for the fun of romping around on the crust and in the sunshine. In going from one tree to another, however, it sprang over a hummock beyond which it could not see. Beyond the hummock was a depression in the snow, and the squirrel landed in it, 8 inches below the level of the surrounding snow. The squirrel was surprised, manifestly, experiencing the same uncomfortable surprise that a man feels who goes down another step in the dark after he thinks he is at the bottom of the stairs. The squirrel sprang straight up, and then, having whipped the snow in four places with its tail, started on again. It had been jumping from 30 to 40 inches, but the first leap onward after the surprise was 15 inches, and to the nearest tree the jumps were only 20 inches or less, but made quickly, as flung snow showed. If one cares to bring imagination into the study of natural history, it might be permissible to imagine a squirrel grunting when it landed at the bottom of that depression.

Every trail becomes a chapter full of meaning when the significance of long jumps, short jumps, sprawling paws, slips, and other indications, is recognized. A trail in the snow is a true record of an animal's life, so true and impeccable that men who kill deer in the deep, crusted snow, watch and fear their own back tracks, dreading the coming of game wardens. If men are afraid in the woods, what must it be for the wild life? The trail tells the story, and the trail which indicates fearlessness is a relief to the student. There are a few animals that are fearless, though all are more or less cautious. In this respect, the ermines, martens, and fishers are especially dashing and brave. They wander through the woods by night or day, confident in their own strength and agility, hard fighters all of them. But their fearlessness is always contrasted with the terror which they excite among creatures of their size. That terror, and more, is ever present in the hearts of other small forest-dwellers.

For instance, witness the track of an Adirondack rabbit (Great Northern Hare, Lepus Americanus). The track came through the swamp near Big Rock. Overhead were dense balsam tree-tops, and on all sides were hummocks. The hare wanted to cross the Stillwater on Little Black Creek. Its course through the swamp for rods showed jumps of decreasing length, from more than three feet to less than two. There were a score of jumps averaging twenty-two inches which came to the moon shadow of a balsam at the edge of the ice. There the animal jumped and landed facing its back track, and there it remained perfectly motionless till the warmth of its paws had had time to thaw the snow.

Apparently all was quiet; no fox or fisher appeared on the back track, no great, soft-winged owl swept among the evergreen tops. Then the rabbit ventured to start across the open space on the ice of the Stillwater. It sprang while facing the swamp from which it had come, turned in mid-air, and landed 31 inches beyond, facing toward the other side. Then came jumps toward the further side: "Inches, 53, 50, 54, 73, 49, 84 (7 feet), 69, 79, 48, 52, 59, 44, 70, 59, 36, 32." At the end of the 32-inch jump, the animal's feet slipped as it sprang, and it landed with its head toward the Stillwater—toward its back track once more. Evidently, however, the slip startled it, for when it landed 23 inches beyond, it at once sprang again, 34 inches, landing facing the swamp it had started toward, and then in the next jump turned in mid-air and landed once more facing the Stillwater it had just crossed. The alders and a shadowing balsam were now overhead. Satisfied that no pursuer was on its trail, it cautiously entered the swamp, and in its shade, forgot the dread venture in the moonlight.

Their tracks show that timid animals all fear the forest openings. A deer will sometimes walk back and forth along the edge of a clearing for a hundred rods, taking short steps, and stopping at frequent intervals, before venturing to go out and eat the apples from a wild tree. A bear track, described by my brother, approached a tramway through the woods. "He came with his usual length of stride to the top of a rise of ground which at that point flanks the old road. Here he slackened his pace, as the shorter steps indicated. Probably he stopped once or twice in his tracks, but that was not fully evident. When he came to the very edge of the narrow chopping, although it was well grown up to briers and young hardwoods, his step shortened until he placed one foot ahead of the other at a distance of one inch. Thus the wise old brute crept along for about four yards. Undoubtedly he halted here more than once. At the end of these carefully taken steps, he came to a little descent in the ground, and down this he walked with his ordinary length of stride. But at the foot of this he seemed to become suddenly aware of his recklessness, and once more, for about three yards, he carefully planted one foot just before the other. Then he relaxed his intense attention and two more rods brought him to his jump across the ditch to the old wooden tram."

A fox shows the same dread of an opening. One, for instance, came to the Apple Tree Clearing, an opening in the woods that is five rods long and three rods wide at the widest. For some reason the fox decided to cross the open, though it might easily have gone around. Beginning to run two rods from the edge, it raced with increasing jumps over the snow, galloping, with its paws one behind the other. The jumps across the clearing were, in inches, 78, 70, 60, 72, 80, 93, 74, 78, 72, 56, 74, etc. Between the last two landing-places there was an oddity in that the fox, as it passed over, dropped a paw on a little hummock, with a light touch, for what reason I could not tell. Familiarity with the history of that little opening led me to think that a trapper had put a chunk of bait somewhere in it, with poisoned pills of lard around it for the fox. The fox, however much tempted, had its suspicions, and its longest jump, 93 inches, cleared the faint impression left by an old snow-shoe trail through the clearing. I should like to know what that fox thought afterwards of the tracks I made when measuring its tracks. In measuring I took the distance from the leading paw of each jump. The paws were put on the snow nearly equi-distant. The lengths spanned by the various impressions made at each jump were 33, 33, 31, 29 inches, etc., the 29-inch track being the gathering for the 80-inch jump, and the 36-inch track representing the landing from the 93-inch spring. In general, the longest jumps of animals are preceded by a comparatively short jump or two, and are followed by a short jump.

Usually, when a fox approaches a man's trail, of whatever age, in the woods it displays much anxiety. In dozens of fox tracks crossing old snow-shoe tracks, I have never seen an instance where a fox stepped in the snow-shoe track. But they follow sleigh-roads for rods at a time. Sometimes, however, a fox fails to notice the snow-shoe track till it is almost under paw. This startles the fox, and it invariably springs back and runs several jumps away from the suspicious depression and odor in the snow. A fox thus startled will sometimes run toward the track three or four jumps, but, losing its nerve, turn back, afraid even to jump over the trail. Usually, after two or three attempts, the fox will clear the man-track, doubtless jumping pretty high.

Fear is the most impressive characteristic of animal trails; it is easily seen when one has mastered the rudiments of the snow language. It takes keener observation to see other workings of the animal mind, but an old trapper becomes marvelously adept in reading trails. I followed a fisher track with one for a considerable distance. The snow was deep and loose, making snow-shoeing very tiresome. The fisher (pekan, mustella pennanti) usually plunges along with jumps from three to four feet long. A very impressive track it makes, giving one the idea of great strength in reserve. But in the deep, loose snow, this fisher became tired. It ran half a mile, then walked a hundred yards, and walking is the summit of degradation for the racers of the weasel tribe.

"See how mad he is!" the trapper remarked; and sure enough, when my attention had been called to it, the track did show "mad." Breasting the snow, flipping its paws, and waving its tail from side to side, the fisher ploughed along, at last beginning to run again, writing its anger at the bad going in the fluffy snow, by flipping the snow in all directions at every step and jump.

When contrasted with a porcupine's trail, through the same kind of snow, the fisher's characteristics stand out plainly. The porcupine walks slowly through the soft snow. Its wide, heavy body ploughs a trench, sometimes six inches deep, with levees on either side. It puts its heels flat on the snow, plantigrade, which many other animals seldom or never do. Plodding along, in no hurry, on its way from a rock-den to a hemlock or birch tree, its trail is the most careless of all in the woods. Its steps measure in inches, "10, 11, 11, 12, 10, 11, 10+¹⁄₂, 10+¹⁄₂, 10, 11," etc., the steps of its fore-paws being of different length from those of its hind-paws, and the steps of the right side different from those on the left, with the result that the porcupine's is the crookedest trail to be found in the woods. Apparently it never thinks of walking or going in a straight line as other animals do. Moreover, it drags its toes as it lifts its paws, and comes down heel first, making in some respects the most interesting of woods trails. In Wisconsin the porcupine is protected by law, for it is the one animal in the woods which a lost and starving man can kill with a club. Its spines protect it from most aggression, till the fisher comes upon it. The fisher kills and eats porcupines, in spite of the armor, which is one reason why woodsmen take delight in the fisher. They consider the lithe, strong-jawed fighter more admirable than the armor-plated hulk.

When one has studied trails in the snow for a time, the animals cease to be mere foxes and fishers and rabbits. One learns to recognize certain individuals; then indeed is one a silent spectator of the pageant of forest nature. Once, when living in a logging camp between the hauling and driving seasons, I knew a great hare. He was the biggest rabbit I ever saw. When he fled from me, he crossed the open hardwood, disdaining the thick balsam swamps, and when I saw that fact in his 10-foot jumps, I was glad I could n't kill him. Then there was a fisher, with a runway perhaps thirty miles long, a great circle which it did not leave. An otter, too—but to go on seems needless. One may even have an unseen, much loved, and decidedly worth-while acquaintance in a deer-mouse.