Adventure In Adventure OutAmherst College Outing Club – Tracking Program
At the end of March, Eric and Farlin took Amherst College Outing Club out tracking in Montague. Starting along the side of the Connecticut river, the group saw beaver tracks, raccoon tracks, and mink tracks. They also saw wild turkeys making new tracks and lighting out in flight across the river. In the words of Farlin, “If you’ve never seen a turkey soar, you haven’t lived.” The substrate along the river was muddy and excellent for finding tracks.
For the rest of the day they tracked as many individual animal tracks as they could to see how long they could stay on their trail. They tracked a deer, a coyote, a squirrel, and a cotton tail rabbit in the sandy substrate of the glacial till in the Montague flats.
Farlin and Eric covered topics including: Stride, gait, weight distribution, the subtleties of identifying the difference between canine and feline tracks, and interpreting the movements and methods of local animals.
Throughout they day, as they learned and practiced their knew tracking skills, the students were able to take time to connect and get to know each other better.
Eric and the group spotting cotton-tail rabbit tracks
And some coyote tracks