A really warm and sunny weekend here in the East of England. After the last couple of weekends spent bushcrafting, I decided to do a bit of tracking this weekend in my local woods.

After a bit of rain early last week, it wasn’t difficult to spot some Muntjac tracks between east and west wood. I spent some time plotting the trail with small sticks and orange string (you can just see it in the pic below) something I’d not done before. Stepping back I realised how the deer had walked around a puddle, crossed the track on the slight incline and walked into the thicket. On the same trail, I spotted what I think is a couple of cat tracks of the domestic variety.


I had lunch in the wood with my Bushbuddy. No, I didn’t have anyone with me. It’s the Bushbuddy stove I ordered from Canada that arrived on Friday. I’ll do a first review of this later but first impressions are that this stove is excellent. A cup of coffee and full English breakfast later, I resumed my tracking.

Next stop was the north side of the field where there’s usually a lot of fox activity. Well, not so much activity as lack of it as I stumbled (literally) on a sunbathing fox. He was lying flat out on his side with his back to me. Luckily I was walking quietly and he lifted a weary head only to slump it down again. Looks like everything was taking advantage of the excellent weather.

My camera was in a small camera bag at my side. In retrospect I should really have retreated and sorted myself out but as it was I tried to get the camera out of the bag in situ. I didn’t do this very successfully and the resulting noise woke the fox for a second time and on this occasion he was on his toes and away. It was a great sight though. I couldn’t have been more than 6 feet away from him.

I wandered back towards woods checking a popular calvert on the way (Badger tracks at the bottom) to follow the well worn mud path. I followed some dog tracks along the path. I estimated it about alsatian size and appeared to have no owner. Not many people use this area so I can only assume the dog ran off by itself. It was on this path that I spotted the tracks in the pic.

I was a little perplexed because we generally don’t get Fallow or Roe in these woods. The last ocassion was a rather large hole in a fence which has since been stitched up. I tried to remember what Jon had said about the differences between Roe and Fallow deer but I still had trouble. It was only when I stood up when I noticed the left cleave on the biggest track was slightly concave towards the tip. The size of the track also suggested that this might be Fallow, although I stand to be corrected.
The four tracks seemed to be grouped together and the next set of tracks were about 6 feet away. This suggested that the deer was running or even jumping or bounding although again I still have trouble identifying the different gaits. I’m not even sure whether the 4 tracks belong to the same animal! I think I’ll stick to Muntjacs!

Nevertheless, I had a good day out and apart from dropping the camera in the mud (ooops… but no harm done – just a few dirty pictures ha ha ha) it was reasonably successful.

I’ll talk about that stove next time. Thanks for the visit.

Pablo.