This past winter found almost zero snow cover on the ground in NY state. First week in Feb. we spent some time at a remote Adirondack Mtn. deer camp that is a few miles off the road and usually inaccessible that time of year, usually 2 to 3 ft. of snow then.
One morning I went for a walk down a old logging trail & came across a large set of canine tracks, followed them for 3 or 4 hundred yards down the road. A single set of tracks, straight in a line with a good span between them, longer than I could take a comfortable long stride.
Then the single track turned into 3 tracks, these animals were walking exactly in the same tracks for several hundered yards. Snow cover was a few inches of frozen over crust, hard enough to support me and 1/2 " of fresh light snow from the night before. This caused me to look at the tracks closer, no camera with me, so I lay a dollar over the track & folded it over for size reference. Size turned out to be 3 1/2" long by 2 1/2" wide. Do coyotes ever walk like that in line? I've seen lots of coyote tracks in my area, but never like that. Size also seemed to be really large, tracks were quite distinct, with no melting around them to make them seem larger. I've never seen a 'yote track that large, either. I know that the NY state Dept. of Conservation has noted that DNA tests show that there is a lot of wolf blood from the Canadian Algonquin wolf-pack inter-bred with the coyote population in NY state. Any thought on the track size / single file walking thing? Any thought on the possibility of a wolf? NY state says no wolves here.
One morning I went for a walk down a old logging trail & came across a large set of canine tracks, followed them for 3 or 4 hundred yards down the road. A single set of tracks, straight in a line with a good span between them, longer than I could take a comfortable long stride.
Then the single track turned into 3 tracks, these animals were walking exactly in the same tracks for several hundered yards. Snow cover was a few inches of frozen over crust, hard enough to support me and 1/2 " of fresh light snow from the night before. This caused me to look at the tracks closer, no camera with me, so I lay a dollar over the track & folded it over for size reference. Size turned out to be 3 1/2" long by 2 1/2" wide. Do coyotes ever walk like that in line? I've seen lots of coyote tracks in my area, but never like that. Size also seemed to be really large, tracks were quite distinct, with no melting around them to make them seem larger. I've never seen a 'yote track that large, either. I know that the NY state Dept. of Conservation has noted that DNA tests show that there is a lot of wolf blood from the Canadian Algonquin wolf-pack inter-bred with the coyote population in NY state. Any thought on the track size / single file walking thing? Any thought on the possibility of a wolf? NY state says no wolves here.