There’s something special about venturing into Yellowstone on a cold or snowy day. Nature seems to be at its best during these long winter months. For the park’s wildlife, every move is calculated; wasted energy this time of year can be the difference between surviving and not surviving.  

As visitors, humans get the chance to study how certain animals move across the landscape. We get to read the tracks left in the snowpack as a way of learning the areas past, or at least what has occurred since the last storm.

Identifying tracks can be a great way for a family to spend a day in the park. Whether you are exploring from a car on one of the park’s plowed roads or from skis along a trail, take some time to recreate what the animal tracks are telling you.

Some mammals like bison, follow each other across large open meadows. The long trenches they make, wind through the snow in a meander, which makes the traveling easier for the bison toward the rear. Bison use their heads to “shovel” snow away from the dried grasses below, and you can see where they have fed or rested.

You may identify areas where more than one species have had an interaction. It could be where wolves have tested large mammals like bison, or where a coyote has pounced through the snow while hunting rodents. It could be just a wing imprint left behind by some predatory bird.

Do some investigating. Find out at a visitor center when the last snow fall occurred and how cold it has been. Look at some animal prints closely to estimate how long ago they were left; newer prints tend to be crisp, while older prints become rounded on the edges.

One local animal tracker believes that tracks are only a piece of the story. Try to go beyond the tracks themselves. Look at the geography of an area to see if you can guess what animals were doing when they came through.

These bison tracks here are heading in that direction. By looking at the flow of the river, we can see they were headed down stream and maybe to lower elevations.

By spending a day studying animal tracks, you can develop a deeper understanding of nature. In the long run, the more we understand wilderness, the more likely we are to protect places like Yellowstone National Park.

Video © 2008 Yellowstone Park Foundation