How To Tell a Mountain Lion track From a Wolf

Well, the big event this past week was my birthday. Egads! I turned sixty-one. It's really hard to imagine but I know it's true when I look at actors from my era and they are getting mighty long in the tooth. Every time I see favorites like Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford I now wonder will I ever see them again. Both these boys are in very good shape for their age so I'm hoping many more times. I just watched Gran Torino for the first time and what a fantastic movie.

My house herd of mule deer dropped by to wish me happy birthday. There is a herd of about twenty deer that pass through about once a day. I had a photo of the group but that dumb Lumix camera malfunctioned and I lost all the photos. Either that or I did. :) But, I did get some new mule deer shots with my Nikons. Nothing to write home about though.

Mulie Doe

Spotted one nice little buck. He won't be having those antlers for long. This is about the time of year when they start to shed them. I wish I knew where they dropped them. For all the wandering we have done we have found very few sheds.

Mulie Buck

As always, when you live in the woods, the weather was/is a major topic. We have been in the midst of a major thaw. The snow has been melting at a prodigious rate turning our world into an ice skating rink. I don't mind cold. I don't mind snow. I loathe and fear ice. It is so treacherous. One false step and you can go down for the count. I wear Kahtoolas when I hike on ice. These are not for urban walking.

The drama for the week was what looked like a mountain lion kill. We stumbled upon a place that showed a lot of blood in the snow. I had seen fresh wolf tracks but knew there were also mountain lions about. After examining the area closely, I concluded that the destruction had been the work of a mountain lion. The main sign was the tracks. Cat tracks are different than wolf tracks in two main features. First and most importantly cats have retractable claws wolves do not. So when you are looking at cat tracks you will not see the telltale toenails. The other thing is that the lion paw is more rounded than the wolf.

Scene of the Crime

You can see from the photo that quite a altercation took place with one party getting the worst of it. Not very pretty but that is the dichotomy of nature.

Mountain Lion Spoor

Interesting to me is the fact that the average wolf is smaller than the cat. The average weight 0f a wolf is 110 to 130 as apposed to the lion which is 120 to 145 pounds. Yet, the wolf has a larger footprint. The wolf front paw is approximately 4.5" x 4.0" and the lion is more on the order of 3.5" x 3.6".

Wolf Track

So, now it's Sunday. The fog is as thick as soup. Koty sez let's just hang at home and so we will. Hard to imagine January is more than half way gone. It will be spring before we know it.

Hanging Around

Cheers for this week.


©Kinsey Barnard Photography

JASPER, ATHABASCA & THE VALLEY OF THE FIVE LAKES

September 7, 2007

Well, we finally had a morning without mishap. The only problem was it was raining and the mountains were shrouded in clouds. We took off at 7:00 am anyway. Our first idea was to go to Edith Clavell Meadow. Unfortunately, the higher we went the more rain and clouds we ran into. We went as far as the hostel, turned around and went back down the mountain. Turns out dogs can’t go there right now anyway as they are doing some kind of Caribou reclamation project. They didn’t want my kind disturbing them. It seems wolves are caribou natural predators and dogs remind them of wolves. That being the case, imagine the impression I would make! That’s ok. We respect that sort of thing totally.

We headed on down 93A and came across a big bull elk fording the
Athabasca River. Thanks to poor lighting conditions, and me, mom didn’t get any keeper photographs. She misses more shots thanks to my irrational exuberance. As soon as she rolled down the window I tried to jump out while making a pretty impressive racket. I don’t mean to do it. I just can’t seem to control myself when I see wildlife. I just want to get after it and completely forget my manners.

A little farther down the road the same thing happened again only this time it was a pair of wolves, one tawny and one black. The tawny was huge and wore a radio collar. The black was much smaller and I couldn’t tell if it had a collar or not. Anyway, I repeated my performance trying to jump out the window and screeching my lungs out. I thought mom was going to strangle me. The thing is, I’m usually in a crate but Shadow is too small so I’m just in the backseat. As soon as a window goes down I’m there. I know mom’s windmill of a mind is working overtime on a solution. I hope it isn’t too awful. I really am sorry but I seriously can’t help myself. Anyway, I thought these guys might be cousins or something. I wanted to get their attention!

We continued on down 93A. Mom was not a happy camper. We stopped at Athabasca Falls. The place was crawling with tourists and it was raining. I got left in the car while mom went to check it out. Bummer.



We then headed back north on the Icefields Parkway (93) and stopped at a spot where they launch white water rafts on the Athabasca River. We walked along the riverbank for about an hour. Mom took some photos of mushrooms and stuff and a little animal mom later identified it as a pine marten. After that we called it a morning. Went back to the campground, ate lunch and took a siesta.

Around two thirty we hit 93 South again. It was still mostly cloudy. We headed for The Valley of the Five Lakes. This is a really neat place to hike. We got rained on some but we also had some sunny moments. The trail is well traveled but since we were there later in the day there were not very many people around. The five lakes, which apparently don’t have names just numbers, are crystal clear and some have that incredible green/blue/turquoise color. We spent about three hours hiking around these lakes and I think mom may have gotten one or two photographs that met her standards. This was especially good, as she gets a little cranky when she doesn’t get any photos that light her candle, so to speak. ☺

That’s about it for this day. Hope the weather is better tomorrow.

Until next time ...

Lakota Sunrise

©Kinsey Barnard