What’s going on out on the land?
Atlas Bone of White-tailed Deer
On one of my tracking study calls a photo was presented and everyone was asked to identify the bone that was shown. Somehow a few people were able to identify it rather quickly. I had never heard of the bone before but took note. I love learning about the skeletal structures of animals and spend a lot of time on it, but how did I miss a bone that so is so important to an animal, and that so many others knew? I needed to learn more about this bone.
White-tailed Deer Sternum
I went for a walk by myself the other day to scope out an area I was going to be going with some students. I wanted to see which areas would be worth investigating and get a sense of how long it would take to get to different landmarks I thought might be worthwhile to go with them. While I was out in a part of the forest I didn’t even consider would be that interesting, I came across a bone, or a series of bones rather, which I wasn’t familiar with. I had to take some photos and knew I would be looking it up when I got home.
Metacarpal or Metatarsal?
I have been thinking a lot about bones lately.. I guess I think a lot about bones all the time, but lately I have been trying to consider them more completely, in relation to one another, and to better be able to identify which bones are which, where they come from on the body, and which bodies the particular bones I find make up? There are so many questions that come wrapped in bone that it’s kind of fun to take the time to consider some of them.
How To Age A White-tailed Deer by Looking At The Teeth
A lot has been studied and written about on the topic of White-tailed Deer. But despite reading a ton of it, I still find it trying to find all the various pieces of information and put it all together, unless I write it up myself. Here is my attempt to consolidate and better understand how we can come to know a deer’s age at the time of their death by looking at the teeth which remain.
White-tailed Deer consuming Water Hemlock
White-tailed Deer consume a lot of different things. It seems everytime I see some Deer browse, it appears to be a new forb, shrub, or tree which I hadn’t seen a Deer browse before. I wanted to look into the foods which Deer browse more generally, but also focus on a new discovery of Deer browse on the aerial parts of Water Hemlock.
What The Toes Show - A question of deer hooves
For the past four years there has been a bit of a conundrum at the tracking apprenticeship. There has been a theory passed around to be argued and analyzed, challenged and sustained. It has confronted, confused, and confounded many of us who have tried to scry a little more understanding from a couple of seemingly basic teachings, all from the hooves of White-tailed Deer.
A mystery while tracking in Lake of Bays, 2022.08.13
The skill set of identifying a fresh trail with certainty in the jumbled quilt of the Summer forest floor is definitely an art and science with which I have little purchase… but a skill set that I do feel a growing confidence about is bone identification, and while making our way up the hill in the leaf little there was a small mandible laying fairly exposed with the lingual surface (the side which would be closest to the tongue in the living animal) facing the canopy.
Emergent Kithship
I have written before about how knowing the land creates understanding of relationships. I have written a lot about it. That’s pretty much what this whole project is all about. But I want to look a little more at how that sense of relationship happens, and what are the triggers which bring it up for us?
What bones did we find?
I went for a walk with my partner and we found a bunch of cool things while we were out, like Yellow Birch seeds, lots of White-tailed Deer scat, all sorts of neat lichens, and also a couple of bones, which based on their size were most likely from the White-tails.
The first bones I found were pretty interesting, quite a good length and size. It was also cool because it seemed like two bones fused together. I figured this would be a simple bone to figure out where it was from on this other animal, and I figured I should learn more about what purposes this bone supports.
Follow The Food
Knowing the plants who are in relationship with the animals we track can help us find the animals we want to learn about. They can point in the direction of where the animals are going or where they will be going. They can show us if we are in the right environment or if we need to keep looking.
This entry is pretty much a story of a recent afternoon spent tracking in the Lake of Bays region, just South West of Algonquin Park, where we spent a few hours following the food and then finding the animal.
Boyne Valley Tracking Journal, 11.12.2021
Once the two of our crew had returned from bringing a car to the next road over, we began our journey through the Boyne Valley, North of Orangeville. I had been there before. The last time was 2019 with my second year of the apprenticeship. It was a great place for trailing White Tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) and was the first place I had ever seen Northern River Otter (Lontra canadensis) tracks. I was stoked to be back.
Tracking Journal for 2021.08.15
I watched in awe and wonder, struck by the beauty of this ordinary everyday animal whom we all have seen, likely ignored and passed by on countless occasions. I took a few photos and just continued to watch in amazement and joy at this wonderful being who only a moment ago was pretty much invisible to me. How long had they been hanging out right beside us? Why weren’t they scared? I still havn’t researched all I’d like to but I will be digging deep into the books this week to learn as much as I can. Sometimes it just takes a short experience to open a whole world of wonder that I end up having to pursue.