Caribou are one of the most traveled animals on the planet. They may travel hundreds to thousands of miles each year going from summer to winter range and back again. If you were to visit Alaska or parts of Canada you would eventually cross their tracks. Identifying their tracks is fairly easy.
Caribou tracks are very distinctive, being nearly round in shape.
Their hoof has two toes like other deer but rather than triangular or tear drop in shape each toe on a Caribou is crescent shaped. The overall shape of their foot allows them to stay up on top of the snow better. Caribou tracks measures between 4 to 5 inches long.
This track below shows a good example of a Caribous dew claws which are often present. Their dew claws help them from sinking in the deep snows.
Caribou scat resembles that of most deer. It can either be in a loose pellet form or clumped pellets resulting from from a succulent diet. The scat measures from 1/2 to 5/8 of an inch in diameter.
A Caribous diet depending on the time of year consists of lichens, moss, leaves, grasses and fungi.
One of the few tracks that would overlap the range of Caribou would be that of the Moose. Moose tracks have the more common heart or tear dropped shape to them. There shouldn’t be any confusion in the two just based on their shape. Moose scat is roughly 3/4 of an inch in diameter and the pellets are around 1 inch long, much larger than the scat of Caribou.
Do you think it’s a male or female in this image?
Yes, it’s a trick question, both sexes have antlers but we’ll never know which one this is. I didn’t get close enough to find out.
Enjoy the Outdoors !!
Hi there,
I came across your website and wanted to know if you would allow us to use a few of your images for an online piece we’re working on for Stantec.com. We’d like to potentially use the scat image and dew claws image in an image carousel to tell the story about how our ES team monitors and protects Caribou in Northeast BC.
The set-up would be similar to this: http://www.stantec.com/our-work/projects/creative-projects/iqaluit-airport0.html#.VPXT9fnF-DM
There will also be a print version of the online piece. The print piece would highlight 12 of our top projects over the last year and one project would be included from each sector. The booklet would not be sold to 3rd parties but would be used as a take away piece for our clients to show the creative aspect that is involved in each of the projects we design.
Is this something you would allow us to use your images within? If so, is there a fee for usage?
Hope this information helps! If you have any other questions please let me know.