Customer Reviews

A Field Guide to Mammal Tracking in North America

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This book has so much information about tracking that it will take a while to digest it all. The gait descriptions are thoroughly explained. Finer points of tracking and how to see tracks are well-defined. Explanations are written clearly and amply illustrated to make learning easier. This guide shows you how to identify not only the tracks, but the patterns and other signs left behind by animals. I have an extensive collection of books on tracking and I rate this one among the top three.

I've read a number of tracking books and this one is the best. Easy to follow. Sensible. Lots on gait patterns and scats. James tells you what he knows and is careful not to pretend to know more than he does.

Animal tracks are more than just impressions in the snow, mud, or dirt. They are a record of what an animal was doing, where it was going, and what it was thinking... IF you know how to read them.

Jim Halfpenny has spent most of his life following, recording, and interpreting the elusive tracks of animals. This book focuses on mammals.

Now there are a number of books on bird and mammal tracks. A Field Guide to Mammal Tracking in North America is much more than a collection of diagrams. This book:

* discusses the anatomy and behavior behind tracks

* develops a rationale on how to look at and measure a track

* revels the differences between a gait, a step, a jump, and a straddle

* discusses tracking techniques (Halfpenny gives seminars on this topic, and it is included as Chapter 4 in this book)

* reviews track characteristics of canids, felids, lagomorphs, ungulates, and rodents, along with bears, weasels, raccoons, opossums, and shrews.

* discusses "scatology"

* presents a number of interesting cases that he then works through to show the reader how to approach a mystery track and identify the animal, and its behavior, correctly.

This is not a very expensive book. It could have been even less expensive with the elimination of the 12 full-page color illustrations of selected mammals in the center of the book. They were nice, but distracting, and most of the drawings don't even have pictures of tracks, the point of the book!

This book would have been improved with use of a digital camera in capturing images of tracks. However, Halfpenny has been collecting them his whole life, certainly prior to the common use of this technique! This is a "must have" book for the serious tracker.... a bargain through and through.

More in depth tracks, skills, info, much better than any of Tom Browns books, also does not contain T.B.'s spirituality. The actual art this man retains is amazing!!! GREAT BOOK!!! There is a reason this book is almost always sold out!

Great book to have on a tracker's shelf. I do not think this book should be the "soul" book an individual buys. If you would like to have just one book on the subject, Elbroch and Rezendez are the book you need to look at. This book is for gaits and behavior.

Many times in the field you only see a small portion of a track, or an indistinct line of marks, like in snow a line of tracks may be a line of little holes in the snow. . is there a way to still tell what the animal is and what it was doing. . YES. The answers are in this book in Dr. Halfpenny's methodical way of measuring gaits, stride, animal size and other clues. With this guide, as well as Mark Elbroch's heavier one on Mammal Tracks & Sign you can learn to track animals. By that I mean you can tell what animals were there, what they were doing and when, even when you can't see picture book examples in the mud or dust. This book (my third copy) is in my pack, and Mark's is in my car (with a second copy at home).

I like this Tracking theme and I wonder why there are many species living in North Mexico and South USA that are not included, like the Jaguar that still lives in Sonora and occasionally in Arizona. I will recomend other track books as:
Mammal Tracks & Sign: A Guide to North American Species