Winter Wolf Tracking

In this week’s edition: Winter Wolf Tracking with 360.ee

Adventure tour specialists 360.ee recently invited Geoff from Wild Estonia Weekly along to one of their wolf tracking day trips. It was a 4-5 hour snowshoeing walk through the beautiful snowy forest and marshland of Kõrvamaa, one of many protected areas in Estonia and only an hours drive south-east of Tallinn.

Getting ready for the walk

Once we had arrived at Kõrvamaa, it didn’t take long to find what we were looking for. We hadn’t even put our snow shoes on yet and after only a few minutes walking we found a chain of paw prints of a wolf that had trotted along the middle of the road sometime recently. It was hard to tell exactly how long ago, as there hasn’t been any fresh snow in the last few days. Each paw print was about 10-12cm long, bigger than I had expected, and certainly bigger than most dogs that you might see being led along a footpath or perhaps sitting in someone’s handbag.

Wolf paw prints

From then on, every few minutes would bring a new discovery. The next was a urine stain on the snow by the side of the road – the sign of a dominant male and/or female wolf during the late winter mating period. Then more paw prints on the road leading into and out of the forest. With snow shoes on, we followed our guide Bert along what might be a rough walking trail in warmer months, but at the moment was covered in deep snow. Here again were wolf tracks, but this time the snow was deeper and you could see the way that their paws had pushed into the snow with each step.

Our guide Bert talking about wolf tracks leading into the forest.

We walked on through the trees and soon came across the tell-tale signs of wild pigs. First there were the ‘pig paths’ which are well trodden paths cut through the deep snow and then there were the places under the shelter of bushes and trees where pigs bed down to sleep. It was interesting to discover that the wolf tracks were so close to these paths, as it clearly reveals how these two tough and very social animals share the same territory. It made me wonder how often they interact and what actually happens when they do.

A pig trail through the snow

Before stopping for a light lunch of hot tea, pea & ham soup and sweet treats, we journeyed through marshland and open forest, finding an impressive set of elk tracks as well as possible Pine Marten (Martes martes) and hare tracks and some surprisingly snake like tracks of a small mouse or shrew.

Lunch stop

After lunch, we kept moving on into new places on our loop back to the starting point and were rewarded with some fresh elk tracks (Alces alces). There was some excitement in the air as perhaps we might be lucky enough to have a close encounter with the largest of animals in the forest. First it was the tell-tale footprints and drag marks of its bifurcated hooves in the snow, then it was the broken and chewed twigs and needles of a young spruce tree.

Elk tracks in the snow

Bert led us onward to find where the elk had spent the night. The deep depression in the snow and the size of its gait told us that this elk was of an impressive size. Deep gouge marks on the bark of a nearby tree told us more about its winter diet.

Tree bark gouged by an elk

Another surprising discovery for me was when Bert found the tracks of one of the Grouse family, probably the Hazel Grouse (Bonasa bonasia). Each evening this bird digs itself into the snow cover and spends the night safe and warm ‘underground’. In the mornings it bursts out from its snowy blanket and flies off for another day in the forest leaving a burrow trail, small depression and feather marks in the snow. Once Bert had explained this simple but effective winter adaptation to us, the relatively easy to miss tracks became a clear and compelling trace of another night of winter survival night in one birds life.

Hazel Grouse

Hazel Grouse tracks

Bert was obviously very knowledgeable and interested in the lives of Estonian wildlife and took every opportunity to follow a fresh set of tracks or to ‘read’ the wide variety of marks, scats and footprints that we found on our almost five hour meander. Following his GPS, we completed a long winding arc and found our way back to the road that we’d initially walked along and the paw prints that had greeted us at the start of the trip.

Bert talking about the territories of local wolf packs

Before joining the winter ‘Wolf Tracking’ trip I had imagined that the day might be a quiet and intense experience of stalking a pack of wolves through the forest, somewhat like going on a hunt. The day wasn’t really like this but any slight disappointment I felt was replaced with regular surprises and a different sort of excitement when it became clear that the forest was indeed wild with life and that, like a detective or Australian aboriginal tracker, we could indeed read this snow covered landscape with its marks and tracks and gain a frozen glimpse into the interesting lives of some of the innumerable animals that it supports.