Tracking Apprenticeship Complete

The 9 month White Pine Tracking Apprenticeship had its last meeting this past weekend. It was an amazing learning experience. We completed the journey with a mock evaluation, simulating the Cybertracker evaluations, except the Dans say ours was a bit harder. We also did some really cool bear sign tracking and we got to hear people's presentations of their projects that they chose for the course.

I'm sad its over but I feel great about meeting all of my goals in this apprenticeship. I'm pretty sure I learned as much as I possibly could have. I completed all of the journals, met all of my project goals, and scored 98% on the evaluation - best in the class. The real evaluation is coming up in a couple weeks so hopefully I can carry my momentum onward and score well on that one.

Check out this sweet short-tailed weasel track. D'Arcy and I found this track under I-95 in Portsmouth, NH.

Here is some of the intense black bear sign that we found this weekend. A territorial male just smashed this living maple in half.

Here is another tree destroyed by territorial bears. They bite and scratch sap trees (Red Pine is a favorite) until it looks like this.

Here is an example of an eval question. It was actually three questions: 1. what animal made this track (in the big circle)? 2. Which gait is is using? 3. Which foot is this (little circle)?

This one I got wrong but I'm ok with that... its a toughy. Answers:

1. Frog (I said toad)

2. Hop (other options are bound, gallop, lope, trot, walk)

3. Hind right.