First Camera Check

Trip Date: April 2015

Back in January, you may remember, I talked about my remote wildlife camera that my wife got me as a gift.  If you don't know what I'm talking about please see my previous post titled Camera Placement.  Anyway, in early April I trekked back out to the camera to change the batteries, swap the SD memory card, and more importantly see what I captured.  

While hiking to the camera I came across these canine tracks that I guessed were made by a wolf.  They were coming from the direction of my camera, so I was pretty excited to see if they'd walked by it.  That way I'd know for sure what made them.

The diameter of my lens cap is 73mm (2.9"), so these are decent sized canine tracks

They looked like wolf tracks to me

With wolf tracks, it's difficult to tell how many wolves were there because they tend to walk in a single-file line and will step in each other's tracks.  Sometimes what looks like one wolf could actually be the entire pack.  As I kept walking I noticed, what appeared to be, a second set of tracks.  Now I was thinking that there was more than one canid leaving their mark.

You can see two paw prints above and to the right of my lens cap, as well as a larger print below and to the left

After spotting these prints, I hurried to my camera with eager anticipation.  I was not disappointed with the results...

The first critter I captured was this Snowshoe Hare and there were a lot of photos of this little guy!

I was right, Wolves!  Three of them to be exact!

Two were the more common grey colour, but one was jet black

I also had a couple photos of Coyotes

The most recent photos on the camera were again of Wolves.  These must have been the ones that left the paw prints I came across as they were only a few days apart.  

In total I ended up with 30 photos of Snowshoe Hares, 12 of Coyotes, and 18 of Wolves.  That doesn't even include all the hikers, climbers, and fat bikers that also crossed paths with my camera.  So far it looks to be a great spot and now that Spring has arrived, I can only hope those numbers will continue to increase.

I created a Facebook album, titled Wildlife Camera, where I will continue to post all of the best photos.  Stay tuned for my next update!