Mammal Tracks & Sign: A Guide to North American Species

Rating:
Summary: Complete
Review: Quick reference track and scat guides. Best animal gaits descriptions and illustrations. Beautiful photography. A "How to get started" chapter. Great stories interspersed. Unbelievable amount of research. All sorts of signs covered. Massive. Clearly, the most complete guide to tracking ever.

Rating:
Summary: The most comprehensive tracking guide available!
Review: This book is astounding! The number and quality of the pictures is nothing short of amazing while the breadth of detailed tracking information is unparalleled. This guide is the most comprehensive one out there and should be in every tracker/naturalists backpack and bookshelf. Full of information never before printed it can help you answer many questions you may have while in the field. I love it and bought two, one for home and one for the woods!

Rating:
Summary: The best of the best
Review: This book is it! I have been tracking for about a year now and i recently baught this book and it is the best i have seen. it is both handy in the field and at home moreover the personal accounts from mark are fabulous and add an important dimension to tracking that illustrates his thinking that most books leave out. I have been studying deer in my area and this book has been by far the most helpful of all the books i have used. Thanks Mark!

Rating:
Summary: The Only Book You'll Need
Review: This is probably one of the best books I've ever purchased as an avid nature enthusiast.

I have several animal tracking books, including Paul Rezendes', Tracking and the Art of Seeing, and this book is even better. The real photographs of tracks, scat, den sites, and kill sites of mammals (and birds) are second to none.

I reference this book often in the field while hiking. I live in New Jersey where the bobcat is an endangered species, and thanks to this book, I was able to accurately identify both a bobcat's den and a recent kill site on a rocky ridge in a nearby state park. It was quite an exciting find.

I would recommend this book time and time again!

Rating:
Summary: Mammal Tracks & Sign
Review: When Darwin wrote the "Origin of Species" it was eventually refered to as the BOOK, being the undisputed standard reference on the subject. Mark Elbroch's "Mammal Tracks& Sign" will likewise become the standard referance on the subject of Animal Tracking, and likewise should be called "The BOOK"!!!! It has raised the bar to a very high, and professional, level and offers a wealth of knowledge,insight and wisdom to the tracking world. Well done likewise to Stackpole Books who have spared no efforts toward creating a most pleasing, and beautiful, layout!!!
I have been tracking for many years, and have been likewise teaching the Art & Science of Tracking to secondary school students for the past 12 years, and find this book to be the best possible tool that I could ever imagine having. In a time where education is being called upon to inculcate a new awareness of life into the curriculum, and to generate a new sense of hope and purpose in our collective vision for the future, this book is a blessing. Science, rather then the dry and detached technological view that many experience it as, can become the most wonderful tool for exploring the magic and mystery that life constantly holds for us. We need only break out of old patterns of thought, and explore new territory. Tracking, as an Art and Science, has accomplished this for me as an educator, and has been a catylist for many of the students that I am responsible for in terms of preparing them to be aware, outwardly as well as inwardly. Mark Elboch's "Mammal Tracks & Sign" is a must have for all those working in the field, and the "BOOK" for any educator (elementary through PhD) who wants to push their own art of bringing the world to life for their students. Buy this book, and head for the woods!!!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent but with a caveat or two
Review: While I agree with most of the praise that others readers of this book have expressed, there are a few oddities. Most of the tracks, etc. are photographed without a scale to give an immediate impression of relative size. Additionally, some of the schematic drawings are sometimes confusingly labeled, though the meanings of each become clear with a few re-readings. I guess I wish that the author had asked less experienced trackers to review the manuscript, as a lot of these minor details would probably have been cleared up prior to publication. That being said, one of the major strengths of this guide is the section that illustates various gaits and the subsequent trails they potentially leave. Very few, if any, other guides out there give this difficult aspect of tracking the exhaustive treatment that this author does; a much-needed treatise, so thank you!