Coyote Snow Tracks?

[captpschar]

I've been scouting Snoqualmie valley timberlands this year, and I've noticed something odd that I haven't got the experience to understand.  Hopefully you guys can shed some light on what I'm missing.

I'd put a lot of miles in looking for sign and tracks before the recent snows, and found lots of what appeared to be coyote sign, along with what I thought looked more like bobcat and potentially mountain lion, especially classic coyote scat laid on paths and roads, that seemed to indicate that there were plenty in the area.

Since the recent snows I've been out a few times to get a picture of what kinds of animals are moving around in the area, found plenty of deer, plenty of bobcat, some elk, and at least one mountain lion, but only one set of coyote tracks crossing a path briefly and otherwise zip. 

I'm confused about why I've found so many tracks of so many animals but so few coyote relative to the scat.  In my experience most animals will use paths and roads extensively when covering distance, so I expected to find much more coyote tracks than I did. 

In your experience, do coyotes spend a lot of off path and off road?  Do you think I've just been scouting at the edges of their territory and haven't found their main hunting grounds?  Perhaps the mountain lion(s) are pressuring them out of the area?  Maybe coyotes move much longer distances than I'd realized and spend way less time in any particular area than other predators?

Why so few tracks?  What am I missing?

[KFhunter]

difficult to answer all those questions as they're overly broad in scope, but the more time you spend in the woods noticing these types of things the better your understanding of animal movement and behavior will be.

It could be that the coyotes were moving down the trails and roads during the storm and their tracks were covered, it could be that the mt lion was moving to a new area or working that area for a while longer.

 

[Tracker0721]

Or depending on how much snow you got the coyotes stayed in the woods more as there’s less snow under the trees. Or if there’s a crust on top they’re light enough to walk on top. But when the snows deep they’ll prefer the path of least resistance, run some snowmobile tracks around then come the next day and I almost always find coyote tracks on the snowmobile trail. 

[captpschar]

difficult to answer all those questions as they're overly broad in scope, but the more time you spend in the woods noticing these types of things the better your understanding of animal movement and behavior will be.

It could be that the coyotes were moving down the trails and roads during the storm and their tracks were covered, it could be that the mt lion was moving to a new area or working that area for a while longer.

 

Or depending on how much snow you got the coyotes stayed in the woods more as there’s less snow under the trees. Or if there’s a crust on top they’re light enough to walk on top. But when the snows deep they’ll prefer the path of least resistance, run some snowmobile tracks around then come the next day and I almost always find coyote tracks on the snowmobile trail.

It might be that both of you have it!  The snow got to about a foot deep on the trails.  I'd bet that early on during the snow, they walked the trails and laid tracks, but as the snow mounted, they began to avoid the deeper snow on the trails, and as a result their tracks were covered as they moved through the trees instead.

This is something I hadn't thought through, that for a larger animal with longer legs, the brush remains difficult to move through because of their size, and the snow covered trail remains easy because of the length of their legs, so they continue to use that path, but for a medium-small animal, for which the brush isn't much of an obstacle, the snowed path represents a comparative challenge and they avoid it.

Perhaps the small body and large paws of the bobcat that allow it to walk easily on the surface of the snow explains why I would see their tracks, but not the coyotes, who could not stay on the surface of the snow.

Excellent info!  Thank you!