Game trails to nowhere?

[DaNewb]

So I was out exploring my area a few weeks ago while I was checking cameras and I ended up doing a bit of bushwhacking using OnX. I was moving N2S along a transition line between a stand of Fir and a stand of Alder. The Fir is Weyerhaeuser and the Alder is a family plot, separated by the lot line I was following.

Anyways, as I'm trekking through the timber, more on the fir side, I came across what appeared to be well-used game trail running E\W. I stopped long enough to walk maybe 50ft each direction from where I'd came across it, then marked the location in OnX, with plans to come back and place a camera and track it more fully.

When I got back to it a week or so later, I explored it fully. Heading east on the track it just meandered through the firs for a while and petered out.

Heading west on the track, into the alder, the brush got thick real quick...bull through it sorta thick. I could tell there was a track to follow, but the brush was so overgrown I would've never tried to pass through it otherwise. The track only went west a short distance, maybe 50yds or so before it ended in this tiny little clearing maybe 20-30ft across. No other exit I could see but the way I came. No tracks or sign at all.

I turned around and went back to my start and placed a cam facing west, but I don't see how anything large could be using the track to any purpose. It's been a couple weeks now and I'll be checking it in the next couple days.

Ever encountered a dead-end game trail like that before?

[JDArms1240]

Might just be a main “highway”, so to speak, in the travelings of a bunch of different deer/animals.  From there they probably have their own little trails that they break off and follow.

[TitusFord]

Animals tend to go underneath the brush when it gets that thick leaving little evidence of a trail. It’s common for alder stands to be so brushy you can't move.
Also alder stands tend to have more water availability and more food throughout making less reason for animals to stick to one path to go somewhere. They can go almost any direction and have food, cover and water in there.

[NOCK NOCK]

Might just be a main “highway”, so to speak, in the travelings of a bunch of different deer/animals.  From there they probably have their own little trails that they break off and follow.

This. 

Game trails/movement  are very similar to how us humans do it. As an example, when the spring migrations of MD happen, some FS roads are covered in deer tracks....all heading north to high elevations. much easier traveling long distances on an open back country road.

[Fidelk]

Once shot and dying, they have an amazing ability to find a game trail to run on for that last 40-50 yards.

[Bullkllr]

Sounds like nearly all game trails on the wetside.

[thom9719]

Game trails change depending on time of year and subsequent growth. Go back and check that trail in February. I'll bet you'll see where it goes.

[Pegasus]

Most likely you found a chupacabra trail.

[Boss .300 winmag]

I followed one a few years ago into reprod during the late archery season the trail changed to alders and maple trees the trail ended, I had a feeling I was in the bedding area, a few more steps and it was confirmed as a deer bolted from its bed never to be seen.

[addicted1]

Sounds like nearly all game trails on the wetside.

Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.

[Okanagan]

Those disappearing game trails used to puzzle me and frustrate me when I tried to follow one of them and it just fizzles out, often in a difficult spot to continue.  I have noticed a pattern sometimes. 

Not always but often there are terrain or vegetation features that cause animals to develop on-again off-again trails.  A common one is some kind of pinch point that makes a particular route the easiest way for animals to travel from one area to another.  A game trail develops as they converge into a corridor that is easier going, and the trail evaporates as they disperse on the other side.  So trails converge, getting my hopes up that I have found a major trail, and then diverge to no trail at all. 

The easiest of those to see is a mountainside that has a section of cliffs above and cliffs below, leaving a section between them as the natural travel route along or around the mountainside.  Humans don’t always see or notice the easier and harder travel routes.  Our minds tend to focus on finding a directional route to where we want to go and so we look for a trail going our way.  Meanwhile animals wandering/traveling in that specific bit of land may have something entirely different in mind, and may be content to end the trail at a place puzzling to me.

Thickets, thorn patches etc. can produce the same kind of paths of easier routes to get through an area.

Basically a trail will develop in any place where many animals prefer to walk the same path, and may disappear where they can and will diverge to many choices of path.  It helps if we can figure out why animals are walking where they are, but I can’t always get out of my human brain/motivations and get into their heads. 

Migration trails and major trails from one favored area to another are another subject, though they may have overlapping factors.