Tracking

At 14, with my single-shot Remington .22 over my arm, as I recollect, I was a famous tracker in my neck of the woods, a parcel of hill farms and wood lots about 10 miles on a side. Armed with a deck of Straight Arrow's ID cards from the Shredded Wheat box, I could track a fox or deer, or rabbit most any place, especially in fresh snow.
Perhaps two decades later a new critter showed up, increasingly at night howling across the frozen lake to each other as they settled in. One day, skating on the lake, we found a deer frozen in the ice, it's haunches eaten away and the carcass surrounded by coyote tracks, a lot of tracks. Ever since then, even as our part of the world returned to a gentrified forest, the coyote has left his tracks in the night, such as these we spotted yesterday at our daughter and son-in-law's place toward Egremont.
Almost as big as a German shepherd, often yellow-gray to dark gray, these wily, largely nocturnal hunters eat mostly mice and such, but in numbers can chase down deer, and reportedly have even snatched at an unattended infant. Staring down a chance encounter with an alpha male in an orchard or corn field gives one pause, unless one has a familiar .22 over his arm and a packet of Straight Arrow cards at recall.