Vermont: Mystery Three-Toed Track
Posted by: Loren Coleman on February 5th, 2011
Can you identify what animal left this recently found track from Vermont?
Unfortunately, the person photographing the apparent footprint forgot to put something down next to the imprint to indicate scale.
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Yep. 3 shoe prints at different angles.
Looks like overlapping deer prints to me.
Looks like if it were turned around it would just be a shod horse track with a small abrasion in the middle of the normally empty section.
Looks like a hoof print made by a horse to me.
Looks like a horse track to me. A horse whose frog is in bad need of trimming, but a horse nonetheless. (The “frog” is triangular shaped spongy pad located with the base of the triangle at the rear of the horse’s foot.
This is normally shaved down when horses are seen by a farrier.
My vote is either escaped or let loose pet horse, or one who has been quite awhile without proper foot care. Loose horses are getting much more common since they have outlawed the slaughter of horses for meat in the US. People cannot afford to have horses euthanized, so in many cases the only thing they can do with a horse that won’t sell and which they can no longer afford to care for, is to let it go. Sad, but true.
It appears to be a dog print that has been partially covered with debri, giving it the appearance of only having three toes.
The slight splay would be due to a muddy slope (I have witnesses this with a track myself, which at first appeared to be feline/unidentified but was just a dog on a wet and muddy slope).
The appearence of a horse shoe-like edge is an illusion due to a piece of black coloured debri to the left and a small twig to the right – possibly done deliberately to further obscure and change the immediate appearance of the dog track.
Forgot to add the tell-tale claw indentations at the end of the three visible pads which anybody with a bit of familiarity with animal tracks will recognise as probable canine (although scale would be useful to rule out other mammals).
While I don’t believe in any way, that is a bigfoot track, I find it odd that no one else sees a distinctive 4th “toe print”, like I do. Personally, I believe it is just some natural phenomena. It could very well be, overlapping horse prints.