On a wintery morning during an early chapter of my trapping career, I had my favorite hound with me and was searching the predawn mountains looking for a set of cat tracks to keep us occupied for the day. A fresh layer of snow had fallen earlier in the December night and tracking conditions were ideal.
Up ahead in the glow of my searchlights I could see where something had entered the road. As I rolled up to get a closer look at the fresh tracks, I had to scratch my head. I had caught enough cats by this point in my career to know that whatever had left those tracks in the road was not feline. Upon closer examination, they resembled small, pigeontoed bear tracks. After some deductive reasoning,
