Casting My First Paw Tracks

Wildlife Spotting Journal Entry 4: September 5th, 2024

May 01, 2025

When I was little, I had this book that had about 100 ideas of creative activities to do during the summer, and one of the activities was casting wildlife tracks. There were bunnies that lived in our neighborhood, and we’d frequently see foxes, but there was never a good place to find tracks. It was all either cement, asphalt, or grass, so prints could never really be left behind. No traces or signs of what passed through, only just the memory of seeing them remained.

Time went on, years went by, and I never got the chance to cast a paw print. Then after I moved to Utah and a couple years went by, I started to see more wildlife where I live. I saw plenty of deer, and a couple little fox kits playing down by the river, along with raccoons, and a few other animals. That sparked that feeling of wanting to make a paw print cast again, but I had no idea where to even start looking, as the ground was filled with field grasses, shrubbery, and tons of trees.

A couple more years went by, and something happened to where I had to start riding my bike on the trail we lived next to. Soon, it became my own little world filled with wildlife, as well as the horses that lives in the nearby pasture. I came to realize that there were always foxes along that pasture, and in nearby fields, so I began looking for them more and more as I would ride my bike to and from the train station.

One morning after about a year of riding the trail, I saw fox tracks in a dirt patch just before the train station, and I knew that was my time to finally make a casting. I took a picture of where it was so I knew where to find it again, and once I got to work I started researching everything I needed in order to make the cast. After work I got the plaster I needed from Hobby Lobby and headed back over to the paw print. I mixed it up and carefully put it into print to make sure I didn’t distort it. After I was finished with that, I put a couple rocks on it to mark it for the next morning since it had to fully cure.

The next morning I left early so I would have enough time before the train to get it out of the ground and clean it off a little bit. Once I got there, I took another sharper rock and kind of carved it out of the ground on the sides so it would be a little easier to get out without breaking it. After it got to a good point then it popped right out and there was a ton of dirt stuck to it. You couldn’t even tell what it was. So I still had some time before the train got there, and so I started chipping away the dirt and revealing its form more and more. Then I had to finish cleaning it up at work.