Tracking a Black Bear's Overstep Walk

Video Transcript

"We are Nick and Valerie Wisniewski on behalf of expertvillage.com. We would like to talk about black bear tracks. For more information, please see our website at walnuthilltracking.com. What we’ve done here is we’ve prepared a sub straight and we’ve taken some plaster cast, some black bear tracks that we found in the wild over the years. The pattern that we put down here is the pattern that you will see most often in the wild. It is called an overstep walk. In an overstep walk, what happens is the hind foot travels a little bit further than the front foot during what is called an overstep. So you have left on the ground a pattern of two’s, two, two, two, two and so on. The black bear is most comfortable in the gait and this is the gait you will see most of the time. It is walking a little bit faster than it does in a direct register walk. Strides are anywhere from 18 to 28 inches normally. "