Dog tracks vs fox tracks in the snow. The first two pictures are dog tracks. Dogs don’t have to hunt. They get food free so they don’t conserve energy. They can frolic and run in circles. I think the tracks in the upper right of the second picture may be fox though.

The next two pictures are fox tracks. Foxes have to kill for every ounce of energy they use, so they don’t waste it. Fox tracks are straight or even when they curve it’s for a reason. In the fourth picture it’s hard to see but this fox is walking along the top of a log in the snow. It probably knows the forest floor so well that it walks on this log whenever it goes through there, snow or no snow. It’s quieter than walking through leaves.

I’ve figured out about where the vixen at this end of the woods has her den this year, but I haven’t gone in to find its exact location. I don’t want to make her move. Even if she uses a groundhog hole, it takes her a lot of digging and therefore energy to ready it for her kits. I’ve been inside a fox den once after a hurricane washed it open. The rooms in them are huge, big enough for several people to sit in. That’s a lot of effort. If she had to dig a second den because I hung around the first one too much, it could abort her kits. It isn’t easy to kill enough mice and voles every night to grow a litter inside her. When in doubt give them space.

(Coyote tracks in deep snow are easy to tell because their tails drag in it and make a line through the tracks.)