Red Fox or Grey Fox?

Though it may seem easy while looking at a tracking book in the comfort of your living room, out in the field it is often difficult to tell the tracks of one species from another. Here are the tracks of a red fox next to that of a gray fox. In the back of my book Mammal Tracks and Sign of the Northeast I have comparison pages for you to look at those tracks that are easily confused with one another, such as these two.

If you notice the red fox track, it has a chevron shape in the heel of the front foot (the lower track in the photo). This is only on the front foot, and if the fox is doing a direct register trot, it will often be blurred by the rear foot falling into the track on top of it. The overall shape of the tracks is like an arrowhead, and it is bigger than the gray foxes track, the front track being 2 1/8” to 2 7/8” long and 1 5/8” to 2 1/8” wide.

Red fox also have furry feet that can often obscure the toe pads, unlike gray fox which have less fur on their feet and usually all toes will show clearly. The gray fox has a delicate print, much like that of a housecat and close to the same size or just a bit bigger, the front track being about 1 3/8” to 2 “ long by 1 1/4” to 1 7/8” wide. The heelpad on the front is often described as a ball with wings, though I don’t always see that in the tracks, and it is more often like what is in this photo.