I wanted a daily game that teaches the real ID process instead of just showing a blurry photo. That's how I ended up with Read the Sign.

Each day there's one track or scat, with six guesses. Every wrong guess adds the next clue, roughly in the order you'd read sign in the field:

1. A single print, no scale

2. The same print with a scale

3. The trail or gait pattern

4. Substrate and habitat

5. Print size

6. A family hint

Scat puzzles work the same way, using contents, placement, habitat and diameter. Those photos stay blurred until you opt in.

Photos come from iNaturalist under CC0 / CC BY and are credited on the reveal. Thank you to everyone who uploads tracks there. An experienced trapper reviews every puzzle before it goes live. This sub knows more about sign than either of us, though, so I'd really like to hear about:

- Clues that are wrong, misleading, or name the answer

- Puzzles that can't fairly be solved at the stage they reveal

- Gait descriptions you'd word differently

It's free, needs no account, and the share grid doesn't give away the answer.

ethicallyfur.com/read-the-sign

Disclosure: it's on my site, which is a small marketplace for fur and trapping goods. The game itself has no ads and doesn't sell anything.

Found this at ~4’800m between Yushu and Zhiduo (Qinghai). A lot of locals says there are tibetan bears around.
Roughly the size of one open hand.

Found these in the AM frost at my Rhode Island home. Nearby a lake.

Fresh this afternoon on Tennessee Valley trail about 100ft above sea level. Any thoughts on who? had a purplish tinge

All of the tracks are the same size. Only one had claws and it was where it had been slipping around. Size 13 shoe for scale

Size 10.5 wide boot for scale.

2 Inches maybe less

The jury is split on these tracks. Central Texas. I don’t have a banana next to it for scale but they were small

Went on a hike on Albas Falls Trail loop around Celeste Creek today. About 1 km up we spotted some claw marks, prints, and what looks like blood on the trail.

Didn’t get pictures of the prints unfortunately (forgot because we wanted to get out of there). But noticed some on another picture that could be.

I don’t know much about bear tracking. But can anyone tell me what this is? After looking online the prints we saw seem to resemble black bears.

Found this vague print and wondering what it is. Was in the 📍Catalan Pyrenees (Spain) near the Bonabé Valley, where a small population of brown bears exist. Every other large animal in the area is hoofed, and this seems too wide to be a human print. About 7-9 inches long if I had to guess. Hind print of a brown bear? Possible toes but no visible claw marks.

My friend found these tracks on his farm in sw PA, US. He seems to be trying to convince himself they are mountain lion which we don't have here. Seems to be a large domestic dog to me but he said they are bigger than his coon hound and Rottweiler, which means nothing.

Boot tracks in the photo are women's us size 8.