That is the question. But the answers aren’t always obvious.

Before I go further I need to warn you. There are some photos that may disturb you because friends and I have recently stumbled upon fresh mammal kill sites–the work of other critters and not by human hand.

But as one friend said recently when I asked if she and her husband wanted to visit one of the sites, “A kill site! Yes, we want to join you. A kill site is even better than scat!” And so they turned their car around and changed their afternoon plans.

I had actually been told about this spot about five days before my first visit, and probably a lot had changed since it was initially spotted. But still, look at all that hair. And all the footprints surrounding it.

It was deer hair. Winter deer hair. Hollow hair that helps trap air and keep them warm during cold winters in New England. While in the summer, their coats are reddish-brown, in winter, the color may be brown or grayish-brown. Possibly the darker color helps them absorb more sunlight, adding to the warmth factor.

Looking about, it was obvious that a lot had happened in this spot. There was hair everywhere, and blood, and scat, and bones, and even mud as the perpetrators traveled through the adjacent wetland, which given the ice/water conditions, was too treacherous to follow.

But at the scene, leftovers, like this leg and foot.

And part of the hide with more bones to nosh on.

A scapula, that was outlined with teeth marks.

The top of the head, spine and ribs, plus another leg. Do you see that whitish oval on the leg? That is the tarsal gland, a key for deer communication. It is found on both bucks and does. Each hair in that oval secretes an oily substance and when a deer rubs-urninates, bacteria living within the gland mixes with the urine and the deer leaves behind its own unique odor–possibly providing important information like age, health, and other characteristics.

A few feet from the top of the head, the lower mandible sat, completely stripped of any meat and skin that had covered it.

About fifteen feet away lay the rumen, or stomach contents. In Mark Elbroch’s Mammal Tracks & Sign, he writes: “Coyotes tend to open a carcass from the rear and then move into the ribs and cut out the internal organs. They often remove the rumen right away; this may be an indicator of the original kill site or the place  where the carcass was encountered. Within a short time, the carcass is dragged and moved several times, and it is cut into smaller pieces and dragged in different directions by different coyotes seeking a spot to feed in solitude.”

It turned out, however, that it wasn’t just a coyote family enjoying this grand feast. The print with the asymmetrical toes indicated another, more solitary figure had entered the scene.

A friend placed his game camera on a nearby tree and captured some of the action by the one with the bobbed tail.

Click on the white arrow and watch the bobcat dine.

He looked quite healthy and sated after partaking in such a meal.

And left plenty of tarry, segmented scats behind–as a parting thank your note.

The bobcat wasn’t the only one to leave his calling card. If you take a look inside the eye orbit, you might spy the mark of another.

It was a small deposit, the sign of an ermine or long-tailed weasel.

So, the story of this deer’s tale goes something like this: “A neighbor told us that a couple of days before the deer carcass was found, a deer was chased out of the forest onto the pond by two coyotes. When the coyotes saw the neighbors they ran off and the deer ran down the pond to the outlet. The deer had been wounded and left an intermittent blood trail. We are thinking this was the same deer that was killed on the nearby trail,” wrote Paula, the one who’s face lit up when I invited her to change her afternoon plans and visit the site.  

One final look at the tippy toes and dew claws of the deer–can you imagine walking on your tippy toes all day as ungulates do?

And then it was on to another place on another day–after a recent fluffy snowstorm. The storm had ended during the previous day, but then there was a dusting overnight, followed by gusty wind. Two friends and I met at a trail system and within minutes one set of tracks led to another and that set led to a half dozen others, all traveling together. Like a pack. Or a family. Mom, Dad. And the kids.

At first we thought domestic dog, but then we found a tuft of fur. And so we continued on, spying something amiss in the track ahead.

Another kill site. If you know us, you can imagine our glee. Who did it? And what happened next? What we noticed: the area had been visited by many, who had then taken off in different directions. The meal had been buried under a pine sapling. There was some urine deposited by the midnight raiders. We found some hair of varying colors. And we had lots of questions.

On one side, a rib cage well cleaned.

On the other side of the hole, a second rib cage that at first we considered had been torn from the first, but then decided it belonged to a different critter.

And there was a leg by the hole. To whom did the leg belong? The foot was gone, which would have provided a clue. We did spot some reddish hair still clinging to it.

All appeared to have been excavated from the hole so we decided to take a closer look.

Up close, there didn’t seem to be anything else of note.

But, we’re a curious sort (in more than one way) and so Joan and Dawn used the tools we had to dig in.

To our discerning eyes, there was nothing more, though we could have missed a clue.

What we did find curious, was that upon closer inspection of a tuft of hair that looked grayish at first glance, it was really black and orangey tan. We had talked about a young deer at first, then switched our minds to a fox. but if you look back at the head of the deer at the other site, there is a lot of similarity. And the leg was long–which we thought could perhaps be the hind leg of a fox, but maybe it makes more sense that it belonged to a young deer.

We didn’t reach a definitive conclusion, but what we did think about was that the first site had been the work of coyotes, which a bobcat had visited. It occurred to us that the second site was probably the work of a bobcat, which coyotes had visited. As Elbroch writes, “Bobcats cover their prey and often move the carcass and recover it on successive nights. They appear to be unable to break the large bones of mature deer, so they sever and separate them from the carcass at the joints as they feed. A cleaned carcass with intact large bones is a good indicator of a bobcat kill.”

Not to cache or to cache? That is the question. But, occasionally coyotes will cache too. Tracking. It’s not a simple, straightforward art and each time we practice it, we come away with questions and learn a wee bit more to store in our brains for the next time.