Casting A Good Foot Print

[gojohn111]

Got a question about casting a good print. Can you only get 1 good cast or can you do maybe 2? Now that I have the Hydrocal & a little extra water in the backpack, will I need to keep looking for another good track? Thanks for your help.

[Rebelistic]

1 cast per track is all you can do. Here is one that Biggjimm did in the reference section.

[chrisandclauida2]

Sometimes there is confusion as the community uses the terms print and track loosely and interchangeably. Some try to limit this by saying track way but still all of us new and old do this.

I'm no big tracker but I was a big outdoorsman type when younger and did lots of hunting and the tracking that goes with it. So I would say I'm passable in that area but it's a skill that requires exercise if not a completely perishable one with out practice.

More relevant I think is my time actually looking for people shaped prints many times a day for years and tracking a few escaped inmates thru various types ground. It's not simple by any means and light and it's angle to the print and shadows it throws is extremely important to seeing and evaluation of prints and tracks and why casting is important because this extremely limits 2 dimensional photography. Prints that are extremely impressive in person can be almost indistinguishable in a picture or video.

The long winded self serving info I just gave that no one asked for or cares about was to give a basis for how those terms are used or should/shouldn't be used. IMHO ofcourse.

A print is a single impression of a single hand foot paw butt etc. A track is a line or group of prints left by one individual showing a direction of travel and a witness as to what that individual did along the way. Like stop, sit, turn, go in circles, dance, hide, jump over, crawl under etc etc.

We should try to use the terms all the same. I thought the op was talking about casting multiple prints of the same body part in the track. Still thinking he was talking about casting the same individual print more than once could also be thought the meaning of his question. Going back and rereading the op it seems like he was talking about recasting the same individual print more that once.

Oh The wacky zany crazy stuff we bigfooters do and say.

Yes I get anal sometimes. I cant stand, at least get irritated, at people calling a magazine a clip. A clip is a device used to aid loading of ammunition into a magazine even if the clip stays with the ammunition inside the magazine. And don't even start in about the one or two exceptions to the rule.

Also let's not talk about when the letters Y or W can sometimes be vowels especially since they quit teaching this 30 years ago.

And Pluto is a planet.

And wait staff in restaurants who have no clue to the meaning of the position of my fork and knife and clear my plate when I wasn't done eating.

Oh my, I should probably shut up now.


***disclaimer*** The preceding post may contain humor and or sarcasm or was manufactured in a brain where humor and sarcasm are known to be present so some cross contamination may have occurred.

[gojohn111]

My intention was asking if casting the same print twice was possible like I found by a fresh tree break having toes visible in the soil. Thanks for your input.

[Rebelistic]

A print can only be cast once. Too much of the ground is picked up when it is removed. Duplicates can be made by pushing the cast into sand.