I receive emails, lots of messages, through my website. Some of them contain intriguing items that people are innocently trying to identify. I received one such email from a Ms. Sheila Cave of Minnesota, who with her family, had found a large, mystery footprint. I followed up with various questions about how she found this lone track.

I also asked her permission to share the following images here, to see what kinds of ideas people might have on the originals of the photographed footprint.

First some background on the find.

Ms. Cave began with a simple inquiry, through a contact page (not tied to Cryptomundo), asking if I would look at her track photos to see if I could tell her what the animal might have been:

I would like to send you some photos I had taken on a recent weekend trip up to Isabella, MN. We were deep into the wilderness along the Mitawan stream jumping rocks and logs catching trout when I stumbled across an unknown track of an animal. I didn’t have plaster with me, but I did have my camera, and based on the size of my shoe in one of the pictures, I’m estimating the track to be about 8 1/2-9 inches in length.

I asked for more details, and for her to forward the photos. Here’s what I received, which clearly, while I thought this was probably a mundane animal or a hoax, I found interesting, the more she told me about how and where she found it:

My husband, myself, and our two sons were walking along the Mitowan stream up in Isabella, MN Sunday, August 31st, 2008 doing some trout fishing. My husband decided that he wanted to go deeper into the woods to follow the stream in the hopes that he would find some good deep trout holes, so I followed him way back into the woods around several bends of the stream through some tough terrain.

We came across this area (where the tracks were found) and it looked like a good spot to catch trout, several large timbers over the water, old glacier rocks and large deep cesspools so we climbed up on some rocks and one of my son’s started fishing there. I started taking some photos of the area and wanted to get a better capture of my son fishing so I decided to jump over to the rock (where I found the prints in the mud). The prints were not visible and surrounded by grass prior to me jumping over to that rock. Had I not jumped over there, I would have never seen them or found them.

When I got over to the flat rock, I immediately saw the prints in the mud. My first impression was being mystified at the size of the track. I bent over closely to look at the long (finger-hand like look of the claws and seeing the small indentations of the tip of the claw in the mud) I was amazed at the size of the heel which reminded me of a human heel. I hollered to my husband to come over and look at the track. He’s been an avid outdoors man spending a great deal of time in the wilderness and he had never seen a track like that before he said “it was really weird”.

I took out my Nikon Coolpix 6.0 digital camera and took several photos of different angles, close ups and put my boot in one photo for a size comparison. I kept studying the print trying to figure out what it could be. I wasn’t certain how clear any of the pictures would come out until I got home to put them on my computer. I just held the camera as steady as I could. After taking the photos, I started pushing the tall grass back behind the print looking for any additional prints, but could find none. My husband had already walked through the mud along the embankment coming over to the rock where I was so if any additional prints had been there, they were already trampled.

Once home, I immediately began looking for answers to what the print was. It measured 8 1/2 inches long based on my boot print in comparison and from appearances, looked like a five toed animal, much like that of a beaver, muskrat (which is closely resembled especially the heel) and a raccoon. However, this track measured 4 inches longer than a Beaver, 6 inches longer than a muskrat and 4 1/2 inches longer than that of a raccoon which didn’t make identification easy for me. I realized quickly this was not any type of bird track, as all large birds (Eagles, Wild Turkeys, Owls, etc) have only 3 toes and not a large wide heel but a 4th skinny claw (for a heel) and the center claw (2nd toe) lines up with the heel unlike that of my track which indicates a five claw toed animal. This animals heel is very deep into the mud, at least close to two inches unlike it’s finger-like claws, so the animal put most of it’s weight on the heel when it stepped there. I wished with all of my heart that I would have had some plaster with me at that moment of finding this. I was so focused on the print that I didn’t even noticed until I came home that the photo contained a print of a moose/deer hoof track that partially stepped over the unknown track on the right side.

Bewildered, I then contacted the MN DNR, and Robert Kirsch was assigned to analyze the photos. He emailed me on September 2nd in the evening with the response “there is not a native species that leaves a track like this”.Sheila Cave

I feel this track may be of something of importance because of it’s uniqueness and size. Like I wrote in my previous note, the track is a five clawed toed track, although a portion of the track is covered on the right side by a moose or deer hoof stepping on it.

My boot in one of the photos measures 11 inches, so I estimated the track to be 8 1/2 – inches long. The heel portion was about two inches wide and over 3 inches long. The long finger/hand like claws were over 4 inches long with a spread of over 3 inches between the first claw to the middle(center claw) directly above the heel. The 4th claw was covered by a moose or deer track and the 5th is in the moose/deer track.

I realized quickly this was not any type of bird track, as all large birds (Eagles, Owls, etc) have only 3 toes and not a large wide heel but a 4th claw (for a heel) and the center claw lines up with the heel unlike that of my track which indicates a five claw toed animal.

When I ran searches for five claw toed animals, I found that the print most closely matches a beaver, muskrat (especially in the hand-claw like look and large heel), and a raccoon, however, the print [I found] is 4 inches larger than a normal beaver, 6 inches larger than the normal muskrat and 4 1/2 inches larger than the raccoon.

All photos were analyzed by Robert D. Kirsch of the MN DNR Two Harbors, MN and his [email] response was “there is not a native species that leaves a track like this”. Sheila Cave

When I call it “prints” is because the photos I took contain at least two animals, the “unknown five toed large heeled animal and the moose/deer print that goes over it in the upper right section. That’s why I’m calling it “prints”. Because there is more than one print in the photo. Sheila Cave

Prior to finding the prints, I had taken this photo from the angle where my son was fishing. (behind me)
Near the bottom center is the flat rock surrounded by grass that the prints were found on,
you can barely see the mud in this photo that is located to the upper left portion of that rock.

If I had not jumped over to that rock, I would have never seen that print at all. Sheila Cave

Okay, folks, what do you think?