Andrei Munteanu
Wildlife specialist
Fourteen seasons in the Piatra Craiului. Maintains the hides and runs the tracking mornings.
Tracks and signs: reading the forest with a biologist
Zărnești basinWildlifeEasy4 hFamiliesFirst-timersPhotography
Duration4 h
GradeEasy
Good forMax 8Ages 10+
On sightings
Sightings are never guaranteedWe do not publish a sighting rate for this experience. These are wild animals on wild ground and we do not bait. Some evenings you will see nothing at all.
What the day is like
A morning on what the animals leave behind — prints, scat, rub trees, hair on wire. No hide, and nothing to wait for.
Four hours on foot in the forest, learning to read what the animals leave behind. Prints in mud and snow, scat, rub trees, claw marks, hair caught on wire, the difference between a boar wallow and a deer bed.
Why this exists
Most people who come for wildlife want to see an animal, and most evenings they do not. This morning is the other half of the subject and the half that never disappoints: the ground itself records who walked over it, and once somebody shows you how to read that, a forest stops being scenery.
What you will not do
Wait. Nothing here depends on an animal turning up, which is exactly why we run it — it is the one wildlife morning we can promise will deliver.
Pace
Slow, and short. Four kilometres in four hours, most of it standing still looking at the floor.
The day, hour by hour
08:00Pickup and drive in
Collected from Brașov, forty-five minutes to the forest.