Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Is this a river otter foot print?

I saw two what I think were river otters in my large pond several weeks ago. The otter sighting has coincided with my pond fishing being deteriorated.

I spoke with a local trapper and he said river otters in this area often stay awhile and move on. I only saw them once and haven't seen them since...so I kind of forgot about them. I hear they mainly come out at night?

This weekend I saw these foot prints on my dock. Someone I know who was unaware of my otter sighting weeks ago immediately said "those are otter prints". What do you guys think?

http://www.ezimba.com/work/180416C/ezimba14728238654600.jpg

http://www.ezimba.com/work/180416C/ezimba14728240265800.jpg

I don't know but I did a search and found this.

River otter tracks

more

and yet more

Cute little buggers. As long as they are not at my place.

River otters will wipe out a lot of the fish in your pond, especially CC in the winter when they are sluggish. Saw that this winter, and my otters appear to be mostly nocturnal. I haven't seen any sign in a few weeks, so it appears they moved on. Now I have a regular GB Heron.

Thanks guys. Yep the trapper I know confirmed that he thinks there is a 90% chance those are river otter foot prints. He says that otters are hyper and will sometimes kill a fish and only eat half the fish then go off to hunt another fish. He's going to come out next week and set some traps for me and show me how me how it works. snrub....that's exactly what he said...otters are cute interesting animals but it comes down to us vs them eating up all our fish...then they become less "cute".

To me those are racoon. The long toes are the key. The heal is just not being set down. They will do this side by side track when hopping and will not leave the heal part of the track.