I agree with a lot of this; tracking is often a fairly informal, albeit accurate, application of logic, deduction, model construction, and prediction. One area you might examine are studies of fossil trackways which range in age from the Mesozoic to relatively recent (some of the early Homo trackways from Africa).

After all, those investigations are carried out by paleontologists, and they are "scientists," right? Ergo, their activities are scientific. Next question.

I write this as I am digging fossils on a site where we have a wealth of trackways. Some of us are wondering about what, if anything, to do with them since they are not the principal focus of our investigations. One characteristic of "scientists" is they are thoughtful before destroying data..