All things being equal with no funneling effect of a mud hole or other blockage in a roadway that goes around a sloping hill, do cats and coyotes tend to go low side or high side? No tracks to look for. Hard, rocky or leafy surface.

There are two directions where I live, up and down. Pretty mountainous (for the East at averages of 2,000 ft.). I find coyotes will walk most logging roads on the low side so their vision is mostly down the hill. There are lots of exceptions of course for mud, puddles, frozen hard rough ATV tire tracks, etc. Also, one theme I see all the time is they travel roads running parallel to the ridges rather than roads running up and down the hills. This is my observations and I'd be curious if trappers in different regions find it to be different than mine.

In South Texas. Close to border. Same basic thing BP sweeps roads. No tracks. Of coyotes! LOL ! Look for the low spots. Set in dips in topography

Animals will generally take the easy path like us.

Cats like to walk the lip of a hillside so they can look over. Lots of time there’s a faint trail there especially if hill top has been removed from a surface mine. I set logging roads quite a bit. Just curious what everyone’s thoughts were.