dung eating

I watched tv when i got in after Japanese and saw a bit of the Liam Neeson film Rob Roy. I started watching about 10 minutes in to the film. Rob and his band were tracking some cattle rustlers. The tracker in the party finds a cow pat. He breaks of a piece, rubs it between his fingers to examine the texture of the dung, then brings it up to his nose to smell and finally pops some in his mouth and has a bit of a taste before spitting it out. Rob comes over to him looking for an indication of how far ahead the rustlers are. His answer is "A day... or two." This answer seems a bit rubbish to me. If I was going to be handling and chewing dung I would want to be able to narrow it down a bit more than 24 to 48 hours ahead. Frankly I don't think I would bother. I reckon just by looking at a cowpat 24-48 hours old you could have a pretty good go at being that specific about its age without putting any in your mouth.