Spawn at the Ancient Forest Camp and move along to 16 from the roost. Follow the path down to the river to find 1-3 gashes and 0-5 footprints.
This works best for this area, beside a potential 1-2 footprints and a gash by the northeast camp additionally.

Spawn at Northeast camp, from here, just take the dive into Diablos lair/sandcave, zone 13.
Move out of the cave and make your way to zone 6. Search around 6 for a very inconsistent possibility of 1-3 footprints, and sometimes a fur.
Jump down from the south-east side to zone 7, you will usually find some hair and a footprint. From there, move on to the eastern camp through the cave. Rinse repeat.
This usually gives you a between 1/3 and 1/2 the progress for the investigation with each run.

Move down from central camp and head right, through zones 12 and 14, these are most likely to have around 2 flesh and 2-5 footprints. Return and repeat.

From Northeast camp, go around the rim and inside of icyboi's bowl (zone 12)
as well as dropping down to zone 8.

You should finish the once tedious quest in a good 90 minutes or less.
If you know any other advice to share in this guide, please let me know!

Thanks for reading!