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28 September 2001

The Science and Art of Tracking

Reviewed by Sheldon Greaves

Tom Brown, Jr. The Science and Art of Tracking (Penguin USA), 1999. 240pp softcover. ISBN: 0425157725

Animal tracks form the leit motif of a close encounter I once had with a mountain lion, which I never actually saw.
Explanations follow.

I was about fourteen and was taking part in a scout camping trip in the Oregon Cascades. Although it was early June, most of the ground was still covered with snow. About eight of us were hiking along a wooded ridge as it was growing dark. We spotted a level site just below the ridge and went down to make camp. The site was snow-covered, except for a few patches of bare rock. I found one such patch about twenty yards from the rest of the group. It was just barely large enough to accomodate my sleeping bag, so sans tent I bedded down in the gathering darkness. The next morning I discovered something disquieting. The snow surrounding the edge of my sleeping bag was marked by tracks. They were large, round paw prints nearly three inches across. The prints showed no trace of claw marks as one would expect from a large canine. I knew enough about animal tracks to know that while I slept, an adult mountain lion had crept up to my sleeping bag, padded silently around me, no doubt sniffing me curiously, then slipped silently back into the surrounding woods.

Tracks tell stories. For most of us, those stories involve not wiping one's feet before going indoors. But if you are interested in the animal kingdom, tracks can be a suprisingly rich source of data. Tracks can tell you more than just the identity of an amimal and where it was going. The sophisticated tracker can tell many things about an animal (or human) by examining subtleties in the tracks most of us would not think about. Tom Brown's book seeks to help the reader learn not just how to follow animal tracks, but to read unsuspected amounts of detail from those tracks.

Parts of this book were frustrating to my scientific sensibilities. Brown claims to have been trained as a child in his craft by an elderly Apache scout named Stalking Wolf whom Brown affectionately refers to as "Grandfather." The early part of the book contains several anecdotes about Stalking Wolf and his remarkable abilities in tracking and fieldcraft. I do not know how credible these stories are; some strain my credulity. I am aware of a minority opinion in the tracking and primitive technology community who are skeptical of Brown's story. His tales regarding "Grandfather" often contain doses of Native American-centered moralizing and New Age fluffiness that tend to trip my BS meter. At times, mostly at the beginning and the end of the book, one gets the feeling that Brown aspires to be some kind of spiritual guru whose hook is tracking and its connection with the natural world, the "Earth Mother", and so forth.

Having said that, once Brown gets down to business, his book is remarkably hard-headed and insightful. It is clear that Brown has dedicated countless hours to careful and detailed study of animal tracks; he runs a highly-regarded wilderness school where he teaches tracking and outdoor survival skills. He obviously knows a tremendous amount about tracks and the animals who make them. Moreover, he demands that the reader spend plenty of "dirt time" both in the wild and experimenting with a sandbox designed for track study (instructions for constructing such a box are given). Although I remain slightly skeptical about some of his claims to discern an animal or person's state of mind from their tracks, there is no denying that the information in this book can give the nature enthusiast a very useful set of tools for understanding the animal world.

Unlike other books on tracking, there are very few charts showing the characteristic footprints of various animals. This is not a serious problem, as there are field guides on the market that cover this area, and if you are interested in tracking you should obtain such a guide to supplement Brown's book.

Brown's approach to tracking concerns the dynamics of how the foot interacts with the medium of the track. Brown emphasizes what he calls "pressure releases", which are features created by the foot as it deforms under the weight of the animal, and when the foot pressure is removed. Pressure releases are influenced by subtle body movements that can be inferred by the discerning tracker. To get some idea of how this works, find a smooth sandy beach or other track-friendly medium. Stand perfectly still, making a pair of footprints. Then make another set of footprints, only this time, while standing turn your head 90 degrees to the left. If you compare the tracks carefully, you should see a slightly raised ridge of sand along the right margin of your footprints caused by the shift in body weight that accompanied this simple motion. This is one type of pressure release, one of many that Brown uses to wring additional data from a set of tracks.

Exploring the implications of pressure releases constitutes the bulk of Brown's method of reading tracks. He also has some excellent material on tracking through different kinds of terrain, conditions, and over a variety of surfaces. The book also suggests exercises and experiments for learning how to follow a trail under varying circumstances and tips for picking it up again if you happen to lose it.

To his credit, Brown asserts his desire that tracking be studied, approached, and accepted as a science, one that is susceptible to expansion and development by observation and experiment. My own cursory reading and playing with his ideas have already helped me spot things on nature walks that I would have otherwise missed. If you can put up with the occasional spiritual trappings, this book will change the way you observe nature, and teach you to see much more.