Tracking (hunting)

A further goal of tracking is the deeper understanding of the systems and patterns that make up the environment surrounding and incorporating the tracker.

The practice of tracking may focus on, but is not limited to, the patterns and systems of the local animal life and ecology.

Spoor may include tracks, scat, feathers, kills, scratching posts, trails, drag marks, sounds, scents, marking posts, feeding signs, the behavior of other animals, habitat cues, and any other clues about the identity and whereabouts of the quarry.

The skilled tracker is able to discern these clues, recreate what transpired on the landscape, and make predictions about the quarry.

The military and intelligence agencies also use tracking to find enemy combatants in the bush, land, sea, and desert.

[1] It has been suggested that the art of tracking may have been the first implementation of science, practiced by hunter-gatherers since the evolution of modern humans.

Tracking is therefore a non-invasive method of information gathering, in which potential stress caused to animals can be minimized.

Some of the most important applications of tracking are in hunting and trapping, as well as controlling poaching, ecotourism, environmental education, police investigation, search and rescue, and in scientific research.

While preconceived images may help in recognizing signs, the tracker must, however, avoid the preconditioned tendency to look for one set of things in the environment to the exclusion of all others.

Trackers will always try to identify the trail positively by some distinguishing mark or mannerism in order not to lose it in any similar spoor.

Often hoofs of antelope are broken or have chipped edges, or when the animal is walking it may leave a characteristic scuff mark.

Tracking is easiest in the morning and late afternoon, as the shadows cast by the ridges in the spoor are longer and stand out better than at or near midday.

If their quarry has consistently moved in a general direction, it may be possible to follow the most likely route by focusing on the terrain, and to look for signs of spoor only occasionally.

In difficult terrain, where signs are sparse, trackers may have to rely extensively on anticipating the animal's movements.

When the trackers lose the spoor, they first search obvious places for signs, choosing several likely access ways through the bush in the general direction of movement.

Once the general direction of movement is established and it is known that an animal path, river or any other natural boundary lies ahead, they can leave the spoor and move to these places, cutting across the trail by sweeping back and forth across the predicted direction in order to pick up tracks a considerable distance ahead.

[2] Since signs may be fractional or partly obliterated, it may not always be possible to make a complete reconstruction of the animal's movements and activities on the basis of spoor evidence alone.

Trackers may therefore have to create a working hypothesis in which spoor evidence is supplemented with hypothetical assumptions based not only on their knowledge of animal behavior, but also on their creative ability to solve new problems and discover new information.

Anticipating and predicting an animal's movements, therefore, involves a continuous process of problem-solving, creating new hypotheses and discovering new information.

If the wind direction is unfavorable, the trackers may have to leave the spoor to search for their quarry from the downwind side.