Tracking: A Blueprint for Learning How

1. What they did

Jack Kearney, a United States Border Patrol agent who had tracked people for nearly twenty years at the El Cajon station near San Diego, wrote this book to teach anyone with good eyesight, patience and motivation how to become a skilled tracker of people. It grew out of the two-day tracking course that he and his fellow officers taught to search and rescue (SAR) and law enforcement groups across the United States.

The book has ten chapters:

• Man, the tracker. A short history of tracking, and how tracking became the Border Patrol’s earliest technique.
• Why tracking? Case stories and a simple calculation showing how much tracking can narrow a search.
• Awareness training (Phase I, Exercise 1). Equipment, choosing a training site, laying practice tracks, identifying and measuring the track, the tracking stick, marking tracks and the three-person team.
• Utilising sun angle (Phase I, Exercises 2 to 4). Following tracks laid at ever larger angles away from the sun, and key terms.
• Sign: what to look for. The kinds of sign a person leaves.
• Slope and ground cover (Phase II). Tracking downhill, uphill and across slopes with vegetation.
• Aging (Phase III). How tracks and damaged plants change over time, with exercises on tracks 12 to 48 hours old.
• Signcutting. Looking for sign to find a starting point.
• Track identification and description.
• Following a non-visible trail.

The book is a manual based on the author’s experience, not a study, and it includes many examples from searches and law enforcement cases.

2. What they found

Why tracking matters

• Tracks are by far the most common clue a lost person or law breaker leaves; in ideal conditions there is a clue about every 18 to 20 inches. Dropped objects, by contrast, turned up only about once in every three miles of tracking.
• In a murder case, El Cajon trackers reconstructed within two hours who drove, how the two people walked, and where the attacker left. At trial this supported the defendant’s account that the killing was not planned. In a smuggling case, the author’s tracks evidence disproved a driver’s story in court.
• A lost person walking 2 miles per hour could be anywhere in 314 square miles after 5 hours, or 5,026 square miles after 20 hours. Holding the direction of travel for a mile narrows this to a wedge of about 30 degrees: about 26 and 209 square miles.
• The author says the biggest problem in finding a lost person is never a lack of sign but too much of it, laid down by searchers’ feet and vehicle tyres.

The training method

• Step-by-step: see every track in sequence and never go beyond the last visible one. “Jump-tracking”, hopping from one obvious print to the next, teaches nothing.
• The tracking stick: marking the walker’s step interval and foot length on a stick, then swinging it in a small arc from the last toe, shows where the next track should be. The author calls it the greatest single help in making beginners track conscious.
• Marking tracks: a curved line behind each heel, with a tail to show left or right; a circle round any track clear enough to identify.
• Three-person team: a point person follows the trail while two flankers watch for joining trails and sudden turns; members rotate.
• Sun angle: the single most important thing to learn at the start. Tracks are easiest to see when they lie between the tracker and the sun, and when the sun is low (early morning or late afternoon), even on overcast days.
• Practice: each exercise at least three times for two to four hours; about 100 hours of practice before the aging exercises.

Sign

• Sign is “any evidence of change from the natural state that is inflicted on an area by a person’s passage.” Four things catch the eye: flattening, regularity (straight lines and shapes not found in nature), colour change and disturbance.
• Conclusive evidence (sure to be human on its own) includes flat spots, buried pebbles and sticks, the rear curve of the heel, toe digs, bruised stems, mud picked up on shoes and shine. Substantiating evidence could have other causes and needs several pieces together.
• Only shoes (and other made objects) and hooves leave flat spots. Pressing your own foot down nearby shows whether a flat spot was made by a person or a heavier hooved animal. In grass, hooves crimp the blades towards the middle of the pressed area, while a smooth sole does not.
• On slopes people shorten their stride and leave nearly twice as much sign; downhill tracks with dense vegetation are among the easiest.

Aging and trail loss

• The best guide to age is what a step does to live plants, which begin healing at once. Trackers should study the plants in their own area. Dew and fog darken old trails in dry grass and roughen flattened dirt; snow tracks turn from white to ice-grey as they refreeze.
• Three head of cattle on the same path can erase a person’s trail in under 30 minutes; coyotes and rabbits take several hours.
• Signcutting is done by walking across the likely path at right angles, ideally in the first and last third of the sun’s arc. Vehicle tyres are the second worst destroyer of sign, after the feet of non-trackers.
• A track description should start general (“flat” or “heel”) and then add measurements, a drawing and any cuts or worn spots.
• A non-visible trail can be followed by elimination: checking both sides for any sign of the person leaving the trail. Crashing through brush usually means walking at night, not panic; abandoned survival items are the stronger sign of panic. Sounds and smells (barking dogs, crushed plants, campfire smoke on clothing) are also sign.

3. What they concluded

• Anyone with 20/20 vision (with or without glasses), patience and the motivation to practise can become as expert as the El Cajon trackers. The skill comes from doing it daily and making many mistakes, and this book aims to shorten that process.
• Tracking is often the best way to find a lost person, but most searchers are unaware of this.
• The author’s deeper aim is to make everyone who enters a search area “clue conscious”, so they do not destroy the tracks that trackers need to save a life.
• Aging tracks well takes years of looking at trails of known age in all seasons and weather; there is no shortcut.
• People should learn to track where they will be tracking, because plants, weather and animals differ from place to place.

4. How tracking was or was not used

The whole book is about tracking people. It covers tracks and signs identification (footprints, partial prints, flat spots, toe digs, bent grass, bruised stems, scuffs on rock and lichen), trailing step by step, measuring and drawing tracks, aging tracks and damaged plants, signcutting, and following a trail where no sign is visible. The examples come from Border Patrol work, criminal cases and searches for lost children and adults.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Reported but not validated. The author describes his own experience (Border Patrol agent from 1960, tracking four to ten hours a day, three to five days a week at El Cajon from 1961 for nearly twenty years) and that of his fellow officers, but no certification or test of their skill is reported. He also wrote the tracking course for the new United States Border Patrol Academy and the tracking section of a law enforcement manual.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• The tracking stick: a walking stick or ski pole with two rubber bands or O-rings marking foot length and step interval, used to find the next track.
• A signal mirror to throw low-angle light onto tracks shaded by a hat at mid-day; a hand-held flashlight held low to the ground (head lamps are of no value, the author says).
• Crepe paper rather than plastic flagging for trail marking, because it fades faster and old markers are easy to tell from new ones.
• A notepad, pencil and small metal measuring tape for measuring and drawing tracks.