# The Comprehensive Guide to Tracking Skills: How to Track Animals and Humans by Using All the Senses and Logical Reasoning > Can you follow an elephant by smell alone? Former ranger Cleve Cheney once did, for two kilometres. His practical guide argues that tracking means using every sense and sound reasoning, and walks readers through the many signs animals and people leave, from scat and wallows to the alarm calls of birds. Summary by Kersey Lawrence, Original Wisdom. Updated 9 November 2026. Page: https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2013-cheney-comprehensive-guide-tracking-skills/ ## Citation and access - **Authors:** Cleve Cheney - **Year published:** 2013 - **Journal or source:** Book, Safari Press - **Full citation:** Cheney, C. 2013. The Comprehensive Guide to Tracking Skills: How to Track Animals and Humans by Using All the Senses and Logical Reasoning. Safari Press. - **Access status:** Publisher link only - **Where to find it:** https://www.simonandschuster.ca/books/The-Comprehensive-Guide-to-Tracking/Cleve-Cheney/9781571574275 ## Tags - **Species:** Mammals > Aardvark; Mammals > Aardwolf; Mammals > African buffalo; Mammals > African civet; Mammals > African elephant; Mammals > African wild dog; Mammals > Bat-eared fox; Mammals > Black rhinoceros; Mammals > Black-backed jackal; Mammals > Blue wildebeest; Mammals > Bushbuck; Mammals > Cape fox; Mammals > Common duiker; Mammals > Common dwarf mongoose; Mammals > Eland; Mammals > Giraffe; Mammals > Greater kudu; Mammals > Hippopotamus; Mammals > Impala; Mammals > Nyala; Mammals > Plains zebra; Mammals > Porcupine; Mammals > Springhare; Mammals > Steenbok; Mammals > Vervet monkey; Mammals > Warthog; Mammals > Waterbuck; Mammals > White rhinoceros - **Region:** Africa - **Tracking:** Beds; Blood; Bones; Burrows; Digs; Feeding signs; Paths; Scat; Tracking; Tracks; Tracks and signs identification; Trailing; Urine - **Behaviour and ecology:** Behaviour; Communication; Feeding - **Data type:** Protocol or guidelines - **Observer qualification:** Not needed - **Discipline:** Human tracking; Wildlife tracking - **Year published:** 2013 ## Detailed keywords - **Species:** No species studied; a practical tracking guide. Animals used as examples in the excerpt (common names only; the book gives no scientific names here): elephant, white rhino, black rhino, hippo, buffalo, warthog, blue wildebeest, zebra, impala, kudu, nyala, bushbuck, gray duiker, steenbok, giraffe, eland, waterbuck, civet, hyena, porcupine, aardvark, aardwolf, springhare, dwarf mongoose, wild dog, bat-eared fox, Cape fox, black-backed jackal, vervet monkey. Birds as indicators: red-billed oxpecker, cattle egret, francolin, quail, guinea fowl, fork-tailed drongo, gray lourie, double-banded sandgrouse, vultures, kites, marabou stork, eagles. Insects: flies and dung beetles at fresh scat. Humans as the subject of man tracking (combat, antipoaching, search and rescue). - **Location and habitat:** African bush in general (the author learned to track as a ranger “in the wilds of Africa”); no specific country or site is named in the excerpt. The author states that tracking principles are universal and apply anywhere. - **Topics:** definition of tracking; aims and practical uses of tracking (hunting, guiding, conservation, recovering darted or wounded animals, safety); man tracking (military, criminal and forensic, antipoaching, search for missing persons); sensory optimization and logical reasoning; what sign is; visual sign (tracks, scat, urine, saliva, feeding and drinking sign, scent and territorial marking, scrapes, pasting, horning, middens, wallows and dust baths, rubs and bark stripping, game paths, beds, burrows, nests, blood sign, skeletal remains and carcasses); seeing parts of animals and looking “through” vegetation; olfactory sign (elephant musth, buffalo, waterbuck, smoke, rain); sound sign; birds and other animals as indicators; mud trailing from wallows; height of rubs by species; ageing sign from moisture and blood clotting. - **Statistics or models:** None - **Data type:** Practical guide (book) based on the author’s experience. The file is an excerpt only: cover, dedication, contents, acknowledgments, Chapter 1 and part of Chapter 2 (pages 1 to 17, with page 16 missing). No dates of data collection. ## Synopsis ### 1. What they did Cleve Cheney, a former ranger, wrote this book to “unravel some of the mystery” of tracking and to show its logic, so that anyone willing to put in the time can learn its principles and practise them. He dedicates it to two trackers who taught him, his ranger colleagues Ozias Cubai and Ringane. The full book has eleven chapters: what tracking is; teaching yourself to track; wildlife behaviour; identifying mammal tracks and signs (including scat and ageing signs); gait patterns and pressure releases; blood trailing; tracking specific animals, including the “Big Seven”; tracking, stalking and approaching; bird, reptile and invertebrate signs; tracking people (combat, antipoaching, and search and rescue); and dangers of the bush. The file in the library is an excerpt: the front matter, Chapter 1 and the first part of Chapter 2 (pages 1 to 17, with page 16 missing). This entry describes the excerpt. ### 2. What they found What tracking is - Cheney defines tracking as using all your senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch) to monitor your surroundings and to make logical, realistic deductions from what you observe. Experienced trackers with advanced skills also develop a “gut feel” that goes beyond the five senses. - Its aim is to recognize and interpret signs for some practical purpose. - Wildlife tracking is used in hunting (identifying tracks and scat and following wounded animals, often by blood), guiding (interpreting nature for visitors and finding animals for sightings), and conservation (establishing presence, behaviour, movements and habitat preference, and finding wounded or darted animals). - Man tracking is the identification, interpretation and follow-up of signs left by people. He describes military, criminal (including forensic work at crime scenes), antipoaching, and search for missing persons as its main types. Teaching yourself to track - Senses, like muscles, weaken without use. Trackers should train their senses to take in as much as possible, then sort it by reasoning and their accumulated knowledge. - A sign is anything a living creature produces or leaves behind that our senses can detect. - Tracks can show when they were made, the animal’s age, group size, size, speed, direction, condition, sex and activity. - Scat shape, colour and form can identify the species; content shows diet and condition; how it is deposited (spread out, scattered, piled or buried) shows species and gait. Flies and noisy dung beetles point to fresh scat. Where urine lies relative to scat can show the animal’s sex, for example in impala. - Other visual signs include feeding signs (dropped cud, gnawing, browse lines, stripped bark, kill remains), drinking places and holes dug for water in dry riverbeds, scent marking (scrapes, pasting, horning, middens), wallows and dust baths, rubs, game paths (where overlapping tracks show the order of events), beds, burrows, blood, and bones or carcasses. - Mud from a wallow makes a trail that is easy to follow, even where tracks do not show well, and is a good way to start learning. The height of mud left on trees and rocks indicates the animal’s size (Table 2.1), and its moisture indicates its age. - Trackers should look for parts of animals rather than whole animals, and look “through” vegetation rather than at it. - Smell is also useful: the author once followed a bull elephant in musth for about two kilometres by smell alone. Smoke can warn of fire or a poachers’ camp, and the smell of rain of a flash flood. - Sound deserves more attention than it gets; silence also tells a story. - Birds can reveal animals, water, kills and danger, for example oxpeckers and cattle egrets with large mammals, gray louries calling at people and predators, sandgrouse leading to water, and vultures marking kills. ### 3. What they concluded - Tracking principles are universal: species differ, but soils and vegetation respond in the same ways everywhere. - Good tracking rests on using all the senses well, correctly interpreting signs, and the knowledge built up over time. - To spot what is unusual, a tracker must know what is “normal” in their area. - Wildlife and man tracking differ, but they share much in common. ### 4. How tracking was or was not used The whole book is about tracking: both tracks and signs identification and trailing (following blood, mud and scent trails), of animals and of people. ### 5. Tracker or observer certification Not reported. The excerpt does not mention any tracker certification. The author’s skills come from years as a ranger, learned from the trackers Ozias Cubai and Ringane. ### 6. Other technologies, skills or innovations - Training the senses (sensory optimization) and reasoning as the basis of tracking. - Reading the behaviour of birds and other animals as a source of information. - Using smell and sound alongside sight. ### 8. Implications for tracking (Original Wisdom's observations) _These are Original Wisdom's observations, not the authors'._ - The book treats tracking as more than identifying footprints: smell, sound, the behaviour of birds and the “normal” state of the bush are all signs. This matches the wider view of tracking used in tracker training. - The table of rub heights is a simple, practical aid for identifying which large animal left mud or rub marks. ## Cite this summary Lawrence, K. 2026. Summary of: The Comprehensive Guide to Tracking Skills: How to Track Animals and Humans by Using All the Senses and Logical Reasoning (Cheney, 2013). Original Wisdom, Tracking Literature. https://www.originalwisdom.com/tracking-literature/2013-cheney-comprehensive-guide-tracking-skills/