SAS Tracking Handbook

1. What they did

Barry Davies wrote this handbook as a step-by-step guide to the basic tracking skills of the British Special Air Service (SAS), drawing on his own tracking days. He argues that visual tracking is a dying skill, pushed aside by drones, electronic tracking and other technology, but still needed in jungles, deserts and mountains where technology is sparse.

The book has ten chapters:

• What is tracking and how is it used: military, law enforcement and border agencies, mountain rescue, hunters and gamekeepers, and ecologists and educators, in desert, Arctic, jungle and urban terrain.
• Understanding tracking: the qualities of a tracker, how the eye works, a glossary of tracking terms, where and how to look, footprints, direction of travel, start points, weather and deception.
• Basic training skills: observation, first and second tracking exercises, and reading footprints and confused sign.
• Border patrol tracking: how people cross borders illegally and how agents find their start points.
• Military tracking: history, local trackers, tracking drills, tracking reports and anti-ambush drills.
• Tracking using dogs: scent, handlers, patrol dogs, tracker dogs, explosive-detection dogs and evading dogs.
• Animal tracking: behaviour, tracks, gaits, feeding signs, beds, scat, scent marking and short notes on European and North American mammals.
• Urban tracking: surveillance on foot, by vehicle, by GPS trackers, drones and aircraft, and counter-surveillance.
• Additional tracking skills: navigation, concealment and noise discipline.
• Advanced tracking: the character of a tracker, equipment, the author’s tips from jungle training, the effects of time, camp intelligence and the exhausted quarry.

2. What they found

Reading sign

• Sign is any trace left by the quarry: things seen, heard or smelt. The book divides it into ground sign, bottom sign (below knee height) and top sign (above knee height), and into temporary and permanent sign.
• Trackers look for two main changes: transformation (something changed from its original state, such as a footprint in soft soil or a broken branch) and discoloration (a turned stone, wet prints, wilted leaves, urine, blood).
• A “key sign” is a feature special to one quarry, such as a tread pattern or stride length. In a group, the last person usually leaves the clearest print.
• Footprints can show speed, load, injury and sex. Shorter strides suggest tiredness; longer strides, more speed. Someone carrying a heavy load takes short steps with feet turned out. A stick broken to the quarry’s stride length saves measuring each step.

Ageing sign

The author gives rough guides, such as: trodden grass stays green for about a day; footprints in mud take about an hour to fill with water; dew stays for about four hours after sunrise; broken twigs start turning brown after about ten hours; and animal prints on top of human prints suggest the human prints were made before nightfall, as most animals move at night.

Animal tracking

• Animals do not try to deceive trackers, but they sense people far better, and their tracks are much more varied than human tracks.
• One animal’s print can look like another’s depending on the ground (sand, mud, snow), the animal’s age, and whether it is a front or hind foot. Identification should rest on the surroundings as well as the print: rabbit and squirrel bounding tracks look alike, but a squirrel’s trail starts and ends at a tree.
• The gap between groups of tracks shows speed. A walking or trotting animal’s hind foot lands in the front foot’s print (“in register”).
• Animals often use the same paths, feeding places and beds. Roe deer clear leaves away to lie on bare earth, making their beds easy to spot.
• Feeding signs can identify the feeder: on hazelnuts, squirrels split the nut in half, common dormice leave a smooth round hole with tooth marks around the inside, wood mice leave tooth marks on the surface and the hole’s edge, and bank voles leave tooth marks on the edge only.
• Many trackers put more weight on droppings than on prints: droppings prove the animal is present, show what the animal ate, and may show age, size and health. Old droppings decay with weather and sunlight.

Dogs

A tracker dog’s sense of smell is estimated at 700 to 900 times greater than a person’s, and their hearing about twice as good. Following a scent trail is so demanding that most dogs work only 20 to 30 minutes at a time, five or six times a day, so a quarry who keeps moving can outlast them.

Military and local trackers

The author credits military trackers in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, Borneo, Vietnam and Rhodesia with valuable successes. He advises recruiting local trackers through the local headman, treating them with trust and respect, and recording how they perform, because they know their own area far better than outsiders.

3. What they concluded

• No technology yet matches the human eye and an inquisitive brain for visual tracking, though technical tracking and surveillance now dominate in cities.
• Tracking is learned by doing: start with short, clear trails (no more than 500 m, with the quarry no more than 30 minutes ahead) and build up slowly, working in pairs or groups.
• A tracker needs patience, persistence, sharp observation, a good memory, good eyesight, fitness, and above all a true understanding of nature.
• For animal tracking, knowing where an animal lives, what they eat and when and where they feed is the starting point; it is best to study one species at a time.

4. How tracking was or was not used

The whole book is about tracking: tracks and signs identification and trailing of people, animals and vehicles, with practical exercises for learning both. It covers footprints, stride and gait, blood, urine, scat, feeding signs, beds, hair left on brush, claw marks on trees, burrows and the ageing of sign.

5. Tracker or observer certification

Reported but not validated. The author draws on his own jungle tracking training in northern Malaysia with New Zealand SAS instructors and local trackers, and teaching tracking courses in Spain from 1998 to 2003. No tracker certification or test of skill is described, for the author or for anyone else.

6. Other technologies, skills or innovations

• Tracker dogs, patrol dogs and explosive-detection dogs.
• Surveillance technology: drones, closed circuit TV, Global Positioning System (GPS) vehicle trackers, electronic ankle tags and mobile phone location.
• Navigation with map and compass, and finding direction without a compass.
• Using a phone camera to record practice footprints for later comparison.