The Mammoth Book of Secrets of the SAS & Elite Forces

by Jon E. Lewis

  At first this will be a contrived activity, but with perseverance you will begin to notice these fine details in the overall pattern around you without thinking about it. When this happens, you are ready to start tracking.

  You’re unlikely ever to find a string of “Man Friday” footprints. Instead you will have to follow a trail of scuffs, creased leaves, bruised grass stems, hairs and occasionally part of a footprint.

  If you are lucky enough to find a clear print, study it carefully to glean as much information as possible about the target. Compare it with your own to determine the target’s size, sex, age, weight, load or no load, speed of travel and whether he is fit or exhausted.

  Marking up the track pattern

  Once you have found a print, mark it up by drawing a circle round it in earth or sand, or with a piece of crepe paper held down with a stone. A second mark can be drawn: a semi circle with a tail on the right indicates a right foot, and a tail on the left of the semicircle is a left foot.

  Mark each footprint and make a detailed sketch of the prints in your notebook. A better view of the pattern of the target’s movement is obtained if you mark each print with crepe paper, lolly sticks or similar. This marking gives you an idea of where to look for the next print, if you are having problems. A Polaroid camera is a good idea for recording tracks, especially if you are using more than one team.

  Using the tracking stick

  The first mark to set on your stick, using the moveable rings, is the step interval. This is the distance from the tip of the toe to the heel of the opposite foot. Set the lowest ring to show the distance from the tip of the stick that represents the step interval. If you can’t find the next print, you put the first marker over the toe and rotate, and the next heel print will be under the point.

  The second mark you set on your stick is the foot length, measured heel to toe. This is set next up from the step interval mark. If you find a heel mark but can’t see the toe, all you have to do is put the second marker over the heel and rotate the stick. The tip of the toe should be under the first mark.

  Clothing and equipment

  A tracking team must be totally self-sufficient and capable of operating as an independent unit. Communications equipment and plenty of supplies and ammunition must be carried. Tracking can often be a slow process, so everyone must be warm, windproof and waterproof.

  The tracker’s load is normally carried by the support team, leaving him with only his belt kit. Make arrangements for his kit to be dropped where he can reach it at the first sign of trouble.

  ANIMAL SIGNS

  You must also be able to read animal signs, even when tracking people. For example, a human track with a badger print on top if it will show that the track was made before the badger was active at night. If you know the habits of the local wildlife, you will have gained a clue to the age of the track.

  Animal tracks may also lead you to a rubbish or food cache, providing you with crucial information regarding the target’s state of mental, moral and physical well-being.

  Common tracks

  How animals move

  Each group of animals moves in a different way: they move different foot combinations, and to further complicate the issue they move in different patterns at different speeds. The numbers indicate which foot hits the ground first. The only way to learn more about these animals is through first-hand tracking experience and careful observation of the animal in its natural habitat.

  Dog – walking

  Fox – walking

  The hind foot lands directly on top of the forefoot, obliterating the previous sign.

  Badger

  The hind foot almost covers the forefoot. Note that the toes point inwards.

  Domestic cat

  This is substantially the same as the fox pattern, but straighter.

  Rabbit

  The rear legs are usually placed down together in front of the forelegs. When eating the pattern changes.

  Squirrel

  Feet are placed down together

  Man

  There are differences between men and women.

  Weasel

  This method of movement is known as the omega curve; the animal’s body forms a curve in the shape of the letter as it bounds forward with the front legs and brings up its rear legs.

  Animal tracking exercises

  You need hundreds of hours of practice and regular tracking exercises. The following are designed to equip you with the basic skills. Practise them as often as you can, in as many different environments as possible. Try to spend three hours on each exercise each time and record your progress in your log.

  1 Familiarize yourself with the track diagrams. Imprint their shape in your memory, paying particular attention to the details. Now try to find real examples of these tracks, draw them and measure them.

  2 Having found the tracks of the animals represented, try to find out as much as you can about them by following the trail early on, this is a vital part of the learning process. Make a detailed drawing of the last two tracks you can find. When you’ve learned more, you may be able to decipher the clues to the next track.

  3 Find out as much as you can from books about the animals represented. What do they eat? Where do they live? What noises do they make? What do their droppings look like?

  4 With a teammate, compete to see who can find the most feathers lying on the ground. Now identify which birds they belong to. If you come across a heap of feathers indicating a kill, try to discover which predator was responsible.

  5 Follow a well-worn trail and see how many hairs you can find.

  Tracking: Using the light

  Now that you have become more sign-conscious, you must learn to maximize your chances of seeing sign. To see the greatest detail in a clear print you need contrast: this means the light striking the ground at a low angle. Normally, this means that you are limited to tracking when the sun is low in the sky, during the morning hours and in late afternoon/early evening. Around midday the light is almost directly overhead and casts a flat light, which makes ground features disappear. However, time will usually be against you in most live tracking situations, forcing you to continue through the day and sometimes even into the night. In this case you will need to make use of techniques that have been devised to control the light conditions to your advantage.

  Daylight tracking

  When the sun is low in the sky, you can take advantage of the light just by positioning yourself correctly: make sure the track is between yourself and the light source by watching the shadows cast by your tracking stick. Probably the most common error of novice trackers is to align themselves incorrectly.

  Once you are in the correct position, it is often an advantage to lower your line of sight, sometimes even right down to the ground. As you become more proficient you will do this mainly for seeing the finer details or when the light is bad. If you are not used to squatting on your haunches for long periods, include exercise for this in your fitness programme; novice trackers on their first extended follow-up often miss sign due to a reluctance to squat down.

  When you are sign-cutting (searching for sign, normally aiming to cross the target at 90°), getting into the correct position relative to the sun is vital, but can pose problems. If the target is moving directly away from the sun, to “follow up” you will have to look back over your shoulder. This must be practised, as it takes some getting used to.

  If you have to follow up through the midday period, you will have to slow down and be more careful, which is more tiring. Ideally your commander will use several trackers and rotate them at point duty.

  You may be able to gain some lighting advantage by using your torch. A torch is also the best answer when you are tracking in woodland where the light conditions can be very confusing, especially under dappled shadowing.

  Night tracking

  Night tracking is not always possible; it depends on the local ground conditions. Because you will be using artificial light you
can precisely control the light angle. Wherever possible try to position your light source low and with the track between yourself and the light. A torch with a variable focus beam can be an advantage. If you are using vehicles on dirt roads fit them with tracking lights, set to point sideways creating constant lighting.

  Night tracking should play an important part in your training programme as it helps to reinforce your use of light and enhances your ability to notice sign. Study clear prints as well as faint sign and experiment with the light angle and beam focus until you feel you have the correct combination.

  At night your ability is severely handicapped by the change of colours to monochrome. In tactical situations follow-ups usually only continue at night when a life is at risk or if there is a high probability of changing weather conditions obliterating the available sign.

  Tracking on a slope

  Many novice trackers fail to notice that the ground conditions are changing from flat to slope because they are too wrapped up in the sign: even the very gentlest slope will dramatically affect the lighting conditions, sometimes favourably, sometimes not. There is little you can do except to be aware of the situation.

  Moisture

  Moisture can often make tracking easy. Dew that collects on surfaces, particularly plant foliage, will normally reflect light well. Places where a target has stepped will usually show as dark patches if he flattened down the vegetation before the dew settled, because the light will reflect off these patches at a different angle from the surrounding vegetation. However, if he passed by after the dew settled it will have been wiped off the vegetation.

  On hard, flat surfaces such as rock, moisture can reveal the prints of the target as light patches. The dust on the surface will darken with moisture, but he will have removed dust by treading and so the moisture will not collect so easily.

  Remember, don’t just watch the ground. Sign can be left by any part of the body: for instance moisture missing on a shrub may give you accurate indication of the target’s height.

  Tracking by feel

  You will usually be tracking by sight, but you may find yourself in situations when a track cannot be seen – although this does not mean that it can’t be detected.

  A track in short grass is an example. When a foot treads on grass, the grass is flattened and sometimes broken, bruised or torn. Greater damage is caused when the target is travelling at speed or under a load. If not too badly damaged, the grass slowly recovers to stand upright again. The time it takes for the grass to untangle itself and recover will depend on the local weather conditions and the variety of grass. It does not usually take long for the track to become invisible to the eye, but some blades of grass will remain depressed.

  By very light and careful probing with the tips of your two little fingers you will be able to detect these blades of grass by a resistance to your probing. Compare this with the surrounding area. With care, you should be able to discern the overall shape.

  Other signs

  Do not make the mistake of looking only at the ground. Search also for other signs such as bruised vegetation, scuffed roots, broken cobwebs, pebbles turned to expose their darker, damp underside, and the smallest of details such as grains of sand deposited on large pebbles by the target’s boot.

  To become a successful tracker you must pay attention to all of these factors all of the time. These signs combine with the tracks to fill in the missing details in the mental picture you are building of your target. In a tactical situation, your life and those of your team may depend on you noticing a few grains of sand.

  Improving your tracking skills

  1 Find a piece of bare earth or sand, smooth it over and make a set of tracks inside it; do not make the tracks too obvious. By packing the ground hard you should be able to achieve a very fine impression. Make a careful study of the impression at different times of the day, mid-morning, mid-day, mid-afternoon, dawn and dusk. Observe the track from the shadow side, the sun side, and with the sun to your side. Make drawings of the track under all of these circumstances, being careful to draw only what you can see.

  2 With the same track impressions experiment with your torch. Draw what you can see with the torch between yourself and the track, with the track between you and the torch and with the torch illuminating from the side. Position the torch to point along the ground and also down onto the ground at about 30°. Finally, draw what can be seen with the torch directly above the track, with both hard and soft focus.

  3 Armed with your tracking stick, tape measure, notebook and torch, follow the trail paying careful attention to the light. Ask a team mate to stop you randomly to check that you are correctly positioned in relationship to the light. In bad shadows or under a forest canopy, experiment in improving the light with your torch.

  4 With a team mate, study a track; firstly while standing, secondly while squatting down and thirdly when on all fours and your head next to the ground. In each case, record the details you observe.

  5 Follow an animal trail with your team mate. Try at first to find 10 tracks, then 20 and so on up to 100. When you are able to do this, repeat all these exercises in different conditions (remember, the more challenging the terrain, the more you will be learning).

  Tracking involves more than just following a string of clues. You must constantly update and enhance your mental picture of the target until you can begin to predict his next move. This skill needs great concentration and attention to detail and comes only with many hundreds of hour’s practice.

  If you have been practising the techniques already shown you should now be following simple trails with some success. But there will still be questions: how old is the sign, how do I know the target wasn’t walking backwards or with his shoes tied on back to front?

  To answer any such questions when you are learning to track, you must return to ideal conditions. In your mind, build a picture of how the target you are following makes tracks under many varied circumstances. You can then adapt this to the more difficult conditions you face 90 per cent of the time. You will also need to experiment with the different soil and vegetation types in your locality to understand how they register the impression of a foot, and how they weather under different climatic conditions.

  Reading a clear print

  By now you know that clear prints are not the norm but occur sporadically along the trail, in places where the ground will accept a clear impression. These areas are know by trackers as “tack traps”, and can be either natural track traps such as puddles and cow pats or man-made track traps; deliberately prepared patches of ground where the target or enemy troops have to pass or are likely to pass. Such ideal spots often contain a wealth of information, so get into the habit of using them.

  The following are major features that you will need to be aware of. To practise reading these signs set your self some problems under ideal conditions.

  1 Lines of force

  These show as ripples or fracture lines within the track. They radiate from the major point of contact in exactly the opposite direction to the direction of movement. The faster the target is travelling, the more force produced, the greater the lines of force, and the further back they occur. When a target is moving very fast, sprinting for example, the whole track impression can be thrown backwards, very often breaking up. Pay careful attention to these lines for both speed and direction.

  2 Soil scatter

  Soil is sometimes thrown out of tracks by being kicked or picked up by the foot. It is usually to be seen in front of the track, in line with the direction of travel. This is especially true of tracks in snow.

  3 Risings

  These are where the ground has risen outside the track in response to pressure generated within the track. They are caused by forces in a downward and horizontal direction – often sudden braking and acceleration.

  4 Deep impressions

  These indicate where the target has placed its whole weight within the track. Each represents a separate movemen
t. By carrying out a comparison with your own tracks you will be able to determine whether or not the target is carrying a load. If so, and you are following the track for any length of time, you should expect to see the “put down markers” of bergens or rifles.

  There are many more signs to learn, such as twists and slides, but these are best learned by field practice. If the target decides to employ counter tacking procedures, it is your attention to fine details that will win the day. When a target tries something devious most trackers sense that something is wrong, and then test their hunch by studying the fine nuances in the track.

  Make plaster casts

  To develop this sense for detail make plaster casts of tracks: this will teach you to notice the finest sign. As an experiment ask a team mate to lay some clear tracks, imagining he has come to a path junction, and briefly cannot decide which path to take, before finally choosing one. Then carefully study the tracks. You should be able to detect the indecisions as a series of fine lines around walls of the relevant tracks.

  Is he walking backwards?

  One of the commonest problems a tracker faces is how to tell if the target is walking backwards or has tied his shoes on back to front. The simple answer here is that a tracker does not determine the direction of travel by the direction in which the tracks are pointing; instead he reads the sign within the track to determine the direction. Regardless of which way the prints point, the direction of travel must be directly opposite to the lines of force; and this is usually corroborated by a soil scatter.

  Has he changed his shoes?

  This is very difficult. Unless you find the signs of where the target changed his shoes, all you can do is to refer to your careful measurements of his stride and your appreciation of how he walks. If he tries to alter his gait, you may be able to detect this as an unnaturalness in the overall appearance of the trail, although this can be very difficult to determine.