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GREAT trackers are usually
born and not made. A hunter, speaking about his Shangaan tracker,
once said: "We read the newspaper or listen to the radio in the
morning to find out what has happened in our world during the night.
This man looks at the ground in the morning, and from that he can
tell you exactly what has happened in his world during the night."
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The ability to track an animal through the bush, or the ability to look at spoor (the marks left by animals) and tell what sequence of events have taken place is both an art and a science. It requires keen eyesight and a keen sense of smell, and an intimate knowledge of the bush and its inhabitants. Tracking, or "spooring", involves looking at every detail. Most people think that it is just a matter of looking at footprints, but it also involves knowing: |
* what plants are most likely to be eaten by which animals;
* what their dung looks, smells and feels like and therefore how old the tracks are;
* which animals are likely to leave traces of saliva and from its state of dehydration know the age of the saliva;
* which animals are "clean" or "messy" eaters, and so from a few leaves either neatly cropped or dropped on the ground, be able to tell which animal was likely to have eaten them;
* which hair belongs to which animal, so that a few stray hairs rubbed off onto bark at a certain level will tell you which animal passed that way, and in which direction the animal was moving;
* from the position of urine stains, relative to the footprints, tell whether the animal was male or female.
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Often the tracks people want to follow are tracks left by humans. A good tracker would look at this path, and be able to tell you how many people walked this way, which direction they were moving in, and how long ago. What conclusions can you draw? In this photo,
you can see where gravel was scraped away and some
loose material was kicked back as the toe of this
boot dug in. The person was travelling from left to
right in the photo. |
