Teaching Tracking in Taiwan

The journey was a long one, only to be expected, but well worth it. This all started a couple years ago when a couple Taiwanese, Ho Tao & Jia Yao, contacted me about conducting a tracking training with interest in becoming certified trackers. I was happy to work with them but I could not guarantee certification…that requires demonstration of a minimum set of skills. Well, long story short, they both achieved Operational Tracker.  Read more here.

Tracking in South Africa

Rob enjoyed a break from teaching by heading south of the equator for two weeks of EPIC experiences tracking almost everything from millipedes to lions. Read more here.

Cybertracker

Rob earned Specialist certifications in both Trailing and Track & Sign Interpretation, warranting a Senior Tracker certification from the worldwide organization. Rob is currently working to become a Cybertracker Trailing Evalautor. Read more about Cybertracker and Rob's trail here.

Tracking Training Log

Regardless of whether you are tracking two-legged humans, four-legged animals, or other quarry, most people want to improve their tracking skills. One tool to assist with that is a tracking training log. This log is intended to assist with documenting observations and interpretations by the tracker. As with most investments, you will get out of it as much value as you put in to it.

This log was originally constructed from discussions with Search & Rescue canine handlers and using their training logs as a starting point. It was then developed with the visual tracker in mind, and can be used by human trackers and animal trackers alike. It can be used to log experiences that a tracker has in the field, but is intended to be filled out after the fact because it isn’t convenient to bring in to the field. Here are three versions of the log – an excel version that you can edit as you please, a pdf form with NATS watermark, and a pdf form without logo watermark in case that presents printing difficulties. At first this log may seem overwhelming, but please understand that you don’t have to fill out every field in the log – just enter information for the parts in which you are interested. With that in mind, it is good to have something in your field book that reminds you to pay attention to some things such as wind, cloud cover, etc. A lot of weather information can be found online, and that is another article presented here as well as an appendix in Rob’s revised book Foundation for Awareness, Signcutting & Tracking.