I am looking for English language books that detail how indigenous peoples track men and animals - the more detailed and specific about the methods, the better.

So far, I have what Tom Brown, Jr. says is the Lipan Apache way.

Do you know of any others?

Thanks.

I don't know of any specific Indigenous manuals, however "The SAS Guide to Tracking" is a decent book. Although I don't own the book, I have had the opportunity to read through many parts of it on occasion at a friend's home.

The book is probably available through Amazon.com.

Oddly enough, the anthropological literature is fairly silent on the specifics of tracking; I really can't think of any decent references, although surely some must exist somewhere.

I am afraid I can only recommend Tracking: A Blueprint for Learning How, by Jack Kearney. "La Migra" (Border Patrol) is probably not what you had in mind when you specified indigenous groups, but I'll bet the basic skills are cultural universals and require intimate knowledge of the local environment in order to detect disturbance.

In few other pursuits does Yogi Berra's famous dictum, "You can observe a lot just by looking" apply more aptly than to tracking. Another cliche - practice makes perfect.

Here's one:

Pat Lowe, Hunters and Trackers of the Australian Desert
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=BsOqf9lakFcC

A little bit of info

http://www.calverley.ca/Part01-FirstNations/01-065.html

+1 on Kearney. I had to find a copy through a used bookseller. Misquote: "There ain't no shortcut: you have to practice."

Check out the web site: www.utstrackingservices.com.

They use the Kearney book in their instruction/courses.

UTS has a very solid method.

Blake
www.outdoorquest.biz
www.outdoorquest.blogspot.com

Thanks for the referrals to contemporary tracking resources.

My special interest in this thread is to find reliable sources about how indigenous peoples tracked men and animals.

I am loooking forward to Liebenberg's book in which he proposes tracking as a possible origin for science, and supposedly details Kalahari tracker technique. Supposedly there are some scientific papers by Stander about indigenous tracking, but I have not yet located them.

Nighthiker pretty well summed it up. A book or manual can only show and teach you so much. To learn more about tracking, you need to get first hand experience. A good time to do this is when you are hiking. Find one distinct set of human tracks on a trail and see if you can follow the tracks. This may be challenging when the trail has heavy use and it also depends on the trail itself, meaning is it composed of soil, sand, rock etc. You will also have to factor in the weather. Is it very dry which makes tracking more difficult or has it rained and the ground is softer which may show the tracks more easier.

(Slight hijack, but still relevant)

Just yesterday morning we came across a freshly overturned rock that showed ground disturbance where the rock originally was. I was able to determine that this rock was very recently overturned as the disturbed ground was still damp and did not have any dry edges or imprints. I also noted that the soil on the now exposed underside of the rock had not started to dry at all. Notice the pushed down vegetation? These are all important clues as the temperature at the time (10:30 am) was already in the mid 70's and the exposed rock with the soil on it was facing roughly south east. It should also be noted there were no other people in the area and we did not cause this disturbance as it was off to the side of the path.

Here is a link to the picture I took. Any guesses as to what was under the rock that may of interested some animal?

(end of hijack)

Insect protein? Worms, grubs, crickets ....

As a solo hiker, I am highly attuned to flipped rocks, ripped-up stumps, and curious indentations in muddy spots. Very instructive. There's nothing like a fresh griz track (that you know wasn't there a couple of hours ago) to gain your full and complete attention ... as you extrapolate from the size of the paw+claws to the size of the animal ...

Correct on the insects. There were thousands of ants under other rocks in the same immediate area. This overturned rock was the work of a bear as there were signs (tracks) of bear all over the place.

We did not spend much time to spend here to find out (and not that we wanted to go deliberately bear tracking!) as we were in the process of traveling home but we did see a nice wetland/marsh area to explore at a later visit.

+1 on use of a trail to practice elementary tracking. I started paying attention when, descending from a climb, we noticed that our "up" trail was overlain by the prints of a very large kitty cat....

You been stalked!

Actually, we probably were not "stalked," in any ominous sense, anyway. Cougars are curious kitties, and he was evidently just checking us out. Hikers were rare on that trail at the time. Mountain lions are not.

To my disappointment, I have climbed that peak over seventy times over the years, including many overnight trips, and i have yet to see a cougar in the wild. But I have recognized their tracks many times.

Watching the various footprints along a trail can provide useful and interesting information. The rudimentary skill I developed came in handy on several SAR operations.