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.