SAS Guide to Tracking, New and Revised

This book is an excellent resource in any situation. Not just tracking in the woods.This book is a useful tool for teaching ourselves to be more observant. Being observant and noticing your surroundings, is a good skill to have in a lot of every day situations. For example, listening for the hidden meaning in what your boss is telling you. Finding the meaning in why your wife may be mad at you for.Noticing the finer details in your every day surrounding to look for trouble when things are a miss. Teaching your children, and yourself to pay attention, and challenging them and yourself with memory games, to help you both with observation, memory and communication skills.As for tracking, it is an excellent reference with very detailed information that after you read and understand it, a lot of it seems obvious to you, and you wonder why you didn't think of it.However, you didn't until you read the book.Some of the things that don't seem obvious is what to look for when an animal crosses a creek. How the lichen will be pushed off of the stones on the creek floor. What a track through grass looks like, when an animal has been walking away from your area, versus walking toward the area.All though this book is loaded with detailed tools to track, it isn't a dry boring read. I found the book very easy to get through, and had a good time thinking about how the techniques can not only be applied to tracking animals in the woods, beach, across rocks, etc, but how to apply it in everyday life.When you look around at the areas you are most familiar with, and learn to look past the mundane details you have seen a thousand times, things look different to you. I am talking about the city you work in, the suburbs you live in, and the small towns we are from. It kind of opens you eyes a little and gives you a fun, new perspective.This book is about being a tracker(having certain personality traits), not just specific instructions on tracking techniques. It is overall excellent.A good companion for a woodsman, or anyone that has a naturally inquisitive, intelligent mind.Mark :)Check my profile for more info....

This book is an extensive source of material for tracking humans (and animals), but also covers material on all facets of tracking and related skills (stalking, observation and navigation skills). This book has its flaws in the 1st and 2nd editions; some that would make animal tracking experts and Tom Brown "Brownies" cringe; for example mistakes and statements made by Carss about determining the sex of deer. Overall this is very minor mistakes to me. I need to really do a page by page comparison of changes made in this 3rd edition. At fist look it has a slight additional page count but as of now that is all I can really tell for content. Although the 3rd edition has a new foreword by the world famous former 22SAS survival expert and instructor John "Lofty" Wiseman, author of The SAS Survival Handbook that provides a wealth of creditability to this already very respectable title. As far as the human (mantracking) and military tracking portions, I think most of the information is right on, seeing as most was gleamed from military sources like the New Zealand and Australian Special Air Service. One of most interesting topics covered in this book not found in other works is the Track Pursuit Drill (known in U.S. circles as the Track Following Drill), which is a methodical procedure of following sign/spoor that falls somewhere between the step-by-step method and the aggressive speed-tracking. The TPD was adopted for heavily vegetated areas (like the jungles of Vietnam) but is suited for all terrain. Also of note is to please be aware that this title was originally published (1st edition) as "The Complete Guide to Tracking" which is identical in every way other then the cover and size, the 2nd edition being slightly larger and squarer in shape. This book is a revised and updated 2008 (3rd) edition. As a professional military tracker I can not recommend this book more. Anyone who wishes to learn a broad base of information on tracking this is the book to start with no matter if you track humans or animals.

Great book of much interest

Great reference guide for something to look at on your off days. I do Search and Rescue, so it's very nice to keep up to date and read other people and professionals idea's, thought's, and advice. And when I teach survival or just want to go camping. It's always a good idea to practice and try/build new skills. This book is fairly old yes, but great reference guide when you want to learn new ideas and build on existing skills.This book will really help anyone of any level better appreciate the use for tracking. either it be search and rescue, bird watching, or just wanting to learn more about the wilderness. this will teach you the way to go about doing all these things.

Very interesting book takes you through the tracking process step by step. The book also offers real examples of tracking.

This the most thorough book on tracking that I have read. A true must have for anyone that is interested in tracking. I will make great use of this book teaching. Thank you Bob for putting your thoughts and experience into a superb book!

Well written