Fitting Your Stride to the Track
These are the tracks of two birds. One lives generally on the ground, the other in bushes and trees. Which track belongs to which bird?
I have watched a tracker in the Soudan following tracks where for a time they were quite invisible to the ordinary eye in this way: While the track was clear he made his own stride exactly to fit that of the track, so that he walked step for step with it, and he tapped the ground with his staff as he walked along—ticking off each footprint, as it were. When the footprints disappeared on hard ground, or had been buried by drifting sand, he still walked on at the same pace, tap-tapping the ground with his staff at the spot where there ought to have been a footprint. Occasionally he saw a slight depression or mark, which showed that there had been a footprint there, and thus he knew he was still on the right line.
PATROL PRACTICES IN SPOORING
Prepare a tracking ground by picking a piece of soft ground, about ten or fifteen yards square, and making it quite smooth with a roller by sweeping it over. Part of the ground should be wet as if by rain, the other part dry. Make one boy walk across it, then run, then bicycle. Explain the difference in the tracks, so that the Scouts of the Patrol can tell at once from any tracks they may see afterwards whether a person was walking or running.
Send out a boy to make tracks and let the Patrol track him and notice when any other tracks override his,
showing what people or animals have passed since. The boy may wear tracking irons strapped to the soles
of his boots. Or he may have a few nails hammered into the sole or into the butt of his staff in a pattern that will make an unmistakable track.
Study the age of tracks by making fresh tracks a day later alongside the old. Notice the difference in appearance, so that the Scouts can learn to judge the age of tracks.
Make each Scout make a track of his shoe in soft ground and draw a diagram of it on paper.
Send Patrols along different roads, and let them return with reports on tracks seen—whether of people, or vehicles or animals.
Make plaster casts of tracks. Build a wall round track of mud. Pour water into mug or cup, slowly add plaster of paris, stir all the time, until like very thick cream—just pourable. Then pour into track. When almost dry, scratch on date, where found, etc. When absolutely dry, dig out carefully; wash.
GAMES IN SPOORING
Track Memory
Make a Patrol sit with their feet up, so that other Scouts can study them. Give the Scouts, say, three minutes to study the boots. Then leaving the Scouts in a room or out of sight, let one of the Patrol make some footmarks in a good bit of ground. Call up the Scouts one by one and let each see the track and say who made it.
Track Drawing
Take out a Patrol; set it on to a foot track. See which Scout can make the most accurate drawing of one of the footprints of the track. The Scouts should be allowed to follow up the track till they get to a bit of ground where a good impression of it can be found.
Spot the Thief
Get a stranger to make a track unseen by the Scouts. The Scouts study his track so as to know it again. Then put the stranger among eight or ten others and let them all make their tracks for the boys to see, going by in rotation. Each Scout then in turn whispers to the umpire which man made the original track—describing him by his number in filing past. The Scout who answers correctly wins. If more than one answers correctly, the one who then draws the best diagram of the footprint from memory wins.
Follow the Trail
Send out a “hare”, either walking or cycling, with a pocketful of chicken feed, nuts hells, confetti paper, etc., and drop a few here and there to give a trail for the Patrol to follow.
Or use Scout signs, scratched in the ground or formed from twigs, hiding a letter at some point.
CAMP FIRE YARN NO. 13
READING “SIGNS”, OR DEDUCTION
Putting This and That Together Instances of Deduction Sherlock-Holmesism
HINTS TO INSTRUCTORS
Instruction in the art of observation and deduction is difficult to lay down in black and white. It must be taught by practice. One can only give a few instances and hints, the rest depends upon your own powers of imagination and local circumstances.
The importance of the power of observation and deduction to the young citizen is great. Children are proverbially quick in observation, but it dies out as they grow older, largely because first experiences catch their attention, which they fail to do on repetition.
OBSERVATION is, in fact, a habit to which a boy has to be trained. TRACKING is an interesting step towards gaining it. DEDUCTION is the art of subsequently reasoning out and extracting the meaning from the points observed.
When once observation and deduction have been made habitual in the boy, a great step in the development of “character” has been gained.
The importance of tracking and tracking games as part of a Scout’s training cannot be overestimated. It is not so difficult as many people imagine. More tracking out-of-doors and yarns on tracks and tracking in the Troop room should be encouraged in all Scout Troops.
WHEN A SCOUT HAS LEARNED to notice “signs”, he must then learn to “put this and that together”, and so read a meaning from what he has seen. This is called “deduction”.
Here is an example which s hows how the young Scout can read the meaning from “signs”, when he has been trained to it.
Old Blenkinsop rushed out of his little store near the African Kaffir village. “Hi! Stop thief!” he shouted. “He’s stolen my sugar. Stop him!”
Stop whom? There was nobody in sight running away. “Who stole it?” asked the policeman. “I don’t know, but a whole bag of sugar is missing. It was there only a few minutes ago.”
A native police tracker was called in—and it looked a pretty impossible job for him to single out the tracks of the thief from among dozens of other naked footprints about the store. However, he presently started off hopefully at a jog-trot, away out into the bush. In some places he went over hard stony ground but he never checked his pace, although no footmarks could be seen.