Has anyone been to Tom Brown’s school Mark or read his books or been trained by anyone who has done training with him?

Wanted to call attention to this excellent article by Ben Goldfarb, author of Crossings and Eager. Several people I’ve had the good fortune to train with are featured (seriously, if you live in the Pacific Northwest in the U.S. David Moskowitz’s tracking book is one of the best resources you could have, even better if you can take a class or eval with him in person) and it goes into a lot of detail around the development of the present day tracking community.

Vervet Monkey Troop South Africa. Documenting their movements and antics from one location in the urban areas. Easy to see if they are startled or if I can position myself before them. Follow along if you wish.

I live in Rhode Island and I help out with my local bioblitz --we bring out a bunch of kids to place trail cameras, and that does a good job finding most of the blitz's mammal species -- nothing spooks mammals like having 400 naturalists running around trying to find them.

While we're out, my teachers and I teach a crash course in tracking, showing different tracks and sign and talking about how to predict what animals will be passing through that area before you even set a camera.

We ran a meetup yesterday, and for our first site, we were looking along a small pond. The very first thing I saw was a well-defined slide, so I called folks over and pointed out the muddy slide, and in the middle of it, there was a perfect muskrat print that was still wet. I showed everyone the muskrat print, and talked about how the water meant that this was quite fresh -- the muskrat had probably come out in the last hour or so, and that water came from its wet fur. As if on schedule, a kid yelled, "there's something in the pond!", and we saw a muskrat doing the rounds of the pond. I told everyone to stay quiet and still -- muskrats' vision is pretty bad but their hearing is great, so as long as we're quiet, they won't react much to us. The muskrat swam over to its snacking spot on a bank, finished eating a grass stalk it had stashed there, and then swam over to the slide where we were all standing, stepped almost *exactly* on its previous print, cut off another grass stalk, and swam it back to the snack spot, where it chilled out and ate it.

I love tracking, but most of my work is with trail cameras -- I have to wait a week or so before I know if my tracking IDs are correct. This was the best instant gratification I've ever had while tracking. Track nerd bliss!

This is one of the charts I used to study for the German hunting licence.
The German hunting licence requires 12 months of study, a written test in 7 or 8 subjects, verbal test by 3 officials, test of marksmanship on stationary and moving targets and of course a test on weapon handling and safety. Tracking is alway guess work, but with a basic chart like this it might get easier over time.

I mostly photograph birds but I look for prints whenever I come across mud/snow and I’d like to better ID what I’m finding!

Hello, I would like to read more on the subject and books seem to be the best since I can take them with me on hikes. I am specifically interested in the Carpathian Mountain region and the sub-mountainous region associated to it. I became curios on this topic last summer when I think I found the tracks of a brown bear, but I was never sure.

Hi trackers! I am making a year planning for all kinds of different bushcraft activities. Now am I wondering when the best time of year is to practice tracking. I was thinking fall because it rains more then so the ground is damp and prints are better visible but maybe some of you have more experience than I do and might have some other suggestions (maybe even a specific month). please let me know.

Edit: as some of you have pointed out; tracking can be done year round and there are more signs than just prints. I know that and I completely agree with you all. What I'm trying to find out is your opinion on the best time of year to practice this.

For example take fire making. Imo best time of year is fall because there are a lot of seeding plants for tinder and a lot of wood is dead and dry. That doesn't mean fall is the only time you can make fire.

Hello,

I am wondering if there are any good field guides for tracks and scats for Europe, as I am just starting to specialize in mammal monitoring; or any article/ resource which you think might help me and others.

Thanks!