Tracking Animals: A Guide to Trailing Wildlife

Description:

This guide, co-authored by Lee Gutteridge and Dr Kersey Lawrence, provides a fresh look at the processes and skills required to become competent in the art and science of tracking wild animals. When done correctly, tracking allows for viewing a wild animal without alerting it to your presence, which is key to interpreting and understanding their natural behaviours.

But an animal’s trail doesn’t stop when we find it. An animal’s trail goes on until the day it dies and its bones decompose back into the earth, or it becomes the living flesh of another animal. Tracking gives us glimpses into an animal’s life. Tracks tell stories, and trackers read those stories. Like the tracks themselves, this book is animated with teaching stories and photographs from the field by Lee, Kersey and other expert trackers. The stories span continents, species and habitats, and the concepts are applicable everywhere there are animals to find, and tracks, signs and trails to identify, interpret and follow. This means that the book can be used anywhere in the world, although its heart is in the southern African bush.

This book starts with basic “how to” information and grows in complexity, moving into a series of more technical skills and information, including detailed descriptions of methods used to handle different circumstances a wildlife tracker will encounter. It also includes a few simple exercises that you can do to become a better tracker, whether you are only interested in identifying the tracks and signs in your backyard, or in developing the full suite of skills that trackers use.

With its engaging and informative content, this book is valuable for both beginners and experienced trackers, and to naturalists, hikers, guides, hunters, scientists and educators.