The SAS Guide to Tracking, New and Revised Author: Bob Carss | Language: English | ISBN:
1599214377 | Format: EPUB
The SAS Guide to Tracking, New and Revised Description
From the Back Cover
The ultimate guide to tracking man or animal, from the SAS
“Who Dares Wins.”
—Motto of the Special Air Service (SAS)
Anyone who has spent even a little time outdoors has come across strange tracks left by animals or people and wondered, “What was here?” In this new and revised edition of The SAS Guide to Tracking, Bob Carss—a veteran of Britain’s elite SAS—shows how to track any moving thing, in any environment, and under nearly any circumstance.
Included are tips on:
• Tracking in desert, forest, jungle, marshy, rocky, and mountainous terrain
• Interpreting animal, human, and vehicle signs
• Preserving night vision
• Using time frames to eliminate misleading signs
• Detecting prey when they backtrack or circle around
• Knowing how time and weather affect signs
• Recognizing how to spot intentionally misleading signs
An essential handbook for developing a new awareness of the outdoors, The SAS Guide to Tracking is the perfect companion for naturalists, outdoorspeople, hunters, wildlife photographers, youth leaders, search-and-rescue teams, outdoor pursuit and military instructors, and law enforcement organizations.
About the Author
Bob Carss began his military career at age seventeen with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. He transferred to the world-famous Special Air Service (SAS), where he received training as a tracker in the jungles of New Zealand and with the Iban trackers in Brunei, desert tracking in the dunes of the Empty Quarter and the Sahara, and in all terrains in between. Both Carss and illustrator Stewart Birch live in Hereford, England, where the SAS Regiment is based.
- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Lyons Press; Revised edition (November 25, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1599214377
- ISBN-13: 978-1599214375
- Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
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.
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.
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