Boys' Life/Volume 1/Number 1/Tracks of Men and Horses
TRACKS OF MEN AND HORSES
IN walking, a man puts the whole flat of his foot on the ground, each foot a little under a yard from the other.
In running, the toes are more deeply dug into the ground, and a little dirt is kicked up, and the feet are more than a yard apart. Sometimes men walk backwards in order to deceive anyone who may be tracking, but a good scout can generally tell this at once by the stride being shorter, the toes more turned in, and the heels being tightly impressed.
With animals, if they are moving fast, their toes are more deeply dug into the ground, and they kick up the dirt, and their paces are longer than when going slowly.
You ought to be able to tell the pace at which a horse has been going directly you see the tracks.
At a walk the horse makes two pair of hoof-prints—the near (left) hind foot close in front of near forefoot mark, and the off (right) forefoot similarly just behind the print of the off hindfoot.
At a trot the track is similar but the stride is longer.
The hindfeet are generally longer and narrower in shape than the forefeet.
Native trackers boast that not only can they tell a person's sex and age by their tracks, but also their characters. They say that people who turn out their toes much are generally "liars."
It was a trick with highwaymen of old, and with horse-stealers more recently, to put their horses' shoes on the wrong way round in order to deceive trackers who might try to follow them up, but a good tracker would not be taken in. Similarly, thieves often walk backwards for the same reason, but a clever tracker will very soon recognize the deception.
In addition to learning to recognize the pace of tracks, you should be able to know how old they are. This is a most important point, and requires a very great amount of practice and experience before you can judge it really well.
So much depends upon the state of the ground and weather, and its effects on the "spoor."
If you follow one track, say on a dry, windy day, over varying ground, you will find that when it is on light, sandy soil it will look old in a very short time, because any damp earth that it may kick up from under the surface will dry very rapidly to the same color as the surface dust, and the sharp edges of the footmark will soon be rounded off by the breeze playing over the dry dust in which they are formed.
When it gets into damp ground, the same track will look much fresher, because the sun will have only partially dried up the upturned soil, and the wind will not, therefore, have bevelled off the sharp edges of the impression, and if it gets into damp clay, under shade of trees, etc., where the sun does not get at it, the same track, which may have looked a day old in the sand, will here look quite fresh.
Of course, a great clue to the age of tracks will often be found in spots of rain having fallen on them since they were made (if you know at what time the rain fell), dust or grass seeds blown into them (if you noticed at what time the wind was blowing), or the crossing of other tracks over the original ones, or where the grass has been trodden down, the extent to which it has since dried or withered. In following a horse, the length of time since it passed can also be judged by the freshness, or otherwise, of its droppings—due allowance being made for the effect of sun, rain, or birds, and so on upon them.
Having learnt to distinguish the pace and age of spoor, you should then know how to follow it over all kinds of ground. This is an accomplishment that you can practise all your life and still find yourself learning at the end of it, because you will find yourself continually improving.