Years ago, a man I respect so much, Leigh Culver, gave me an amazing list of books on tracking, which I tell everyone who wants to learn tracking for hikers. Leigh had tracked everything, from people in Afghanistan to Sasquatch in North America…there wasn’t much Leigh hadn’t done. He was a renaissance man and to a young me, as I met Leigh in my early twenty’s, Leigh was like a god to me with his experienced and stories. He would email out lists of books to read and I still have all those lists. One list caught my eye recently, a list for tracking in general, one for tracking people, and one for tracking humans.
Over the years, I’ve put these books on my shelves and to use in the field. They are easy to find on Amazon.
For hunters, tracking makes a lot of sense, just like the OnX app. But, I categorized this for hikers, not hunters. Why is that? Simple – I think hikers sometimes don’t actually see the world around them and truly appreciate nature. They talk, they walk, they take a lot of photos – but looking at the ground around them, seeing what is actually happening…most hikers are very attuned to what is happening above waist level. Below the waist, at our feet, hikers are blind. I never realized how true this was until I was on a hike with Leigh, so many years ago at Kennesaw Mountain, and he began pointing out everything around us that was happening. It was like a stepped into another world of awareness.
Tracking For Hikers
So, we’ll start with the basics, like he did with me. Because the basics make you better.
It made me a better hiker – and the books he told me to get, made me a better outdoorsman.
Here’s a few of them. All of them are great reads, keeping you entertained while learning at the same time.
THE ART OF TRACKING THE ORIGIN OF SCIENCE by Louis Liebenberg.
In a work of painstaking and wide-ranging scholarship, backed up by fieldwork among the Kalahari hunter-gatherers, Louis Liebenberg explains how the art of tracking represents a crucial step in human evolution. Liebenberg examines the principles of tracking, and the classification and interpretation of spoor under difficult conditions.
He also show how the original speculative hypotheses of early hunter-gatherers have a direct line to the propositions of modern physicists who “track” sub-atomic particles. Liebenberg argues that
the art of tracking involves the same intellectual and creative abilities as physics and mathematics, and may therefore represent the origin of science itself.
Full of fascinating insights into the world of the hunter-gatherer, The Art of Tracking is compelling reading for both general readers and scholars in the field. Contains illustrations by the author.
THE SCIENCE AND ART OF TRACKING by Tom Brown.
The author shares generations of wisdom through one of the most rewarding pursuits to be found in nature. Tracking lets us unlock the secrets of each animal we follow, and in turn, to become more aware of our own place in nature and the world.
In-depth knowledge about pressure releases.
Leigh’s note: ‘Not everyone agrees with Tom Brown, read for yourself, and decide.’
THE TRACKER by Tom Brown.
The story of Tom Brown and his life in tracking. ISBN: 0425101339 Penguin 1996 229pp $6.29
Leigh always had a funny way about him, describing books, describing videos he had brought on VHS and DVD through the years. As I go through some of these notes he provided over the years, two things stick out – one, his short notes, and two, that he listed items like ISBN numbers, the publisher, and price – because Amazon did not yet exist. Imagine that, a world where Amazon doesn’t exit.
