If you lose sight of the track you must make a "cast" to find it again. To do this put your handkerchief, staff, or other mark at the first footmark that you noticed, then work round it in a wide circle, say 30, 50 or 100 yards away from it as a centre—choosing the most favourable ground, soft ground if possible, to find signs of the outward track. If you are with a patrol it is generally best for the patrol to halt while one or perhaps two men make the cast. If everybody starts trying to find the spoor they very soon defeat their object by treading it out or confusing it with their own footmarks—too many cooks easily spoil the broth in such a case.
In making a cast use your common-sense as to which direction the enemy has probably taken, and try it there. I remember an instance of tracking a boar which illustrates what I mean. The boar had been running through some muddy inundated fields, and was easy enough to follow until he turned off over some very hard and stony ground, where after a little while not a sign of his spoor was to be seen. A cast had accordingly to be made. The last footmark was marked, and the tracker moved round a wide circle, examining the ground most carefully, but not a sign was found. Then the tracker took a look round the country, and, putting himself in place of the pig, said "Now which direction would I have gone in?" Some distance to the front of him, as the original track led, stood a long hedge of prickly cactus; in it were two gaps. The tracker went to one of these as being the line the boar would probably take. Here the ground was still very hard, and no footmark was visible, but on a leaf of the cactus in the gap was a pellet of wet mud; and this gave the desired clue; there was no mud on this hard ground, but the pig had evidently brought some on his feet from the wet ground he had been travelling through. This one little sign enabled the tracker to work on in the right direction to another and another, until eventually he got on to the spoor again in favourable ground, and was able to follow up the boar to his resting place.
I have watched a tracker in the Soudan following tracks, where for a time they were quite invisible to the ordinary eye in this way. While the track was clear he made his own stride exactly to fit that of the track, so that he walked step for step with it, and he tapped the ground with his staff as he walked along—ticking off each footprint as it were. When the footprints disappeared on hard ground, or had been buried by drifting sand he still walked on at the same place tap-tapping the ground with his staff at the spot where there ought to have been a footprint. Occasionally one saw a slight depression or mark which showed that there had been a footprint there, and thus he knew he was still on the right line.
HINTS TO INSTRUCTORS.
PRACTICES IN TRACKING.
1. The Instructor should make his scouts prepare a well-rolled or flattened piece of ground (about ten or fifteen yards square) and make one boy walk across it, then run, and then bicycle across it. Part of the ground should be wet as if by rain, the other part dry.
He can then explain the difference in the tracks so that scouts can tell at once from any tracks they may see afterwards whether a person was walking or running.
If possible, a day later make fresh tracks alongside the old and notice the difference in appearance so that the scouts can learn to judge the age of tracks.
Then make tracks of various kinds overrunning each other such as a bicycle meeting a boy on foot, each going over the other's tracks, and let the scouts read the meaning.
2. Send out a boy with "Tracking Irons" on and let the patrol track him and notice when any other tracks override his, showing what people or animals have passed since.
N.B. Tracking irons are an invention of Mr. Thompson Seton's and can be strapped on to soles of scout's boots (like a pair of skates) so that wherever he goes he leaves a track similar to that of a deer.