"If a guilty person finds himself being watched, it puts him on his guard, while an innocent person becomes annoyed. So, when you are observing people, don't do so by openly staring at them, but notice the details you want to at one glance or two, and if you want to study them more, walk behind them; you can learn just as much from a back view, in fact more than you can from a front view, and, unless they are scouts and look around frequently, they do not know that you are observing them.
"War scouts and hunters stalking game always carry out two important things when they don't want to be seen."
One is Background.—They take care that the ground behind them, or trees, or buildings, etc., are of the same colour as their clothes.
And the other is "Freezing".—If an enemy or a deer is seen looking for them, they remain perfectly still without moving so long as he is there.
Tracking.—The native hunters in most wild countries follow their game by watching for tracks on the ground, and they become so expert at seeing the slightest sign of a footmark on the ground that they can follow up their prey when an ordinary civilized man can see no sign whatever. But the great reason for looking for signs and tracks is that from these you can read a meaning. It is exactly like reading a book. You will see the different letters, each letter combining to make a word, and the words then make sense; and there are also commas and full-stops and colons; all of these alter the meaning of the sense. These are all little signs, which one who is practised and has learnt reading, makes into sense at once, whereas a savage who has never learned could make no sense of it at all. And so it is with tracking.
TRACKING.
"Sign" is the word used by Guides to mean any little details, such as footprints, broken twigs, trampled grass, scraps of food, old matches, etc.
Some native Indian trackers were following up the footprints of a panther that had killed and carried off a young kid. He had crossed a wide bare slab which, of rock, of course, gave no mark of his soft feet. The tracker went at once to the far side of the rock where it came to a sharp edge; he wetted his finger, and just passed it along the edge till he found a few kid's hairs sticking to it. This showed him where the panther had passed down off the rock, dragging the kid with him. Those few hairs were what Guides call "signs."
This tracker also found bears by noticing small "signs." On one occasion he noticed a fresh scratch in the bark of a tree, evidently made by a bear's claw, and on the other he found a single black hair sticking to the bark of a tree, which told him that a bear had rubbed against it.
Details in the Country.—If you are in the country, you should notice landmarks—that is, objects which help you to find your way to prevent your getting lost—such as distant hills and church towers; and nearer objects, such as peculiar buildings, trees, gates, rocks, etc.