The TV show Mantracker, produced by Bonterra Productions is a TV show about a search and rescue tracker that plays a 36 hour game of cat and mouse with 2 human "prey" across a roug wild terrain. Men and women pit their boastful skill against a man who can figure them out, and uses his horse for muscle. The prey have to run about 50 km in 36 hours, and usually sleep for about 6 hours of that. All the mantracker has to do is come within spitting distance and he has a nasty habit of making the prey gives up.
The prey are given a map and a compass and are told where the finish line is. Mantracker gets nothing but his horse and a guide. The mantracker starts 2 km back and can only use his eyes ears and cowboy common sense to keep up with the two fleeing victims. When a flare goes off the prey start to run and the mantracker rides up to where he thinks the chase started and then looks for the direction of travel.
Here is the reality; a horse can outrun a man on most open terrain. The man can out-traverse and out climb a horse in treed, sloped, and rough terrain. So what? The prey has to be careful about where they choose to run and which way they should escape. Bad panic decisions make for easy captures. The prey should always move thinking about the right direction to escape based on the current terrain. One wrong move means one short day.
The terrain varies per show. In most cases the distance is about 40 to 55 km over hills and valleys. The path is rarely straight and easy. The reality is that the distance is a hard one to make on foot without risking it on the paths and trails. Prey try every trick in the book to evade the tracks - but in most cases the tracker catches up because he is that smart and eventually tracks of some kind are left.
Mantracker has a common, time-tested , strategy I call A & A: antagonize and ambush. He has a capture rate of about 70% by my stats so it is nothing to trifle with. The first step in the strategy is to antagonize: make the prey tired and panic and cause them to run down their mental and physical resources. Prey lose direction, compasses, water bottles, clothing, their patience and their energy.
The second part of the plan is ambush. Once mantracker thinks he can, he gets out ahead of the prey and tries to run them down. He is not the most successful with ambush, but he has many chances in a 36 hour race to fail many times.
If you want to take on mantracker, stay tuned for more helpful tactical thinking here.
Friday, February 19, 2010
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