The Tactics of Mantracker Part 3

Mantracker has a few ways of finding where the prey have gone:  ground signs ( tracks, love notes left behind, snapped twigs, etc.), audio signs, and visual signs. And on a few occasions eye witness help but that's a rare help.

When you plan your movement you need to consider all these signs and try and minimize them as you go.  Consider moving in stages, sneaking up to  ridge line to run along behind it and then duck into bushes to stop and determine if you were spotted.  With this tactic in mind, here are my helpful points about the various signs.

Of course ground signs are the well known part of what he does.  He looks for disturbances and mantracker prides himself with his skills.  Most times he can figure out what is going on and he has the time and space to correct wrong guesses and wrong trails.   He tends to look for clues to decide where the prey is going and but sometimes he forgets his discipline.  He wants to stay behind the prey to confirm he is right.  Since he has so much faith in his ability sometimes he has a problem admitting he went the wrong way. When he is wrong it takes him some time to admit that he was wrong and retrace his steps to find the true direction.  You can exploit that, and I talk about that in a later post.

The two underestimated signs are visual and audio.  If you are running from mantracker, you need to stop talking and stop standing in the open and you willl take away a lot of his extra luck away.

If you are unfamiliar with military terms, then lets use the term silhouette that means something  (an outlined form)  that stands out. One way to avoid giving yourself away is to not silhouette your body as you move in the open.  That means keep lower than the things around you because moving objects are easier to see than static ones and the more "human like"  then the more noticeable. If you move quickly  it is very easy to see you from even kilometres away.  When you move in the distance you are more obvious when you cross the viewpoint of an observer and less obvious if you move towards or away from observer.  Slow movement over small open areas can be just as effective as running the entire distance if you move undetected.  Try and stay lower than the height of the hill beside you.  Try and guess where mantracker is behind you and stay on the other side of trees, hills, and dead ground (ground that drops away from the surrounding so it doesn't look like its lower) so mantracker can't find you from a kilometre away.  Running along ridgeline is a very novice way of escaping. Mantracker wishes for simple mistakes like this so he doesn't have to work so hard and still keep his reputation.

In the open, sound is not such a big deal unless mantracker is near you  or near water or steep slopes. Sound carries down hills and across water so you need to be aware when you cross hills and water.  In the bush, sound reverbs around off trees and rocks and will give you away from any direction.  So hiding in the bush does nothing unless you are quiet. Speaking should be kept to a minimum.  You should speak in a low voice and as rarely as needed.  Low frequencies travel farther but are less detectable further away by the human ear. The best way to talk to your team mate is to lie right on the ground facing each other and talk quickly.   

To keep the signs to the minimum, it makes sense to plan out every move down to the places you will stop, the places you observe open areas and where it makes sense to move without visual detection.  Mantracker thinks inside the heads of the prey.  So what? So he is going to think like an escaped convict and guess at how much field smarts you have.  He will think where you should go next from he thinks you are.