Customer Reviews

Animal Tracking Basics

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
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"Animal Tracking Basics" is probably one of the most important books I have read when it comes to learning tracking and nature awareness. It's jam packed with exercises, instructions to fun games to play, and amazing illustrations that will help you learn more about, and deepen your relationship with, the living community around you. And most importantly Jon Young and Tiffany Morgan and many other experienced trackers and naturalists share their experiences and wisdom through interesting and easy-to-understand stories.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who has a desire to experience the art of tracking and nature awareness. This book is a tool to aid you in those timeless experiences. It belongs on any naturalist's bookshelf.

This is a very good book about how to do it. It is not a book of pictures or drawings of tracks you can use to identify tracks.

If you are looking for a good book of drawings of tracks of all sorts for North America check out the following book.

Scats and Tracks of North America: A Field Guide to the Signs of Nearly 150 Wildlife Species (Scats and Tracks Series)

I am planning to use the "Animal Tracking Basics" and "Scats and Tracks of North America" as resource books for one of our students interested in this field.

After learning tracks and tracking for two years now this book, by its title alone "Animal Tracking Basics," seemed a step back. After reading the chapter on aging on google books I knew it was at least worth a once over.

I plowed through my copy in a week and now I'm sorry to be done. This book is packed full of ideas and exercises to take anyones tracking further. Throughout the book it stresses the importance of ecology but also explains how this knowledge will help your tracking. It is a book you will reference again and again.

The track journal was great. I have drawn many tracks in the last year or so and thought I was doing well and getting the information I needed. But, after seeing the FOUR PAGE track journal outline I realized how much I overlooked. I loved the section on birds as well.

If you are just looking for a book to help you identify a track or recognize common signs (i.e. antler rubs), then this book won't be very useful to you. If you are looking to truly learn how to read a track, interpret patterns of tracks, follow trails, recognize what is happening in the landscape around you... in other words, if you are truly interested in becoming a student of tracking, then this book is a great place to start! The approach laid out and the exercises described are fantastic. Follow them tirelessly and you will truly learn tracking.

If you want to learn how to find animal tracks, to follow those tracks to the live animal, and refine the ability to scout up to the animal and touch it, then Jon Young is the person that you want to meet.
Jon Young teaches tracking and nature awareness using both the naturalist and spiritual applications. I have found his approach and methods to animal tracking much easier to learn than having to stare at a single track for hours at a time.
Jon Young incorporates the "big picture" as he teaches tracking using the landscape to assist with finding animal runs and beds. His storytelling ability is unmatched and has an incredible way of bringing in the mystery and excitement of discovery.
This book should be a starting point for anyone on the learning path to be a master tracker.

I can't imagine life without tracking. This book is not just a how to track book but also a description of a lifestyle that any outdoors enthusiast should aspire to. I'll be reading my copy over and over and giving copies to friends for many years. I give this book my highest recommendations.

This book contains a few chapters that I can reference to, but I would not buy the book for those chapters.

For the interested person, this book contains mostly stories and activities that are suppose to promote stronger tracking skills out of people, but does not teach you anything that cannot be found on the internet. I believe this book is a luxury compared to a necessity for the growing tracker.