Customer Reviews

Tom Brown's Field Guide to Nature Observation and Tracking

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is an unusual book in which hard core tracking tips are blended with instructions on cultivation of the inner silence. As opposed to other stories about tracking which border the domain of fiction (e.g., "The Way of the Scout"), Brown gives us in this Field Guide practical advice on reading animal tracks, constructing shelters etc. The tips on "Nature Observation" in this field guide are unsurpassed by any other tracking book I know. TB provides us with priceless descriptions of what happens the moment we enter the forest - that is, how the alarm signal spreads from the birds to mammals and how long it takes for it to subside. The forest he is talking about is a living entity, where everything is connected and where one can plug into the circuits of the information flow by learning to listen to the sounds, by studying the terrain and the wind and by knowing how to camouflage and mask one's smell. The book provides useful info on various types of walking/stalking in the woods. Finally, there is deep reverence for nature something which occurs when one has learnt to be silent amidst the whispering trees (no mean trick for the Westerner who tends to function through the head). Tom Brown has learnt the inner silence tricks from his Apache teacher ("the Grandfather") and trackers might find this book useful for learning more about Native American attitudes toward nature. A similar approach to nature is encountered in some of Paul Rezendes' books (which i also recommend). In short, this book will be useful to those who are interested in approaching nature on its own terms. It will inspire the beginners in tracking and complement knowledge of hard core SAR UTS trackers (:)

This book guides you to a deeper communion and awareness of nature not possible through the ordinary outdoor pursuits most authors write about. Here you will learn the basics of camouflage, observation, and movement which opens the door to seeing more in the outdoors then you thought possible. After reading this book for the first time, I took Brown's advice and simply sat down in the woods. Within fifteen minutes a woodchuck came blithely walking by totally oblivious to my presence. That was more wildlife than I had seen on a dozen previous hikes or camping trips. It was the starting point of twenty years of exploration and discovery and the end of mindlessly walking along trails and missing everything along the way. In this book Brown takes you beyond the "veneer" most other tracking guides cover. He helps you learn how to age tracks, identify the animal's sex, and read the animal's movements and emotions from the shapes and forms found around the track. Brown teaches through stories and experiences that brings tracking to life. This is in stark contrast to the dull didactic recitation of measurements and readings most other books provide. If you ever wondered if Native Americans could really track like the Apache in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the answer is here because Brown learnt everything he knows from an Apache Native American. Are you tired of returning from long hikes or camping trips only to feel that you somehow missed something? then get this book and welcome to Tom Brown's incredible world of adventure and discovery. Keep one thing in mind however, this book is only the beginning. It's up to you to decide how far along this path you want to walk.

This book gave me a renewed enthusiasm for nature and an urgent need to be outdoors, I wanted to do everything he was teaching as I was reading it. I went right out and practiced his techniques as soon as possible during and after reading this book. I've never seen so much wildlife as I do now. It has made me a better outdoorsman and has given more meaning to my time spent outdoors. I can't wait to share it with my father who taught me some basics of tracking when I was a boy. This book taught me all the stuff I wished I had learned long ago, now i must make up for lost time I spent with my eyes closed to the things that connect me with the earth.

I've read this book twice, and both times I've learned (and re-learned) to see and feel and experience more when I go outdoors, go camping, or take wilderness trips.
The book teaches a lot of good stuff about tracking, but its best material, I think, is its section on nature observation: on learning to have a wider range of vision, to see more peripherally, to be quieter, and to be more aware of one's surroundings.
"The tragedy in life is not what men suffer, but what they miss," Tom Brown quotes Thomas Carlyle as saying, and this book is all about helping you not to miss so much.
The book contains great advice and tips on building sweat lodges (to cleanse your body and mind and increase your awareness), on getting more out of your outdoor experiences,on getting closer to wild animals, and on letting the outdoors free life from its tensions.
The book is also full of little exercises designed to heighten your awareness.
My favorite is one where you use sticks to frame a single square foot of outdoor ground. Then you stare at it from a standing position, making note of everything within it: little rocks, a plant, a hole here or there. Then you kneel down and study it from that level: all of a sudden you can see mouse pellets, tiny bugs, and seed husks around the holes on the ground. Then you get down on your stomach and put your face right up to it: suddenly you can see where beetles have nibbled the plant's leaves, you can see the footprints of mice, and you can see the holes are deep, and wider than you'd thought. Then, after about an hour of fascinated scrutiny, you stand up, and the square foot, and all the ground around it seems to pop and buckle, as the realization of how much was all around begins to hit you. The ground seems writhing with life and interesting things, and you can never look around you the same way again.
It's very cool.
I highly recommend this book. Its lists of various scat and tracks are a bit long for casual cover-to-cover reading, but as a guidebook its information is thorough and fairly complete. Read it, learn from it, and add new depth to the way you view the world.

This was the first book that I had ever found on tracking. It does a great job of teaching tracking fundamentals and enviromental awareness. Not enviromental awareness in the Greenpeace definition, but in being aware of what is going on around you. I lent it to a friend once and just about had to wrestle it out of his hands after a couple of months to get it back. It is a great book, well worth the money, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in tracking and observing nature. Some chapters include: Fine-tuning the senses; Movement and Camouflage; Animal Higways and signs; "Aging" Tracks and Signs; Reading and Following Tracks; and Search Tracking.

An o.k. introduction to the subject, I suppose, but there are better on tracking itself, such as James Halfpenny's A Guide to Mammal Tracking in North America, which simply presents serious, hard information, and outstanding illustrations, on family and species track characteristics, gaits and interpreting them, etc., without the mystical mumbo-jumbo of Brown's book(s). This book will help you become more aware of nature, as did the several courses I took at Brown's school in the early '80s, but I have since become very skeptical of much of what Brown has said and written. (And compare the illustrations of tracks in Brown's book to the illustrations in Murie's A Field Guide to Animal Tracks, from Houghton Mifflin, published earlier.)

a good book about how to really see things in nature, not just the obvious. it also goes into some of the basic and more technical aspects of tracking people and animals.

however, i felt that it was to much in the middle of basic tracking and very technical tracking. personally if you want the basics of tracking i would buy his book entitled "Tom Brown's Field Guide to Nature and Survival for Children". this lines out basic tracking skills very well so that a child can understand, but i have found it very helpful in my practices. And if you want very technical tracking advise i would get his "Science and Art of Tracking" book.

And pretty much all of his books go through some nature observation guide. this one just has a lot more excercises for practicing it.

I first read this book several years ago, along with his first book "The Tracker." I was impressed enough to travel by plane, bus and truck to his class in New Jersey. Yep, New Jersey, home the largest wooded area in the U.S.
Tom says as a kid he was trained by an Apache Scout and Shaman whom he calls "Grandfather." We spent a week sleeping in a barn on the hay, going barefoot is really cold weather and cooking outside on a large communal grate. Lecture sessions were held in a 100-year old barn and tracking (or dirt time as Tom calls it) was in various woods and fields. This was one of the texts and we had a meal or two using it as a guide-deep fried clover blossoms as I remember, using cattail blossoms as flour. It was very good.
Tom still has classes in NJ. When I left I was certain, as I still am today, that I could survive in the woods or anywhere if necessary.
Get this book along with "The Tracker," for a complete view of Tom's story.
Tom was also technical advisor on the Tommy Lee Jones movie "Tracker," and the knife used in the production is available from Brown. Enjoy, Learn.

This is a cool book. I tried out some of his advice in just my neighbor hood. He says if you want to see new things in the same places change your habitual patterns. I go for walks at night, and I switched up my rout to see if I would see something I don't normally see when I walk regularly; I ran into a coyote crossing my path and continuing his corse. Call it what you will, I took his advice and it worked.

It's a good book. There's value in reading it. But I agree with several other reviewers that James Halfpenny has a better book on animal tracking. Halfpenny's book provides great information from a great naturalist and you don't have to endure "Grandfather" stories to get it.

But the best book for learning to track is, "Tracking: A Blueprint For Learning How" by Jack Kearney. It's focus is mantracking but you will be a much better naturalist tracker for having read it. Kearney is a retired Border Patrol Agent and his book is unsurpassed as a "Tracking 101" manual. Anytime you find retired Border Patrol Agents like Jack Kearney - as well as Joel Hardin, Ab Taylor, etc. - involved in tracking instruction it will be straght forward, no nonsense, easy to understand and highly applicable to a variety of situations.

Ever notice that most people who give Tom Brown high marks seem to like his stories of "Grandfather" and mysticism? And people that tend to give him lower marks don't?