Tom Brown's Science and Art of Tracking [Mass Market Paperback]

Tom Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1999

More popular than ever, Tom Brown, Jr.'s unique approach to inner growth through outer awareness has gained a wide audience, ranging from weekend campers and nature lovers, to serious survivalists and college students. The Science and Art of Tracking expands upon Tom Brown's most enduring subject: the important life lessons to be learned through tracking skills. Tom Brown was taught the ancient skills of survival by a Native American he called Grandfather. His most advanced lessons were those of the scouts, members of a secret society who were highly attuned to nature. The scouts refined tracking to a disciplined science and art form. With these physical skills came enhanced perception and true enlightment. "Tracking was their doorway to the universe," Tom Brown writes, "where they could know all things through the tracks..." Now Tom Brown, Jr. shares generations of wisdom through one of the most rewarding pursuits to be found in nature. Tracking lets us unlock the secrets of each animal we follow, and in turn, to become more aware of our own place in nature and the world. It is a journey of discovery that engages the senses, awakens the spirit, and enlightens the soul.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Trade (February 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425157725
• ISBN-13: 978-0425157725
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #216,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Tom Brown, Jr is America's most acclaimed outdoorsman, and a renowned tracker, teacher, and author. When Tom was only seven, Stalking Wolf (Grandfather), an Apache elder, shaman and scout, began coyote teaching Tom in the skills of tracking, wilderness survival, and awareness. After Stalking Wolf's final walk, Tom spent the next ten years wandering the wilderness throughout the America's with no manufactured tools--in most cases not even a knife--perfecting Grandfathers skills and teachings. Tom came back to "civilization" and began looking for people interested in all that he had learned, but found none. He felt lost and confused until a local sheriff who knew Tom called him in to track a lost person. Tom found the missing person and, in the process, found his Vision.
Over the next few years Tom earned his reputation as "The Tracker" by finding lost people, and fugitives. He has since worked with many law enforcement agencies, throughout the United States and internationally, on cases involving abducted children, lost hunters and hikers, and fugitives. He wrote about his experiences in a book titled The Tracker, which was published in 1978. Soon after, Reader's Digest ran a condensed version of Tom's story and included information on the Tracker School. That was over thirty years ago, and today Tom Brown Jr's Tracker School http://www.trackerschool.com is teaching people from all over the world and from all walks of life. Since the success of The Tracker, Tom has authored 16 books on tracking, awareness, nature observation and survival, including, Grandfather, The Vision, The Way of the Scout and a series of field guides, which have sold well over a million copies.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

75 of 83 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars See For Yourself, August 2, 2000

By 

Sam Freedom "Sam Freedom" (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tom Brown's Science and Art of Tracking (Mass Market Paperback)

I've read some of the other reviews, and you can bet that the negative ones came from people who, for whatever reason, weren't able to do what was necessary to understand. Like one of the other gentlemen, I too spent a couple weeks with Tom, and his senior instructor at that time, "Little Frank", and I found the course to be perfect for a clumsy, city-conditioned imbecile like myself.

Tom is charismatic, but he doesn't use it to make friends and converts. He uses it to help the reader make the transition from a shell-shocked city-dweller to someone who can feel safe to explore the mysteries of the untamed wild. If you already feel comfortable with nature, Tom, in this book and his teachings, will then help you to move from seeing just big things, to seeing very small details. Some people, such as the earlier reviewer might have had great difficulty with this. After all, not everyone can fathom the benefit that comes from getting down in the grass and watching how beetles duke it out.

As for the skeptic who did not believe that a mouse could be tracked across gravel: I experienced it. Something inside me is changed for ever now that it has entered my direct awareness that such a thing is possible. It leaves me open to what else is possible. The moments leading up to 'tracking the mouse across gravel' were well-orchestrated. We were tracking when the sun was at the most optimal point in the sky. We had started way down the trail near Tom's barn, and he would write details on pointed popsicle sticks and place them with the point touching the back of the animals tracks. We were told to first step back, go wide angle vision while maintaining awareness on the track area, and to just try to see what it was that Tom saw. I can't say this is easy for anyone to do, to try to see as if someone else (but interestingly, this is also necessary for one to become compassionate, so you see his teachings were not simply for the sake of tracking, but for being a finer kind of person.) I continued down many feet of trail, viewing track from rabbit, fox, skunk and even a Bobcat. This continued to the end of the dirt trail right to the edge of his gravel driveway. The mind was now so focussed from finely attuning to all the previous tracks, the detail, and the 'event' that it recorded, so that when I reached the last popsicle stick, the words on it literally sprung into my mind like an eruption, because I had been waiting for this very moment since the first day when he made the promise that we would be able to track a mouse across a gravel path. At that point, I was deely aware of a shift in my awareness. I did not need to squint, or look hard despite the countless spaces between the large pieces of rock. Clear as day there were a set of tracks from a mouse going across the gravel path. I remember my heart-rate increasing and my mind becoming very still. I was, one might say, "in the present moment.", and that is what it was about.

The practice of tracking helps one to become present to what is. All around you, this very moment, there are many tracks. You are leaving many tracks. Don't let anyone feed you their negative experience. They did not have a grateful attitude and are expressing resentments. You can get this book and even if it contains a lot of information that is in his other books, you can learn something essential about yourself, and the many worlds within 'the world'. So much life and death around you now at every moment, and your eyes are towards the sky. Learn to track. Anything is fine, just learn to track something, and you will see it is not about what's 'out there.'

37 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Try it for yourself!, May 20, 2001

By 

virgil akers (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tom Brown's Science and Art of Tracking (Mass Market Paperback)

This is a great book for beginning trackers and nature lovers. The book shows how anyone willing to put forth a little effort to go out and practice and get some "dirt time" can learn to follow even the tiniest tracks across the most difficult surfaces. Tom uses a common sense method of tracking that examines a track in terms of "pressure releases." For example: a heavy foot displaces more "dirt" than a lighter foot, a foot traveling fast will displace more "dirt" to the rear of the foot than a foot moving slowly. By measuring the size of these pressure releases one can tell a myriad of things about the creature one is tracking: its size, its direction of travel, its speed of travel and its head position. Eventually, by studying micro-pressure releases inside the track one will also be able to tell whether the animal has a full stomach, whether it is male or female and dozens of other cool details about the animal. Tom will teach you how to see the animal as you track it. Some people seem to doubt whether the stories Tom tells are real or not. Kevin below states that there are no oak trees in Montana. This is false. The bur oak is abundant in the state of Montana and it grows up to 70 feet high sometimes. The best use of this book I feel is to use it in your everyday life. It teaches one to look at the details of life one might miss.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars quite useful, more so than his other books, March 16, 2005

By 

tupac wayne gacy "me" (tha baghdad basement) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tom Brown's Science and Art of Tracking (Mass Market Paperback)

there is a good summary of basic pressure points and many of the important complicated ones. If you are at a point in your tracking studies when you are ready to start working beyond basic animal signs to reading track movement, this is a good guide. But you might not need it for long, because all of its exercises are carried out in a tracking box with relative ease. It is very hard to teach this stuff to yourself, as I am finding, so find yourself a teacher to set you on your way. Or go to Tom Brown's tracking school for more detailed instruction. If you want to be inspired and drawn into tracking for life, read The Tracker first, then read his other books. A lot of stuff is repeated amongst all of his books, so don't buy them unless you really need them. This is the only book with really concrete tracking instruction, which is why I bought it. Kind of sad really, I wish he would write more books about this and less about old man stories.