12/06/2025
A beautiful tale of how tracking and other search techniques come together to find a subject. If you want to learn these techniques, come join us at a social hike or monthly meeting to get started!
Deep in the North Woods somewhere north of an alarm clock and south of a gotta-be-to-work-in-the-morning, a man is missing...a late season hunter. His wife became worried when he didn't return home and called 911. We're two hours from our headquarters..."Up North," that mystical magical place where cool stories are made. Both North and South End members are there, a good turnout. Clear and cold, very little wind. it's a beautiful night for a search.
Our trackers are on him. It snowed a week or two ago, but a couple of warm days have yielded crusty patches of snow here and there with occasional soft spots of fudgy earth that reveal clear signature prints. Green Team is on Prime. Red Team is off to the south, signcutting the edge of a vast, ugly swamp. Purple Team is to the north on Green's flank in case our subject made a fortuitous turn in the right direction back toward his vehicle. We're glad for the teachings of departed souls like Marv Martin, Jerry Darkis, and Stan Robson...this UTS tracker training is paying off. This is what we've been trained for.
Suddenly out of the darkness...a gargantuan boulder, the size of a two-stall garage and just as high...a glacial erratic deposited in the middle of the woods thousands of years ago. We can only wonder and marvel at the forces that put it here. What a landmark! It's warm from the day's sun...our incoming drones will have no trouble resecting off it. If this search goes to daylight, aircraft will easily see it from the air. We call in the coordinates to Command..."Call it, 'Big A$$ Rock." This gets us a chuckle over the radio.
A little while later we encounter a game trail that crosses the local use trail our subject had been following. The tracks tell the story. Our guy paused, walked a hundred feet down the game trail and returned. Then a hundred feet down the "correct" trail and return. Then he struck out on the game trail...
The wrong way.
We had found the precise point our subject had become lost.
We start down the game trail, sifting partial signature tracks from among the many deer that moved through here. Red's out in front of us now and calls "Prime." They're on the track, a quarter-mile in front of us. We hustle ahead to "run up the sign" and start a new signcut. But before we do, Red's going to try a shout...coordinated by radio so everyone is ready and listening...compasses out, flashlights off, reminder to all that this is not the time to scratch an itch wearing a nylon jacket making all kinds of scritchy noise. Stay motionless...silent.
A faint holler in reply...the terrain in the way muffles the sound...less than 200 meters away! All teams report their compass bearings to Command. They're plotted. We move out.
Our subject did the right thing. He hunkered down on the lee side of a broad creek valley, away from the wind but not so far down where the coldest air sinks. He's sitting by a cheery fire having just consumed his "morale builder," in this case a king-sized Snickers bar. He's even got a cigar. A quick medical assessment...he's fine. We spend a few minutes enjoying his fire, admiring Orion as it rises over the valley. Some good-natured teasing is the order of the day. He's a tad sheepish that he got hoodwinked by the game trail, and he's very, very glad to see us. Snow on the fire, spread out the embers, more snow...a 360-check to make sure no gear has been dropped, and it's time to head out...
Friends, thanks for tagging along with us as we spin a yarn, and be safe out there, eh? (Pete Kramer photo)
