Good day filming for Ch5. Anti tracking and Shadowhawk Trackers doing their thing when it comes to tracking humans.

Heading off to Dartmoor to film  escape & evasion skills, followed by a manhunt sequence for Ch5.

Yesterday was a real treat. I could tell that something was about to go down. The swallows were enjoying a feeding frenzy of bugs just a couple of meters above the crops in a field, then they all dropped into the hedgerows, where they stayed. They were making a racket,  then over the horizon a flock of seagulls appeared, with a peregrin in the middle. Just a couple of hundred meters from me the peregrin went for height, held its postition for a moment, and then dropped its wings and hurtled vertically to the ground from a long way up.  Ive seen their dives on TV, but that doesnt do it justice, the speed is phenomenal, and looks like a dedicated suicide dive. I didnt notice it decelerate, it looked like it landed at full speed. It didnt get whatever it was after, but trully one of natures amazing tricks, and for me ranks as one of my best!

I have a had lots of messages about the " secret , tracking ingredient that I dont teach to anyone.  I am afraid its got to stay classified, because of the massive advantage it would give to you. 

Its fair to say that good trackers will make good evaders, because they know what trackers are looking for.
But there is one trick that I keep up my sleeve, that would foil even the best of trackers.

Tracking in the UK, is one of the hardest environments in the world.  Ive been saying that for years.
One of the most important skills for a tracker is to get into the mind of the quarry, and plot them and yourself into the landscape. It might sound a bit excessive to non trackers, but that includes micro-landscape. Dont think streams, paths and vegetation, think more like insect activity and milimeters of mud.
I have found the last week frustrating, just as the weather baseline settles, it changes again( after-all it is the UK).
As the season turns from Spring to Summer, the vegetation will dense up. It will become much more difficult to get a visual on our quarry, and we will need to use tracking skil  

Start filming a short sequence for" How To Survive a Disaster" next week for Ch5.  As always Ive more than enough to teach our willing presenters about using tracking skills to survive.  There will be hunter vs the hunted  feel about it.
One person is going to be very scared when he finds out what is in store for him!

Tracking during a storm can be difficult, because of the sound of the wind, and the fact that you are likely to be wearing a hood. However, just after a storm, conditions are the best you could get. Fresh debris is on the trail, track traps are refeshed and you can hear a pin drop.
Over the weekend, I cycled out to the woods to check track traps that I check regularly. This weekend there were muntjac tracks. The tracks led up a trail to a long-abandoned quarry, and sure enough half way up was a muntjac trying to sneak away. People will swear blind that they dont live in Devon and Cornwall.
Definitly we have heard their characteristic bark and some of my students have seen them on course.
This is the first sighting I have had in Cornwall.
It got me thinking. I have seen them in the Himalayas and India. There is something in common. At all the locations where I have seen them there are steep drop-offs. Certainly too steep to track easily and probably too steep to be found by deer stalkers.
As trackers, we follow the trail to the animal, whereas most people are unlikely to go down or up steep vegetated edges.
Could this be why the

Sightings continue to come in. I am always excited when a sighting comes in, especially when it is recent and seen by someone else, not connected. There are some very interesting trends beginning to show.
The only way we can spot trends is with more sightings. So please keep the sightings coming in.
If you are not a tracker, I have specially trained trackers around the country who will join you to go back to site and find tracks. Can you imagine,,,you see the big cat, and then in the hands of an expert, unbiased tracker you find big cat tracks.

New kit for people to use. My favourite is the heat detector. Takes a bit of technique to get it right, but when its mounted on top of my night vision binos its infalable.