Recognition by feather

I have been away for a week working as an instructor with Shadowhawk Tracking School. This was an intermediate and advanced course. This tracking included animal tracking and man tracking during the day and night. Yes it is possible to track at night with the correct equipment. An internationally recognised symbol of the tracker is that of a feather. This feather can only be given to you by a master tracker and can only be earned not bought. It symbolises the heritage of teaching passed on from one tracking generation to the next. This is respect for the teaching not veneration of previous trackers. It is not ancestor worship; it is closer to a rite of passage like a bar mitzva. So around the world other trackers will see me as a tracker not as a wannabe enthusiast. What is fantastic to me is knowing that I am the first and only person in Scotland to achieve this level of tracking. There are a handfull of others in the rest of the UK. This feather took the form of a silver pendant rather than an actual eagle feather.


A close up shows the arrow that is the symbol of Shadowhawk Tracking School. It has cost me a lot of time and effort to achieve this and I am well chuffed. I hope to be in a position in a few years where I can spend a lot more time tracking; possibly earning a living from it.