It has been a long journey and a few years since my last post. I am now an instructor with Shadowhawk Tracking School and have continued to progress with my journey as a tracker. I decided to revamp my old blog which was named Stalk like an Apache and change it to something more descriptive to the purpose of this blog which is the journal of a Scottish Tracker.


This has been a long and hard journey and I could not have made it without the help of Ian Max Maxwell who has trained me as well as the other Instructors , mentors and students at Shadowhawk. Many of whom I consider to be close and personal friends. They are a real fellowship of like minded and like purposed people.


Many of my next posts will be retrospective bringing you up to this present point from my last posts in 2006.

One recent and upcoming event that I will mention is my being on TV fairly soon. I will be on TV with James May and Oz Clarke along with the Shadowhawk Hunter Force Tracking team. We will be on Manlab 2 in the episode called Prison Break. This is scheduled as far as I am aware for The end of October.

Here I am below in a pic with James and Oz and in another with the Shadowhawk HunterForce tracking team.






I would also like to thank Andrew from Bushwear in Perth for sponsorship of equipment which I used throughout the show. The waterproof socks were great in the boggy places and the Jacket was removed after the sun came out as it was a very warm day. I look forwards to getting more wear from it as the nights draw in.

Wild Boar in Portugal

I am off to Portugal to track on Thursday for a week. I was there last year for two weeks. When I was there I saw the tracks of a wild boar and I started to follow the trail. After a while I saw the boar rooting under a tree and I decided to stalk closer. The adrenalin was pumping and I was being sucked in closer. When I was about 25 yards away I saw the face, it was a sow and she had two youngsters with her. They still had not seen me so I stayed to watch but was not willing to get closer as I was not armed. Once they saw me she charged towards me for a couple of seconds and then changed angle and ran off into the bushes. Those piercing eyes!!!! Those eyes were burned into my retina, I saw them in my sleep for a few days afterwards and a year later can still remember them clearly. The wild boar is an ancient symbol in Scotland of courage and power in battle. Here is a carving done in the pictish style:


When I go to Portugal this week I will be doing tactical tracking. This is basically tracking an armed fugitive in lots of scenarios with arrest procedures. This will be my second week in two years training upon this aspect of tracking. Most of the instructors who work with Shadowhawk ( see sidebar links) specialise in tracking animals; I love to track people and would do this for a living if ever the opportunity arose. Last year I was training with a Royal Marine and this year there will be some Portuguese Police. I can do the tracking fairly well in the arid environment and will be challenged this year by focusing on control of the tracking team. last year I spent a lot of time as lead tracker and flanker. This year I hope to learn some controler skills.

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.