When you walk through a field or a forest, you may not see any prey animals around for hours, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. Britain has around 37 million wild rabbits, 2 million deer and 2.5 million squirrels, but you’ll rarely see them if you aren’t looking in the right places at the right time of day.

Tracking animals takes competence and patience, and a gut instinct that you sometimes have to follow once you know the basics. Tracking for survival is a great skill to have because it can tell you a number of important facts about British wildlife in order to hunt or trap them successfully.

Animals leave lots of signs we can pick up on if we know what to look for, all of these give us important clues to eventually find it. Just from looking at the footprint of an animal a skilled tracker can tell how old it is, the approximate weight, in which direction it is headed, if it is injured or whether it’s a male or female.

You can also use this tracking survival skill to find someone in your group who is lost, following their footprints and other signs to locate them.

Tracking can also help you to determine the activities of other people in the area who may be friend or foe, and from that make appropriate decisions about where to set up camp, or in which direction to travel.

Contrary to popular belief, tracking is not only about looking at footprints left in the ground, but there are many other tell-tale signs a prepper can begin to use to their advantage when tracking, once they know what they are.

You will learn to become conscious of these signs, and understand where to place your focus when employing this vital survival tracking skill.

Below you will find some interesting articles when it comes to tracking for survival, such as how to differentiate between species, the best time to track and how to build your survival tracking skills.