Customer Reviews

Tactical Tracking Operations: The Essential Guide for Military and Police Trackers: The Essential Guide for Military and Police Trackers

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I found this book to be very helpful. We use this as a text book for advanced tracking in our Search and Rescue team.

David Scott-Donelan is a dear friend of mine. I am a member of Vietnam Veterans of America and Veterans of Foreign Wars. David spent approximately 30 years as a combat tracker, trainer, and officer in charge of training the most elite fighting force the world has ever known. His book is a Bible for Military Personnel who will need Tracking Skills, Law Enforcement people, and Corrections Department People who will have to track and apprehend DANGEROUS armed fugitives. It is not for the meek of heart to read this book. To do what Capt David Scott-Donelan did in Southern Africa for 30 years requires skills that few men in the history of mankind ever possessed. Yet a more gentle and friendly a person you will never find anywhere. If you want to know about serious combat tracking, read the book, and try to get your department to send you to his Tracking School. It will be money worth spent. It will save your life by using the most aggressive tracking methods

ever developed in history by the man who wrote the history!

I bought this after a Search and Rescue mission, hoping to get an insight on tracking subjects that may be avoiding the search teams.

The author spends over half the already short text on either self-congratulatory war stories or "my favorite gun" weapon reviews. The latter in fact are so totally subjective as to be essentially useless. (As a side note, it was the only time in my life I've EVER heard the Mini-14 referred to as having "excellent accuracy")

This book is a definite pass. After a quick skim, I sent it straight back to Amazon to get Jack Kearney's "Tracking, a blueprint for learning how."

David Scott-Donelan with this fascinating book brings his hard learned lessons of aggressive mantracking as he used in the counter-insurgency bush wars of Rhodesia and South Africa. His techniques were gleaned from the elite units (Rhodesian SAS, Selous Scouts, and South African Recces) he served with and instructed in the craft of combat tracking. He does not conjure up spirits from the spirit world to interpret spoor but uses techniques of observation and reduction, with a little common sense. His book covers all fundamentals of mantracking on up to equipment selection, multiple team operations, and follow-up methods to list but a few. Donelan has also taken these tried and proven techniques and has slightly modified them for use in law enforcement employment; using tracking as a tool to apprehend fleeing suspects or escapees, to its use and employment in a search and rescue role. All I can say is if you are to own one book on tactical/combat mantracking this is the book, with its 30 years plus of experience between the covers. Donelan is currently working on a follow up book (working title unknown) so keep your eyes open for it. Also if his book is just not enough and you need or want hands on experience or training; Check out his courses on tactical tracking at his website Tactical Tracking Operations School (TTOS).

Scott-Donelan is not Tom Brown, no tracking ants here. He is also not Jack Kerney. Brown gets down in the dirt and tells you the nitty-gritty of pressure releases. Kerney shows you how to sign cut and use a stick to measure stride and locate the next track. Scott-Donelan tells you what tracking is like when the quarry may hide his tracks or circle around and shoot. His accounts of bush warfare are worth the price of admission. (Scott-Donelan's book also turned me on to Jim Hooper's Beneath the Visiting Moon, a first hand account of tracking in a brush war, also fine read.) Tactical Tracking Operations is your book if you are interested in tracking or just want to read a tale of adventure. I give it five stars, there is nothing else like it.