Hoedspruit tracker honoured

“It’s a great privilege to be awarded the Master of Tracking certificate. To have someone to honour you for what you have given to tracking, that feels good,” says Patrick. “I think tracking is a very nice tool that you can use to read what’s happening in the environment. It gives you the ability to tell what’s going on, and what has happened, and what’s potentially going to happen,” he explains.

“The most challenging aspect of tracking is probably on the tactical side. Most of my tracking combat nowadays is anti-poaching related. Working with dogs in tracking can also potentially be challenging with regards to the speed, the distance, and the amount of time you have to use when tracking,” Patrick explains. His love for track started when he was young. He had to look at different tracks and listen to sounds in his surroundings.

Patrick always had an interest in trying to figure out, what has been there and what was happening on the ground. “I started professionally tracking in 1993 and I did nature conservation at that time. Over the years I worked in different sectors of the conservation field, but it all revolved around tracking,” Patrick explains. “Basically the whole family just loves tracking. My tips for people in tracking, I always say that as a trainer you don’t have to do much work, you only have to take people into the environment, show them the tracks and give them hints and principles on how to track, and the environment or the track will do the rest,” says Patrick.

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“I observe people and check on those who are enthusiastic, and once they start, they are hooked and the tracking just flows. There are certain principles, a lot of it has to do with the mind, the confidence that you must have in yourself, that you have the potential to do this, you just start with it step-by-step,” explains Patrick. “You must observe animals a lot, how they move, and once they have moved go to where they were and check their track and relate to how they moved and that will help you with tracking,” he added.

He said that some of the greatest rewards he has received from tracking for him are being able to train people. “It’s a great reward to show people the amazing world of tracking and observe how they develop and grow in their own ability to track and how they see things and start tracking themselves. At the moment I conduct tracking all over Africa, with regards to animal-based tracking and tactical man-tracking programmes,” says Patrick.

“When following a suspect, we have to think about the danger involved in it. It puts the tracker and the team on high alert with regard to their senses, and that makes it very challenging. When you track under pressure, where you are tracking wounded animals, it is very rewarding to help the wounded animal get the help it needs fast,” concluded Colin. Louis Liebenberg, an expert tracker, and the author of several books and scientific papers on the art of tracking awarded Patrick with his master tracker certification. Liebenberg is an associate of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and co-founder and executive director of Cyber Tracker.