Back in the days before people had apps on their phones to find somebody you had to use a large portion of the gray matter between your ears to locate them. The less folks wanted to be found the more gray matter you had to use. There were times when all the gray matter you had was in use and it still wasn’t enough to find them. That’s when you called in The Trackers.

Trackers were guys that had extra gray matter in their heads dedicated solely to finding other guys or animals whether they wanted to be found or not. It’s unknown how they got this extra gray matter but they had it so just accept it and lets move along. There weren’t a lot of female Mountain men, but if there were it was pretty certain they’d be good trackers too, but history doesn’t relate much about them.

Tracking is the ability to use information gleaned from the surroundings, such as the imprint from the foot of the trackee, or a bent piece of grass, or a note found on the ground saying, “Hey I’m down here by that tree. Follow the stream until you get to that rock then bear left until you see me standing there holding my gun.” Although obvious sounding it was a form of tracking that was usually quite productive. If you could read that is.

Some trackers were like savants. They could look at a track and tell you what it belonged to. They would be able to tell you if it was ham, Ram, Billy goat, Baboon or Bear and how much it weighed, what it planned on doing when it got where it was going, what religious affiliation it had if any, whether it would be friendly when you found it, whether it planned on eating you if it got the chance, and a host of other things to numerous to mention. It was said that they could track an Eagle to its eyrie by the faint imprint of its shadow across the ground. These guys were good.

These abilities were all beneficial skills to have. These fellows lived in a time where if they accidentally stumbled into a pack of unfriendlies they could lose body parts and have a very bad day. So it was a pure survival skill to be able to see an unknown guys footprints and know which tribe they were from, whether or not they might enjoy your company, or if they carried big sharp knives. Well that last one was a given because everyone carried a big sharp knife. It was what they planned to do with it that was important.

The Trackers you see above both had the extra gray matter between their ears and weren’t afraid to use it. There was no physical indication of this extra lump of brain tissue in their outward appearance as it was just packed tight in there inside their heads with the rest of the gray matter and you just could tell they had it by how good they were at tracking. If you’ve ever tried to peel a grape you know how tight that grape is packed inside its skin. That’s the way the inside of the trackers heads were. Tight, packed full. As a team they had followed many a set of tracks and were comfortable with their ability to track a track until they found the maker. They had just come across a fresh set that they believed belonged to a friendly but deranged person and they were going to follow him and see what he was up to. This was often done because they didn’t have that much to do otherwise and it filled up the day.

Trackers played a very important part in the life of the early days of the West by discovering what’s what in the mountains and elsewhere. A lot of stuff would never been discovered without them and as such they were a proud breed, eager to show off their skills for fun or profit and make the West a better place. We salute them.