History Main / ScarilyCompetentTracker

* Thomas "Catman" Blake claims to be [[InformedAbility the greatest tracker on Earth.]]

[[quoteright:300:[[{{Mantracker}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Mantracker_987.png]]]]
[[caption-width-right:300:Certainly not someone you would want to play hide and seek with.]]

[[quoteright:300:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Mantracker_987.png]]

* The original roster of the third incarnation of ''{{X-Force}}'' consisted of [[Wolverine]], [[OppositeSexClone X-23]], Wolfsbane, and Warpath. The first 3 have heightened senses, the 4th is an Apache Indian (see RealLife below).

* In the BellisariusSeries the title character has Abbu, a bedouin chief who is doing mercenary service as a scout with the Roman Army.

* Laughed at in the Scrooge [=McDuck=] story "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff" (a part of ''TheLifeAndTimesOfScroogeMcDuck'' entirety), where Scrooge's uncle Angus tries to act like one of these. Young Scrooge and Geronimo immediately mock him by pretending notice a single bent cactus spine and ''a disturbed grain of sand in the middle of the desert''.

* In ButchCassidyAndTheSundanceKid, Butch and Sundance are pursued relentlessly by a group specially outfitted to hunt them down and bring them in, dead or alive. The group counts Lord Baltimore, a famous Indian tracker, among its members. Lord Baltimore is talented enough to track Butch and Sundance across stone cliffs, much to the pair amazement. They only escape the group by [[spoiler: jumping off a high cliff into a river]], made doubly frightening for [[spoiler: Sundance because he can't swim.]]

* In ButchCassidyandtheSundanceKid, Butch and Sundance are pursued relentlessly by a group specially outfitted to hunt them down and bring them in, dead or alive. The group counts Lord Baltimore, a famous Indian tracker, among its members. Lord Baltimore is talented enough to track Butch and Sundance across stone cliffs, much to the pair amazement. They only escape the group by [[spoiler: jumping off a high cliff into a river]], made doubly frightening for [[spoiler: Sundance because he can't swim.]]

* The original roster of the third incarnation of ''{{X-Force}}'' consisted of [[Wolverine]], [[OppositeSexClone X-23]], Wolfsbane, and Warpath. The first 3 have heightened senses, the 4th is an Apache Indian.

*** He's baffled quite a few times. He can't understand how the hobbit cut their bonds if both their arms and legs were tied. (In truth, Pippin cut his bonds on a dropped knife earlier but pretended he was still bound till he could escape with Merry).
*** Actually, it was Legolas that was baffled by this. Aragorn correctly dedeuced that he had freed his hands and then been carried by an orc.

** In fairness to the reference to the swordfighting example, footwork actually ''is'' an important factor in fencing (arguably more important than handling the blade, since footwork allows one to maneuver oneself into an appropriate position to fatally attack one's opponent) to the point that many Renaissance fencing schools had students perfect their footwork for years before they were allowed to even ''hold'' a sword.
* Hawkeye from ''{{Last of the Mohicans}}'' is a Scarily Competent Tracker in league with Aragorn and Humperdinck. Heck, ''all'' the Mohicans and most of the Indians are, too (the Mohicans also have [[WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway Super Running Skills]].)

* [[TheWildThornberries Nigel Thornberry]], despite his slight BumblingDad appearance, is a formidable tracker- even when trying to catch up with a rare rhinocerous who left footprints that led in the wrong direction to try and fool him.

* TruthInTelevision: the Yung!Sang tribe are actually able to define the age, sex and health of their hunt, as well as how long they've passed by, by the footprints. According to Carl Sagan, they're even able to identify people by name only looking at their footprints.

* In the BellisariusSeries the title character has Abbu, a bedouin chief who is doing mercenary service with the Roman Army.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Corbett_(hunter) Jim Corbett]] was a hunter famous for killing man-eating tigers and leopards that terrorized villages, some of them with victims numbering in the hundreds. He could tell how old tracks were, as well as the sex, size, and condition of the animal that made them. He could even identify individual tigers he had observed before.

* The original roster of the third incarnation of [[X-Force]] consisted of [[Wolverine]], [[OppositeSexClone X-23]], Wolfsbane and Warpath. The first 3 have heightened senses, the 4th is an Apache Indian.

* Similar to World of Warcraft, in Everquest 2 a Scout class can track anything from land mammals to birds to fish to entirely stationary mushrooms. In fact, the tracking window even brings up the ''name'' of everything in the area, allowing the Scout to track specific NPCs (including ones they have never met before and know nothing about).

**** And of course, racial bonuses to survival checks (like a Shifter's) or to Wisdom can make this doable even more easily. And that's not counting items that would give a bonus to the check (Masterwork Tools for a +2, Periapts of Wisdom for a bonus to Wisdom and thus survival). If your [[MinMaxing Optimise]] your character well enough, it can become outright easy to do that DC 39 survival check.

**** And of course, racial bonuses to survival checks (like a Shifter's) or to Wisdom can make this doable even more easily. And that's not counting items that would give a bonus to the check (Masterwork Tools for a +2, Periaps of Wisdom for a bonus to Wisdom and thus survival). If your [[MinMaxing Optimise]] your character well enough, it can become outright easy to do that DC 39 survival check.

* In ''{{Mulan}}'', the Huns are able to identify the movement of the Imperial army simply by analyzing a lost doll.

->'''Gus:''' ''So how are we supposed to blindly trace a man's jogging path?''\\
'''Shawn:''' ''We're going to use my '''[[MagicalNativeAmerican Indian Blood]]'''.''\\
'''Gus:''' ''You can't get [[MagicalNativeAmerican Indian Blood]] by working at a casino.''\\
'''Shawn:''' ''Maybe '''you''' can't.''
-->--''{{Psych}}''

*** Far more realistic in the book, where Aragorn is only able to notice signs because the hobbits had dropped their cloak-clasp as a sign on the way before they escaped, and had been carried away from where the main battle was. Even then, Aragorn is only able to deduce fairly basic information from the signs, and outright admits that a lot of what he sees doesn't make sense unless he acknowledges that a few pertinent facts will have taken place elsewhere, or will otherwise have left no visible signs. Nevertheless, he does have impressive tracking skills, which is justified by having been raised and lived as a Ranger of the plains of Eriador. He does mention having limits, being unwilling to continue the chase across the plains of Rohan at night, as the trail is harder to see compared to when they were in the forest and the risk of losing it in the dark is too great. Also the only reason he finds Pippin's lorien leaf clasp in the book is because Pippin ran from the Orcs to drop it away from them, so the clasp wouldn't be trampled and hidden. In the movie, Aragorn finds the clasp after it's been trampled and buried in the ground.