History Main / ScarilyCompetentTracker

So you have a character in the group who is nature-savvy. Maybe he or she is an [[OurElvesAreDifferent Elf]] or MagicalNativeAmerican or just some gruff WildMan or {{Ranger}}-type. One way to establish that character as being badass and not the GranolaGirl is to show him to be a good tracker. Of course, any moron can follow footprints in the mud. Since our character is so good, he'll not only be able to tell you how many people there were, but any of the following also:

* How long ago they passed (precision can vary from "Less than a day" to "exactly 45 minutes 12 seconds").

* Alternatively, a Scarily Competent Tracker might very well be capable of doing all of the above on dry asphalt or stones. He's just THAT good.

There are two ways the Scarily Competent Tracker works his magic. The first is to crouch and prod the footprints with his fingers. The other is to stick his ear to the ground and listen. Or possibly TheNoseKnows, but that usually goes into SuperSenses. If the Tracker is part of a FiveManBand, then they typically fill the role of TheSmartGuy.

* Despite the show's title, the protagonist of ''Series/{{Tracker}}'' is ''not'' one of these, although he still has a number of superhuman abilities due to the fact that he's an alien EnergyBeing in human form. In one episode, though, he meets an elderly Native American named Wahota Keene (played by Creator/DonFrancks) whose son was killed by one of the escaped alien convicts Cole is tracking. Keene immediately recognizes his son's killer by simply looking at him and then shows remarkable skill at tracking his movements in the woods. Cole does find that he likes Keene, given that they're both trackers.

* In ''ComicBook/ArakSonOfThunder'', the title character Arak Red-Hand is a Native American BarbarianHero in Dark Ages Europe. His tracking prowess is superior to any of the European characters.
* In ''ComicBook/ArchieComics'', Archie tries to hide with Jughead from Veronica to duck out of an event, after freaking out that she asked Betty to help find him, quoting that she can zero in on him from anywhere. They leave Archie's jacket at Pop Tate's, jump to the countryside and wade in the river to cover their tracks, then decide to hide in Veronica's shed. Problem was, not only did Betty know exactly what they were doing earlier but beat them to Veronica's shed first and just asked her to open it from the inside right before they were about to do so.

* The ''ComicBook/BlackPanther'' doesn't take it to comical lengths, but he can still track a robot through a devastated war zone by seeing how the rubble has been displaced from where the patterns of explosions would place it.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Cavewoman}}'', Meriem is this as a result of having lived in the jungle since she was eight. In ''Quiver'', she is able to track an archaeological expedition a month after it left (although this gets a LampshadeHanging when she comments that it was a miracle she could find anything after all this time).
* Bullseye from ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}''.

* Owlwoman of the ''ComicBook/GlobalGuardians'' is [[MagicalNativeAmerican a Cherokee who was gifted with enhanced senses and the ability to fly]]. Her enhanced senses make her a superior tracker.
* In ''ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes'', this is Dawnstar's superpower. she is a master tracker and can track life forms and objects across light years of distance and through interstellar space. She can even use this ability while unconscious, asleep, under mind control, intoxicated or sensory blinded.
* Laughed at in the Scrooge [=McDuck=] story "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff" (a part of ''Comicbook/TheLifeAndTimesOfScroogeMcDuck''), where Scrooge's uncle Angus tries to act like one of these by trying to hunt down the villains by broken tree branches. Young Scrooge and Goklayeh point out that the villains would have to be fairly incompetent to hit the only tree in miles' reach and set out to mock him by 'tracking' the villains by noticing a single bent cactus spine and ''a disturbed grain of sand''.

* ComicBook/{{Lobo}} has an extremely good sense of smell in an atmosphere and an additional sense that lets him track bastichs across the galaxy.

* Parodied in ''ComicBook/MortadeloYFilemon'' by Mortadelo, who tends to put his ear to the ground. Many times, he will miss the actual target. Other times, it does actually work, but it backfires on him.
* Once upon a time in ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'' Trip, the son of [[PunchClockVillain the Raider]], was taken from his home in the late 23rd century and brought into an alternative 2015 that, for the Raider, had never happened. Not only did the Raider track him down there, but it took him ''only a day''... Just as expected, as getting him there and [[spoiler:changing the future by preventing the Raider's death]] was the whole point.
* There's a ''ComicBook/{{Robin}}'' annual where USMarshal Pow-Wow Smith is trailing the Trigger Twins after they were sprung from a chain gang. He tells Nighthawk, a bounty hunter also on their tail, what he knows so far: they drove into the desert from the interstate a few miles north, in a 1978 Cadillac El Dorado, stolen, Oklahoma plates -- [[LudicrousPrecision from Tulsa.]] Nighthawk can't believe Smith could learn all that just from looking at some tire tracks, but actually [[SherlockCanRead that was all in the Texas Rangers' report on the escape.]]
* ComicBook/{{Sabretooth}} and Wolverine are both considered to be excellent trackers, even without their heightened senses.
** Comicbook/{{X 23}} may be even ''better'' at this than Wolverine and Sabretooth. Her sense of smell is even better than Logan's, and she's demonstrably been able to locate individuals in a crowded city ''hours'' after they were last there. In one case it even allowed her to completely reconstruct a crime scene — including the movements of ''dozens'' of individuals — ''by scent alone''. Combine that with her extensive espionage and intelligence training. So when she threatens some mooks by telling them once she has their scent there is nowhere they can hide from her, ''she's not bluffing''.

* The ''ComicBook/SilverSurfer'' has cosmic senses that allow him to (if narration is to be believed) track a single atom on the other side of the galaxy. That one just moves straight into AWizardDidIt.

* In Franchise/TheDCU, ComicBook/{{Tomahawk}} has this ability, unerringly following a trail invisible to everyone else across a dinosaur-infested jungle in ''ComicBook/TheWarThatTimeForgot'' mini-series.

* ''ComicBook/{{WITCH}}'' has Lord Cedric: if he's after you, he ''will'' find you. It got to the point that Elias Van Dahl used ''time travel'' to escape him, going from Meridian at the end of the twentieth century to Earth in the seventeenth century... And then one day ''Cedric barged in with his men''. It's implied he had actually been there for a while and had just waited for the eve of his wedding out of sheer sadism.
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman2011'': Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt, proves that she earns that title when she tracks down Dio by scent and other things no one else can sense, from at least a hundred miles away.
* The original roster of the third incarnation of ''ComicBook/XForce'' consisted of Comicbook/{{Wolverine}}, Comicbook/{{X 23}}, Wolfsbane, and Warpath. The first 3 have heightened senses, the 4th is an Apache Indian (see RealLife below).
* ''ComicBook/XMen'': Thunderbird, Warpath, and Moonstar, all Native Americans, have displayed superior tracking abilities.

'''Mook #1:''' Black pine, from the high mountains.\\
'''Mook #2:''' White horse hair. Imperial stallions.\\
'''Mook #3:''' ''[sniffs the doll]'' Sulphur, from cannons.\\

* Parodied in ''Series/FatherTed''. When Ted has to locate a lost sheep, he tells Dougal that sheep instinctively head north and gives a long explanation as to why. When Dougal then asks which way is north, Ted [[IncrediblyLamePun sheepishly]] admits he doesn't know. He then tries to press his face to the ground and gets a face full of mud for his trouble, while Dougal is able to figure out where the sheep is simply by following ominous noises.

* Billy, the MagicalNativeAmerican from ''Film/{{Predator}}'', does this several times throughout the movie. As does the Predator itself, but it has the advantage of technology.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Archie}}'', the titular teenager tries to hide with Jughead from Veronica to duck out of an event, after freaking out that she asked Betty to help find him, quoting that she can zero in on him from anywhere. They leave Archie's jacket at Pop Tate's, jump to the countryside and wade in the river to cover their tracks, then decide to hide in Veronica's shed. Problem was, not only did Betty know exactly what they were doing earlier but beat them to Veronica's shed first and just asked her to open it from the inside right before they were about to do so.

* ''Franchise/SpiderMan'': Amongst his other enhanced senses, Puma possesses a superhumanly acute sense of smell that he uses to track a target by scent.

** The most famous instance being Creator/ShiaLaBeouf's ''Series/HeWillNotDivideUs'' livestream, in which he raised a flag in protest leading to the most elaborate game of "Capture the Flag" known to man. At one point he attempted to hide it by filming the flag from below with nothing but the sky in view, but 4chan trolls managed to locate the flag in under two days by using astronomy, time zones, and detective work with airline flight paths. When he moved it to a deserted cabin, they found it by examining the wood pattern on the walls. The final location was in front of a blank white wall, which they tracked down to a house in London within four hours by examining how a light from off-screen shifted and eventually dimmed.

* What was their last meal.

** Bra'tac and Teal'c sometimes do this, most notably in "Maternal Instinct" 'Neill, [[DeadpanSnarker being]] O'Neill, lampshades it. Bra'tac is not amused. Though it's more of a SherlockScan; two sets of heavy bootprints and a set of light sandalprints = two men and a woman. Men found dead in one place, woman found dead elsewhere with new group of dead men but with hands unbound = woman was carrying something important. Later he states that the something important was a young girl. When asked how they could possibly know that, they point to a doll that had fallen to the ground.

* The userbase of Website/FourChan is infamous for its ability to coordinate and track down individuals & locations using minute details.

* Trevor Rainbolt, more commonly known on social media as Rainbolt. He has gained popularity for his videos showing off his extreme talent playing GeoGuessr (an online geography game where players are given an image and have to guess where in the world the image is from). Rainbolt often adds additional challenges, such as blurring or pixelating images, and has even correctly guessed the location of images while blindfolded [[https://youtu.be/MAK-GZ1feXQ]] and having someone else describe the photo to him.

[[folder:Web Original]]
* WebOriginal/FortniteLoreSociety: There's a long story here. David found Toby's hometown, and a few months later, after receiving an anonymous paid offer to teach Fortnite lore, David suggested the possibility of finding out where the seller lived.
-->'''David Johnson:''' Alright, I'll track down the name.
-->'''Stick:''' Money time
-->'''David Johnson:''' Since I was able to figure out Toby's hometown, I think I can do this.
-->'''Stick:''' Bros a master tracker
-->'''Toby Is Awesome:''' Thats just called being a stalker
-->'''David Johnson:''' He's from Texas but that's about it.
-->'''Legend Jones:''' Stop arguing so we can get paid mf
-->'''David Johnson:''' Anyone live near Texas? We could do a big road trip there.
-->'''Toby Is Awesome:''' Took me 2 seconds to find the website
[[/folder]]

* WebOriginal/FortniteLoreSociety: There's a long story here. David found Toby's hometown, and a few months later, after received an anonymous paid offer to teach Fortnite lore, David suggested the possibility of finding out where the seller lived.

-->'''TobyIsAwesome:''' Thats just called being a stalker

-->'''TobyIsAwesome:''' Took me 2 seconds to find the website

[[folder:Web Videos]]
* ''LetsPlay/{{Dream}}'': In any challenge where someone is hunting someone else, the Hunter(s) always have a compass that points towards their target, meaning they can always find him no matter where he goes or how he tries to hide. The exception was that they couldn't track locations within the Nether until a Minecraft update changed that. The compass plays a big role in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgdSJdeGF_0 "Minecraft Speedrunner VS 3 Hunters FINALE."]] [[spoiler:Dream builds a fake Nether Portal so that he could trick the hunters into thinking he was back at the Nether. It would've worked, but the compass gave it away since it can indirectly tell whether Dream's at the Overworld or the Nether depending on if it moves or not since this video was before the update that made compasses work in the Nether.]]

* ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' has James, who at least justifies his skills by having "can track you anywhere" as his vampiric gift.

* One of the guardsmen in Creator/DavidGemmell's book ''Literature/{{Legend}}'' does this. Basically, he retells how a fight happened, move by move, just from the footprints in an alleyway. Well, that and the bodies scattered around.

* The Huntsman ([[EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep natch!]]) does this in ''Series/TheTenthKingdom'': after emerging from the Dwarf mines, he puts his ear to a boulder and is able to hear through the rock (complete with cool shrieking hawk sound-effects) all the way to the Royal Estate where Virginia and Tony are walking. Either something they say is indicative of their location, or he can tell how far the sound traveled because he's able to know exactly where they are.