It's a fairly loaded question actually. It could be answered simply, much in the same way as Sir Edmund Hillary answered the question about why he climbed Mount Everest, "because it's there".
There is a literal mountain of training opportunities available to me in the United States. How do I make a decision about which ones to spend my resources on?
I normally choose gun training. Courses in combat and defensive pistol have been my primary outlet, but I have also taken some carbine training as well as a handful of classes on the use of precision long range rifles. I'm a black belt in TaeKwonDo and am currently learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. So why in the world would I choose to take a combat tracking course from John Hurth of TYR Group? Go check out his website for more information on what a combat tracker is and does. You won't be disappointed.
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| black beanie is me |
Honestly I think this time I just wanted to do something different; well that and I had an opportunity to meet John Hurth at the ITS Tactical Muster event in 2015, and knew immediately I wanted to learn more from him.
Going into it I thought, I'll never use this stuff. In fact I would say I didn't even see how combat tracking related to my real world, defensive, gun culture lifestyle. I was wrong in several ways. The first is that I thought it held no relevance to gun training. "Combat" tracking - duh. (smacks self upside the head) We had a rifle in our hands during the majority of this course. We learned some small units tactics and movement among other things.
The second thing I was wrong about is that I would never have an opportunity to use this skillset in my day to day life. Here's a short story about using my tracking skills. Bare with me.
As a family, we like to go geocaching. If you're unfamiliar with this it's an activity where people hide small containers filled with trinkets all around the world. They record the GPS coordinates of these caches and then post them online. Others can download/upload these coordinates into their personal GPS devices and then go on a treasure hunt of sorts trying to find the cache. My family was trying to locate a cache that was in a fairly remote part of a national forest. You get so focused on following your GPS screen that you often forget to look up and take in your surroundings. We found the cache, but I got turned around and really didn't know where the main trail was from where we ended up. We weren't lost - obviously we had a GPS. I just didn't immediately recognize where I was.
Then I looked down and it clicked! I know exactly how to find the trail. Six people walking through the woods creates quite a mark that is pretty easy to follow if you know what you're looking for. Using the obvious signs that we left in the dirt, in the leaf clutter, and the laid over weeds, I was able to find the trail again. Prior to my combat tracking course, I'm not sure I would have recognized those signs. I would have been forced to rely on my technology. What if the batteries had died? For me personally I would have just headed due south until I ran into a highway that I know runs east/west nearly all the way across that area, but the point needs to be made that you have to know skills that don't require the use of batteries.
Combat tracking skills can be extremely useful for locating missing members of your family, or obviously for self rescue while exploring the woods. These skills would be a necessity for search and rescue teams. They could also be useful for members of the law enforcement community. I was in law enforcement for over 5 years and can think of several instances where tracking skills would have been useful had I known them at the time. It goes without saying that the military is the perfect place to use combat tracking skills.
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| The venerable John Hurth surveying his domain |
I'm very thankful that I decided on a whim to take the 5 day combat tracker course from John Hurth of TYR Group. I feel better prepared to thrive in my world no matter the circumstances. All of the above to answer the question; why do I train? I train because I'm committed to being a life long learner. I'd rather not go back to school in the traditional sense, but to branch out of the norm (guns) and learn something new and interesting, is never a poor decision in my opinion.
So what's next on the training horizon for me? On the short list is sniper field craft, combat medicine, and maybe another carbine course. I'm already asking myself why in the world would I care about sniper fieldcraft? Will I ever use this? Do you suppose the easy answers to these questions will keep me from being adventurous and just committing to a new chance to learn something cool and surprisingly useful? Nope! #keeptraining
--ME
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