Winter Tracking Game

If you have a fresh snowfall and a couple of friends handy, you have everything you need for one of the most fun games ever. An ideal number is three or four players, though you can do it with two.

Setup

Get suited up for the cold. Then choose one person to be the ‘hunted’. Everyone else is a hunter. Choose a ‘run time’ for the hunted. If you are playing in terrain that is easy to get lost in, choose a short run time, perhaps a few minutes. If your terrain is more open, give the person a little longer. In the northwoods, we often give each other a five minute lead. Also make sure that you have an ‘end time’ – if the hunted can avoid the hunters for, say a half-hour, the hunted wins.

The Basic Game

The idea is simple. The hunted runs off into the fresh snow, and the hunters follow the hunted’s tracks. When the hunters see the hunted, they yell at them to let them know they see them, and the game is over. The hunted tries to avoid the hunters until the ‘end time’, and then reveals him/herself.

How to Make It Fun

The important thing is not to think of this as a race. The hunted can’t just run off as fast and as far as they can, or the hunters may never catch up. The idea is for the hunted to utilize clever skills to disguise their tracks in order to ‘lose’ the hunters. As the hunted, you want to stay as close to the hunters as possible. When the ‘end-time’ comes, it’s particularly skillful to announce yourself from only a few yards away.

Clever Skills:

Backtrack – make tracks that go off in one direction, and then walk backwards in your tracks and veer off in another direction. The result is that the hunters come upon two sets of tracks leading in different directions.

Disguised Backtrack – If you can find an area where it will be difficult to follow your tracks – say the edge of a stream – backtrack away from it and then use one of the Clever Skills below (such as Tree-Hop) to disguise your second trail. The result is that the hunters follow your obvious trail to the edge of the stream and then waste a lot of time trying to find a trail that doesn’t exist.

Tree-Hop – This Clever Skill uses a tree to allow you to ‘float’ for a while and leave no tracks. By climbing a tree and wiggling over to an adjacent tree, jumping around to the other side of a tree-trunk, or swinging from a branch, you can effectively leave no tracks for a space of a few yards. You have to be careful about dropping snow from branches, because a savvy enough tracker will notice it. But if you make your tracks ‘disappear’ from the hunters’ line-of-sight, you can make it seem as if your trail simply ends. This will usually set them back-tracking.

Scatter-Tracks – The idea here is to scatter your tracks in all directions over a small area. Back-track, jump around, and just make it as confusing as possible. The trick to making this work is to leave the Scatter-Track area via a Tree-Hop or Backtrack.

Streams, Ice, or Animal Trails – If you’re careful about falling through, streams and ice can provide a relatively track-free surface for you to use, even after a recent snowfall. Don’t risk dying (after all, it's just a game for fun), but you can use the wind-scoured ice at the edge of steams to throw the hunters off their mark. Animal trails can provide a similar advantage.

Direction-Changes – When you are entering into an area where you will be able to disguise your trail (Streams, Ice, or Animal Trails, or a Scatter-Track area), consider how your tracks will look as you enter it. Enter the disguised area as if you’re going to be running to the left, and then carefully turn and go right instead. Hunters will usually assume that you are going to continue in the direction your tracks indicated.

Use the Hunters’ Tracks – Perhaps the most effective Clever Skill is to cleverly work your way back around behind the hunters and then use their tracks to your advantage. If they weren’t careful about how they walked, you’ll be able to create havoc by utilizing the prints they’ve left behind them.

Use Your Environment – The very best Clever Skill is just to be clever. Look at your environment and see how you can use it to disguise your trail or confuse the hunters.

There are also Clever Skills for the Hunters, but since they have the advantage in this game, I’ll leave those unsaid.

Wait for the next fresh snowfall, gather a few friends, and have some tracking fun!

 

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