Should CAP focus on organizing volunteers during searches?

[SARMedTech]

Squawking 7500

I wish we could get rid of the word clue from our SAR/Tracking vocabulary. Everytime i hear it, I think of the board game.

Please learn to accept the word "clue."  It is one of the fundamental words in SAR and you won't find a SAR organization, text or training program that doesn't use the word.  You may use "evidence" as a synonym.

Many SAR groups or man-trackers use the word "spoor"...

The SAR tracking community rarely uses the word "spoor."  "Sign" is the most common term used by SAR trackers.  "Spoor" is the word used by the tactical tracking community, which as they make clear, differs greatly from the tracking methods used by SAR.  The two methods are not competing, as they have different purposes.

There methods were amazing and absolutely have alot we could use in modern day SAR.

The fundamentals of tracking date back to cavemen.  Unfortunately, tracking to save a life is not so simple that a caveman can do it.  But the basic techniques used by hunters, animal trackers, SAR trackers, tactical trackers and the Selous Scouts are identical.

Squawk 1200 and ident.  Back to the thread topic which drifted well off course several posts back.
Mike

Doesnt it strike you as a little pompous to tell me what I must learn to accept and what words I may substitute for other words?

I happen to have an article in front of me called "Man Tracking: Not Just for Fugitives. "and in the approximately 20,000 words, the word "clue" appears nowhere, so it would seem that we can safely say that there is at least one "text" which doesnt use the word. Also, I was trained in SAR as a volunteer in Arizona and the term "spoor" was used constantly by the trainer after defining it for the class. First you say "clue" is the most common word and then you say "sign" is. Then you say that "tactical tracking" and SAR are completely different and not competing and then you say that the techniques used by both are "identical."

One thing that is important to note is that the term "spoor" which has its roots in the language of the Afrikaners is a much more subtle term than clue or sign. As it was used by the Selous Scouts it takes in things like the depth of rain drops in a foot print, the difference between an intentionally broken branch vs one broken by the wind, determining one what portion of the foot a person is walking, using the depth of a foot print to determine if a person is carrying something.

I dislike the word clue, so while it is accepted, I dont need to learn to love it. My initial SAR training was based on the Selous Scouts man-tracking techniques and I have had the privilege to meet one of the few surviving members of that organization. Incorporating man-tracking into SAR provides a much more subtle and definitive way to attempt to find a lost person which we need to be able to do and do well since it is a fact that many people do not follow the golden rule of staying with the plane. I also dont think that CAP can just limit itself to searching for the survivor of a plane crash. We have the resources and should be willing to do more searching for lost persons and when you get into that realm, the intricate nature of the spoor tracking technique is an invaluable tool. Searching and tracking are arts, not sciences.

I want to apologize if the tone of this post seems confrontational but you seem to not accept the notion that while we search as a group, each member of a GT brings their own strengths and even non-CAP training to the table, as it were. We tend to see images of SAR operations as the simple act of walking a search line when in fact it can and must be much more subtle than that. That foot print that you see but dont take the time to analyze may just give you the information that you need to find the person you are looking for. While the Selous Scouts were tracking fugitives of all sorts, there techniques, if properly taught and understood, can open up a whole new world of finding lost persons and when blended with the high tech approach of GPS and grids, etc has the potential to make us all better and hence more valuable to the person we are working so hard to find.

[Dragoon]

Back to the subject at hand.

I agree wholeheartedly that we should train GTLs to lead untrained volunteers, and train at least GTM 1s to assist in this effort.

I've been able to do this a few times and it's worked out fine.  Truly it doesn't take that long to teach folks to walk a straight line, keep their interval, and halt the line whenever they see anything.  They move a lot slower than a real GT, but beyond that they work fine.  And sprinking real GT'ers throughout the line helps a lot. 

Most big missing person searches tend to overwhelm what we can provide.  Offering the service of organizing the untrained makes us that much more valuable.