Scouting for Boys

Track Memory

Make a Patrol sit with their feet up, so that other Scouts can study them. Give the Scouts, say, three minutes to study the boots. Then leaving the Scouts in a room or out of sight, let one of the Patrol make some footmarks in a good bit of ground. Call up the Scouts one by one and let each see the track and say who made it.

Track Drawing

Take out a Patrol; set it on to a foot track. See which Scout can make the most accurate drawing of one of the footprints of the track. The Scouts should be allowed to follow up the track till they get to a bit of ground where a good impression of it can be found.

Spot the Thief

Get a stranger to make a track unseen by the Scouts. The Scouts study his track so as to know it again. Then put the stranger among eight or ten others and let them all make their tracks for the boys to see, going by in rotation. Each Scout then in turn whispers to the umpire which man made the original track—describing him by his number in filing past. The Scout who answers correctly wins. If more than one answers correctly, the one who then draws the best diagram of the footprint from memory wins.

Follow the Trail

Send out a “hare”, either walking or cycling, with a pocketful of chicken feed, nuts hells, confetti paper, etc., and drop a few here and there to give a trail for the Patrol to follow.

Or use Scout signs, scratched in the ground or formed from twigs, hiding a letter at some point.

CAMP FIRE YARN NO. 13

READING “SIGNS”, OR DEDUCTION

Putting This and That Together Instances of Deduction Sherlock-Holmesism

HINTS TO INSTRUCTORS

Instruction in the art of observation and deduction is difficult to lay down in black and white. It must be taught by practice. One can only give a few instances and hints, the rest depends upon your own powers of imagination and local circumstances.

The importance of the power of observation and deduction to the young citizen is great. Children are proverbially quick in observation, but it dies out as they grow older, largely because first experiences catch their attention, which they fail to do on repetition.

OBSERVATION is, in fact, a habit to which a boy has to be trained. TRACKING is an interesting step towards gaining it. DEDUCTION is the art of subsequently reasoning out and extracting the meaning from the points observed.

When once observation and deduction have been made habitual in the boy, a great step in the development of “character” has been gained.

The importance of tracking and tracking games as part of a Scout’s training cannot be overestimated. It is not so difficult as many people imagine. More tracking out-of-doors and yarns on tracks and tracking in the Troop room should be encouraged in all Scout Troops.

WHEN A SCOUT HAS LEARNED to notice “signs”, he must then learn to “put this and that together”, and so read a meaning from what he has seen. This is called “deduction”.

Here is an example which s hows how the young Scout can read the meaning from “signs”, when he has been trained to it.

Old Blenkinsop rushed out of his little store near the African Kaffir village. “Hi! Stop thief!” he shouted. “He’s stolen my sugar. Stop him!”

Stop whom? There was nobody in sight running away. “Who stole it?” asked the policeman. “I don’t know, but a whole bag of sugar is missing. It was there only a few minutes ago.”

A native police tracker was called in—and it looked a pretty impossible job for him to single out the tracks of the thief from among dozens of other naked footprints about the store. However, he presently started off hopefully at a jog-trot, away out into the bush. In some places he went over hard stony ground but he never checked his pace, although no footmarks could be seen.

At length the tracker suddenly stopped and cast around, having evidently lost the trail. Then a grin came on his face as he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder up the tree near which he was standing. There, concealed among the branches, they saw a native with the missing bag of sugar.

How had the tracker spotted him? His sharp eyes had seen some grains of sugar sparkling in the dust. The bag leaked, leaving a very slight trail of these grains. He followed that trail and when it came to an end in the bush the tracker noticed a string of ants going up a tree. They were after the sugar, and so was he, and between them they brought about the capture of the thief.

I expect that Old Blenkinsop patted the tracker on the back for his cleverness in using his eyes to see the grains of sugar and the ants, and in using his wits to see why the ants were climbing the tree.