In my personal experience as a student of Tracking, in quite every book I’ve read I’ve run across the amount of importance light has in Tracking. Not only daylight I mean. To the most of people, Tracking during the darkness should be an oxymoron. How could you think to follow tracks when it’s night? How could you even dare to consider it?
But the night shouldn’t be an abnegation.
You can track. Simply. In certain cases, you must track. Because you are in a manhunt, or you are taking part to a SAR Team, looking for a missing person. Because you are a Tracker, not “a part time one”.
For this specific reason, the use of extra tools (to your eyes and mind) to accomplish your mission should be a consistent idea.
Two years ago I’ve purchased a P7 Torch by Led Lenser in an effort to start a night training.
Let me be honest. I don’t have any endorsement from Led Lenser. They never shared any of my post on Instagram or Facebook. They don’t even know that I exist! I’ve just made my choice considering the price and the four lights available inside the torch. Easy peasy.
Then I’ve tested it a lot during some dirty time, with different nuances of darkness. From shades to dark night, frantically changing the colors, trying to following the suggestions I’ve earned from all the books I’ve studied (you can find them here): blu is great for tracks in snow, red tends to make the vision of the tracks blurry, white is good but green is even better.
Below you can find the set of photos I’ve taken enhancing the same track with the different lights on disposal.
As you can notice by yourself, white light works great with this kind of terrain. Second place goes to green light. Blue’s kinda disaster. The rank could change drastically with a completely different kind of terrain and scenario. Infact, my fave light color has always been the green one, and see how it failed this time.
Titling the post, I’ve used the word “enhancing” on purpose. Even if this bulky torch works good, it cannot be a substitute for your eyes. You have to handle it in the right way not to only to enhance track, but also to detect them, bearing in mind the Golden Rule: STY [Sun-Track-You]. Keeping the track always between you and the source of light.
If you dig this torch, you can find a complete review here. “The LED Lenser P7QC is powered by 4 AAA batteries and puts out 220 lumens in high power mode. Its max luminous range is 60 meters and you can expect to get about 3 hours of light in high.”
Maybe Led Lenser will know about your existence!
[All Rights of the article: Kyt Walken, 2017]
MANTRACKING SCHOOL 
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