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Lee Burton: Hello! Today I have the pleasure of being joined by Matt Nelson, and he is from Wisconsin. Excuse me, lives in Wisconsin, actually from California. Originally he is a senior tracker, which is the highest level designation you can get from Cyber Tracker, North America, and he is a track and signed specialist um as well as a trailing specialist.
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Lee Burton: So thank you very much. Your time and welcome, Matt.
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mattnelson: Thank you, Lee. Um. Happy to be here happy to be doing this. And uh, I I I just want to say that I
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mattnelson: I was pruising your um naturalist studies, websites, and uh, I like what I see, and I like the work that I see that you're doing in the world. So I appreciate it.
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Lee Burton: Long story how it came about which we all have time to go into today. But, uh, I I start out, spend a lot of my time, mostly teaching universities, and and honestly just from learning from people like yourself and um, you know it's a good way for us to start off, you know I attended one of your workshops last year on trailing. It's just incredible. And um today I think we'll probably mostly talk about track and sign. But
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Lee Burton: you have such a well rounded skill set um that you know I wanted to take those on those skills on, and you know, university students I deal with and make sure that that gets passed on to them. And you know, because they need it, for you know their field skills. Um, you know, as biologists, which unfortunately is lacking in a lot of cases today, and a lot of them, you know. We're gonna hopefully continue the journey and and end up doing work with people like yourselves. So, anyway, thanks for that. Um.
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Lee Burton: Can you tell us a little bit about your background? You know where you grew up? How did you get into all this? Because again I I think, for people who haven't done this before,
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Lee Burton: as I tell my students, this is a rigorous undertaking uh becoming a specialist uh with cyber tracker. It's not something you do overnight, and so everybody has a different path getting there. But curious what yours was like.
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mattnelson: Yeah, great uh Myan,
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mattnelson: I suppose, was fairly organic. Um, and and I and I will put a little emphasis on that the rigorous nest of of getting a special certificate.
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mattnelson: Uh, you know we we jokingly liken it to a Phd. In wildlife tracking right It's it's It's
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mattnelson: There's a lot of depth, a lot of background, a lot of broad uh knowing there and uh to for someone to get their special certificate. It's It's no easy process. It takes dedication and um and a lot of time,
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Lee Burton: and and I can attest. That is true statement. It really is close to a Phd. I mean, you know I have to do a dissertation per se. But the amount of work that goes into it. It's just unbelievable. It's funny. I I have students, you know, saying i'm complaining. You know they're taking a tracking test or something. This is online, and you know there's not a perfect, you know. Print that they're looking at trying. I'm like Well, you know, when you're out in the field. Uh, That's that's a real world, right? And these are actually pretty easy tracks, you know. So
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Lee Burton: uh, when you're a specialist, it's an amazing skill and shows incredible body of work. So what led you up to that? Did you, you know, growing up like in California? Did you, you know, come from a family of, you know it was outside a lot and emphasized naturalist skills. Or how did you get into it?
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mattnelson: Yeah, Great. So I I I grew up in northern coastal, northern California,
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mattnelson: the Redwood Coastal mountains mainly, and we moved around some. But but that general area um uh western Sonoma, Southern Mendocino counties
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mattnelson: and
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mattnelson: uh, since I was a very young child, all I wanted to do was to be a hunter
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mattnelson: to be a um. Yeah, I I I sort of. I fantasized about hunting, and I and I. I read a lot about wildlife and animals, and I had all these books on Africa as I as a kid.
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mattnelson: That's how I spent my time and um! When, When when I was thirteen years old, my parents moved us to a
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mattnelson: a super rural place on A, on one of the
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mattnelson: salmon and steel had running rivers up there on the north coast, and they ran a Ymca. Summer camp,
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mattnelson: and so here we were plopped in the middle of five hundred acres, surrounded by um
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mattnelson: uh logging company land, really hundreds and hundreds of thousands of of acres of open land,
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mattnelson: and
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mattnelson: right out my back door. I had wild pigs,
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mattnelson: and it was like dropping into heaven for me. We we had moved from a a town out here to this rural uh place where there was tons of wildlife
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mattnelson: right out my back door. Uh, we went down, and and I tried fishing the first day, and I landed like this thirty, six inch um fifteen pound
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mattnelson: just Chrome Steelhead, you know the fish was hooked, but but I was hooked as well, and uh and thus began: Well, i'll back up just a little bit. Um.
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mattnelson: I also had a a mentor when I was younger, who who took me hunting, squirrel, hunting and deer hunting, and uh, so I had some background already.
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mattnelson: But but at this point, when we moved up there into the woods Uh, yeah, that was it. That was all that I did, and and I spent all my time on the river spit all my time up in the hills. Um, I got a a a dog, you know, that piled around with me, and we chased pigs around and
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mattnelson: and dear and uh, yeah, it was. It was
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mattnelson: on some level, pretty ideal, as as far as my perspective goes. You know it was. It was paradise on earth, and and I and I quickly became a hog hunter, you know, like a serious hog hunter, and and I say that uh, with a bit of a smile, because
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mattnelson: I was obsessed,
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mattnelson: and I need you to move. We need you to move down to Texas.
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mattnelson: Yeah, uh, which could be another podcast I have. I have perspectives about that, too. I would love to hear that We'll I'll pencil that in.
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mattnelson: Yeah. Okay, Uh:
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mattnelson: yeah. So I I You know that was what I lived and breathed hunting and and fishing at mainly hog hunting, and
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mattnelson: you know i'd kill um in high school. I was killing,
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mattnelson: you know, fifty sixty hogs a year uh
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mattnelson: all the time, you know. I didn't play sports. I um.
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mattnelson: I didn't do a whole lot of extracurricular activities, because I wanted to be home and hunting, and you know, playing in the woods. So yeah, it was. It was
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mattnelson: the kind of upbringing. I think that a lot of kids don't get the opportunity to have these days Uh, my parents were really cool in that.
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mattnelson: They gave me all the freedom that I needed. They, you know. They bought me guns and said, Go go out and play, and and and I did.
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mattnelson: And uh, one thing that I did early on was I found mentors. I found older men in the area who had grown up there, you know, and hunted hogs all these years, and and knew all the places and
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um, and it grown up out on these old homesteads that I now hunted on, and and so I
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mattnelson: I picked certain mentors in the community to to spend time with and and learn from. And uh it was. It was pretty cool. There was one guy in particular who
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mattnelson: whose father was a sheep rancher, and he would
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mattnelson: send me out looking for things on the landscape like up there in the mountains. There's all these old homesteads, and and the cabins are mostly all gone. Fall. But there's fruit trees, and there's springs, and there's um, you know things you can find, and so he would send me
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mattnelson: looking for this old cabin or that old truck that had been driven off the bank,
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mattnelson: you know, in the fifties, and and so that sort of gave me this mission to go out, and I would grab my dog on my gun, and we go out looking for this this old split makers cabin, for instance, you know, and and in the meantime we'd hunt and um,
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mattnelson: and these old Italian men who who started me off real young picking wild mushrooms.
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mattnelson: Uh they they they they they call them. Um,
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mattnelson: you know the Porcini, and the which which are known as the bleeds and the cream tops, or the cocares, and uh, the chantrels, and all these, anyway. Uh. So at a young age I I was mentored in natural living, hunting, gathering
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mattnelson: by a a number of folks and um, as as well as some of the local native pom all people who were, uh who are long dead now, but they were, uh dear friends and mentors of mine as Well, so
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mattnelson: that's sort of how I got into all this, and and I and I knew of tracking,
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mattnelson: but I hunted with with a dog, so I didn't really need to be a tracker per se uh. And then one time one of these mentors and I was out and
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mattnelson: we looked. We were looking. We were hunting, and and we looked at this pig track, and he showed me, uh in this pink track there was a crack like in the in the edge of the hoof.
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mattnelson: There was a crack in a and a clear line that you could see repeated,
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mattnelson: and he pointed that out. He said, This hog you can. You can recognize by its track,
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mattnelson: and that just
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mattnelson: really kind of blew my mind.
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mattnelson: Uh, I I I got to thinking about
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mattnelson: identifying individuals,
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mattnelson: and what that might mean, you know. And then um!
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mattnelson: And that was sort of one of my first big uh tracking sort of uh doorways, I suppose.
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mattnelson: Um
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mattnelson: years go by, and and I was a hunter, and I went in the military, and I I hitchhiked around the country, you know I I did all this sort of um coming of age kind of things, and I wound up out in Wisconsin at the Teaching Drum Outdoor School,
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mattnelson: which is a a a school where you can go live a full year. Immersion um, building your own huts,
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mattnelson: making buckskin clothing, you know, gathering of a a percentage of your your food. And and so I joined into that year long program.
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mattnelson: And to me it was sort of like coming back to
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mattnelson: that aspect of my childhood that I had kind of walked away from in in um in the in the in the confusion and anger of my young adulthood. Say you know um and
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mattnelson: um,
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mattnelson: and all of a sudden, here I was on the landscape again, just immersed in nature.
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mattnelson: Uh, and then
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mattnelson: and so then I I I I had also found about the Tom Brown um lineage and the John Young stuff and um. These other schools and I had bounced around and went to some of them as well,
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mattnelson: and and taken tracking courses with the you know, the the the border patrol guys and and I had sort of touched into all these things, and none of them really captured me.
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mattnelson: Um!
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mattnelson: So in the meantime i'm in Wisconsin I've been living out in the woods a lot, and my Buddy comes to me and says, Hey,
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mattnelson: the International Society of Professional Trackers is going to have a conference here in Wisconsin this year, and there's going to be one of these cyber tracker evaluations, and it's the first I had heard of it,
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mattnelson: and at this point I was. I was uh
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mattnelson: a little bit frustrated because my teachers
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mattnelson: couldn't help me get past this wall where I was stuck.
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mattnelson: Uh I I i'm not a big book learning type, and so for me to go to the books and sort out whose tracks i'm looking at by measuring. And all this stuff wasn't going to work well for me didn't,
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mattnelson: and I didn't want to go be evaluated. I didn't really know what that meant. Um! But my buddy talked to me into it, and we went, and It was in two thousand and ten, I think,
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mattnelson: and the evaluator was George Lyoniac and Audrey, and Low from South Africa, and
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mattnelson: all of a sudden I had found
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mattnelson: the key for me in my life. I found someone who could point out tracks and tell me why. This is a red squirrel versus a gray squirrel. Exactly why, and and they could um, and my tracking doors just blew back open,
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mattnelson: at which point I I became obsessed again, Right? Not with hog hunting this time, but with with tracking, and
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mattnelson: and I spent
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mattnelson: a lot of time
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mattnelson: out, you know, like on a um on a ice covered lake when there's this much snow on top of it.
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mattnelson: Anything that walks across that leaves very clear prints and lots of them, and so
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mattnelson: my buddy enable I we'd get out on this, and and and Tim would get out on this lakes. And and you know, Mark in the snow. Okay, we think this is a front, and this is A. And we just spent hours and hours and hours and days and months doing this, figuring out learning gates,
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mattnelson: learning to be able to recognize a a trotting gate, or a loping or galloping gate at a glance.
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mattnelson: And um, you know, sort of burning those patterned images into our consciousness. Um,
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mattnelson: yeah. And And And actually, after that first email that I took with George and Audrey. And I I remember thinking,
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mattnelson: I want to do what he does.
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mattnelson: That's what I want to do. You know he he had affected me so deeply and helped help grow my understanding so much in two days that I just. I wanted to have that effect in the world. I wanted to be able to gift that to others, you know. And uh,
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mattnelson: and really I was going after a specialist certificate in track and sign,
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mattnelson: not with the
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mattnelson: at that point, not with the intent of the being an evaluator. Actually, I just wanted to get that certificate, and I and I saw I took a couple of emails in my score,
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mattnelson: you know, because of all this intensive study, my first eval compared to my next. You know, I think I got a seventy-one, or
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mattnelson: the seventy-three or seventy one on my first email a a level one certificate. And then on my second email I got like a ninety-five or something, you know. Um, my learning curve had just climbed up, and and
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mattnelson: I think that's partially because of
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mattnelson: because of back my my hunting and my natural background, that that I sort of had a leg up um as far as
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mattnelson: uh, I had a very similar experience. Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.
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mattnelson: Yeah, yeah, cool and
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mattnelson: yeah. And then I and then I I just sort of started seeking out evaluations and evaluators, and I and I bumped into Mark Ell Brock and I found out that he was uh running a mountain line project and um
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mattnelson: and I said, Hey, I I want to come work for you, you know, and he hired me, and and so I I went out to Colorado, and I um. I lived with him and Casey Mcfarland and uh Neil White, and you know, and we hunted mount lines and um
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mattnelson: put Gps call on them, and uh, so I got to help it help out and doing some really cool work. Kill site research right? So i'd hike into kill sites uh Gps clusters,
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mattnelson: and and record all the tracks and signs of any other species that we're, you know, coming and going from that. Kill all this cool stuff.
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mattnelson: And uh,
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mattnelson: yeah. And then,
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mattnelson: after after living with them for quite a while, I I went to another special, you know, and I got I got a special certificate, and then I I. Two weeks later I went to another part of the country and got a second specialist certificate, so I got two in like two weeks. And um
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mattnelson: yeah, that's when Mark approached me, said, Hey, I want you to think about becoming an evaluator,
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mattnelson: And so that sort of started that whole process of of my training. I don't come from a
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mattnelson: teaching background,
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mattnelson: so I I didn't feel ready at the time to to be an Evaluators are all quite a masterful instructors, you know. They they're good teachers, and I didn't have that baseline. Um. So
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mattnelson: what I started doing is just going and volunteering with the different evaluators. Um all over the place, and I I think I volunteered at like fifteen Eval, or something before. I kind of felt like I maybe was ready to to run my own.
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mattnelson: And and then I did, and and uh, that's what i'm doing now.
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Lee Burton: Wow! That's fantastic. It. We could talk for hours just about all the tangents of that. I was a lot in there, and um
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Lee Burton: Well, what one of my first thoughts is man. I joined the wrong Ymca. As a kid. I I I want a diversion you got. No, not running them down. But uh, that's incredible. And Yeah, what a gift your parents did, whether they do it or not. But um,
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Lee Burton: you know it's interesting, and maybe at some point
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Lee Burton: do a series on this, but so many people have, you know It's never exactly the same. But who really get into this, have some sort of background like that, You know something formational when they were young,
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Lee Burton: you know parents did, or it it may not be in tracking, but there's There's some sort of using natural history component. They kind of got the bug in them,
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Lee Burton: and um, you know it's just amazing, and and and you know full credit to you of doing all that work, and you know again I I know you know what that's about. Um, and you know the path you have to travel to get there, and you know It's obviously kind of a shame that
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Lee Burton: we're losing this in our culture, you know, and the way kids are growing up now. But you know there's always still a few out there. And so yeah, what an amazing story! Um, And you know just how you got to where you are. So the the next question I guess I have for you is,
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Lee Burton: you know you obviously just enjoy this. You'd love it,
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Lee Burton: but for someone else. May it doesn't know much about it, or you know It's thinking about getting into it. Why do you think
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Lee Burton: tracking is an important skill, and and beyond that, Because what I've seen is that people start doing it, and and maybe they are learning for work. Or you know, fuel biologists, what have you? But it also ends up, being almost like an addiction, or can be in a good way.
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Lee Burton: You know it. It's fun, and maybe funds the wrong word, but it's it's just something that resonates, and
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Lee Burton: you know what? Why do you think that is? And you know just the overall value
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mattnelson: Great?
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mattnelson: Yeah. So so um, my simple answer. And and and there's layers. To this I think. But my simple answer is that
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mattnelson: that tracking on some level is fundamental to being human,
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mattnelson: I I I don't see that that
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mattnelson: being human and being a tracker, necessarily can be separate.
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mattnelson: Uh, I I I think that that can. There's There's multiple levels of that, like, I say. But if if if you think about
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mattnelson: um
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mattnelson: going online and and looking for a book, right, we have these tools like Google or whatever that that um that we can use to help us hunt something down
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mattnelson: to to find something that we're after.
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mattnelson: Uh, You know
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mattnelson: children love an Easter egg hunt
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mattnelson: um people in our culture love to go shopping right? We're we're we're
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mattnelson: we're seeking something out to to serve a need. And
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mattnelson: I think
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mattnelson: partly it's it's important because we're getting that need met. You know whether it's uh hunting for meat for our children or an Easter egg, or whatever you know. Um,
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mattnelson: yeah, we're satisfying this need. But but to me there's a connection there that
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mattnelson: that when i'm out on the trail of an animal
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mattnelson: um,
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mattnelson: whether or not I have the intent of taking its life. Um! And and I know that we're not talking about hunting here, but the tracking and hunting and humanness are are all connected to me.
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mattnelson: But if i'm if i'm hunting this animal down, say it's a bear, and I want to get a picture of it. Um,
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mattnelson: I i'm! I'm doing the activity that my ancestors have done
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mattnelson: for for what? Hundreds of thousands of years right I i'm. I'm seeking to find this creature on on its terms on equal terms in the woods, and i'm using whatever skills I can uh
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mattnelson: be it my my smell. You know my sense of smell, my hearing, I might hear some brush crack ahead, or or my ability to recognize signs and symbols on the landscape that can help steer me. You know this feedback from the landscape that's steering me towards this animal.
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mattnelson: So
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mattnelson: there's two parts to what I say in there, and I just I want to summarize. One is, Yeah, I'm: I'm. Meeting some need in the now, and another is I'm. Connecting to
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mattnelson: the means and ends of humidness on some level of that the
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mattnelson: the the animal humanness of of who we are. We forget in in our in our lives these days. We're animals too. Right, we we're, we're um
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mattnelson: just like a a red squirrel. I have five digits on my hand um and uh, and I and I take nutrient in, and I defecate just like all the rest of the animals out here in the landscape. So
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mattnelson: to me, just just on a um sort of a quote unquote spiritual sense. It's just connecting to who we are.
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mattnelson: Uh
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mattnelson: Um,
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mattnelson: yeah, it's in our Dna isn't it. I don't. I like to tell my students that I believe. So. Yeah, yeah, it it as well. Like the the fun aspect that you mentioned the the detective to me. It's it's detective work right. It's investigative. It's a um.
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mattnelson: It cultivates curiosity and and an interest and and a deeper view into your surroundings.
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mattnelson: Um,
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mattnelson: yeah, It's a lot of fun for me, you know, getting on the trail of an animal. It it it's
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mattnelson: not to get all all uh spiritual, but but I feel a connection. I feel a draw. Sometimes I feel drawn down a trail that by something greater than myself, you know. And and uh,
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mattnelson: uh,
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mattnelson: maybe I i'm reading into that or something, and maybe that's just my own excitement, but it doesn't really matter to me. Right? It's it's it's i'm still experiencing this this
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mattnelson: feeling that that quite probably my ancestors all felt um in their in their lives. You remind me of a a program. I ran in Belize, the Belize and Forest Ranger in broken English, you know,
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Lee Burton: was saying.
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Lee Burton: He actually said this on camera, he said. It's like I'm touching the animal.
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Lee Burton: You know It's like when I go through his tracks, you know, and passing through. And so it it is in a way I I like the way that you describe that it's It's really true. And so there's a lot of people who feel that way.
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mattnelson: I I love his perspective. And
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mattnelson: uh, yeah to to me
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mattnelson: It's
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mattnelson: I I i'm gonna um.
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mattnelson: Just say that that my views tend towards the hippie a little bit, all right, and uh and and
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mattnelson: folks listening uh gonna have to deal with that.
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mattnelson: So to me, it's It's kind of all about relationship.
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mattnelson: No,
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mattnelson: I have a relationship with
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mattnelson: the land that I live on. Right. I I um. If you're if you're hunting a gathering or just gathering. You're literally
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mattnelson: taking the the nutri or or farming
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mattnelson: Right You're You're taking the nutrient of the land and and and turning it into human flesh.
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mattnelson: And um
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mattnelson: That can be done in in multiple ways, right? One way is to to extract oil from the earth and make foss um make a fertilizer, you know oil based fertilizer, and and turn that into human flesh. Another is to
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mattnelson: to do it like like people have been doing it for hundreds of thousands of years and and um, and have that direct relationship with place. So yeah, your friend and believes
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mattnelson: when i'm trailing an animal, I I literally feel like i'm in direct relationship. It's it's a direct connection somehow and sometimes,
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mattnelson: but like like my working on a trail, i'm. I'm.
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mattnelson: That animal's behavior is influencing my life,
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mattnelson: and and oftentimes i'll spook that animal, and it'll run off, and i'm influencing its life. And we're we're um. We're interacting literally in in the way that I see the world.
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Lee Burton: Yeah, I think that's a beautiful way of stating that. And I I mentioned this. Sometimes I think I haven't a couple of other podcasts. But if you ever heard the story, Klaus Zuberbueller, who's a anthropologist and spent years in the Ivory Coast, and
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Lee Burton: uh Don't run this give the story away, but was listening, interpreting these monkey calls and leopard calls, and then he has this epiphany moment when he starts to understand. And you know it.
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Lee Burton: Having this relationship, and he realizes he's part of the story. Right always has been part of the story, and there's a very like
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Lee Burton: the key moment crescendo where you realize is that something happens. But yeah, you know, in that sense. Uh, we're all hippies right? I mean, because we all you know, we're dependent on this stuff, even if you're several levels removed. Uh, it all goes back to that. We all need sustenance, and you know it all starts there. Um,
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Lee Burton: what, let me ask you this, Matt. Um,
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Lee Burton: I I think that was a beautiful way of phrasing. You know what tracking does for people on a personal level, and you know, and it's it's just fascinating. You learn so much out there. What about you know? If you're a scientist, let's say a biologist, you don't know much. Um.
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Lee Burton: And you obviously, you know you worked on a cougar, you know. Project. And what what does it do from that perspective? You know It's a real practical level where you know we're trying to, you know. Help save an animal, or, you know, find out more about it, you know, to
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mattnelson: protect certain valuable landscapes, etc. How does tracking come into play there? Yeah. Good question. So
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mattnelson: I I would start, You know i'm in San Diego right now, and i'm working with the uh San Diego tracking team, and they're a twenty year old nonprofit, and they do tracking transects all around the county down here. And um, they're they're recording data.
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mattnelson: And this data can be a complementary to hard science, right? So So
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mattnelson: these people can bring their data to the scientists that are studying wildlife here, and they could say, Look, we're seeing bobcats are using this corridor often right, and so um so Bobcat can get from habitat A. Through this housing complex over to Habitat V.
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mattnelson: Based on this corridor of land, and we need to preserve that, so that the genetic Diversity doesn't get shut off there right
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mattnelson: so just based on a on a purely simple, practical level. And and if we think of a permeability of landscape or connectivity of wild spaces. Uh wildlife tracking is immensely important. Now,
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mattnelson: camera trapping also Um can give you a lot of good information. Um uh Gps callers, for instance, can show you where mount lines are crossing highways, et cetera. Um, but
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mattnelson: i'll tell you I I was part of this cougar project up in the North Bay for a while,
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mattnelson: and and their model was they. They had these maps in the computer, and they and they did this random sampling, and the computer told them where to put cameras all over the landscape right in these random places. And
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mattnelson: I looked at some of these camera sites, and I thought you're never gonna get a picture of an animal here. It's ridiculous, right? So
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mattnelson: So a tracker could come in
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mattnelson: with focused
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mattnelson: um
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mattnelson: intention and and find where to place these cameras. So you're gonna get a high likelihood of success. And you know I've helped Some folks do that, and and many folks are super adept at doing that themselves. But that's what tracking comes in
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mattnelson: You mentioned working with um
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mattnelson: college students
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mattnelson: and and Lee. I I applaud that because
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mattnelson: kids coming out of college
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mattnelson: in some wildlife programs
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mattnelson: come out of college.
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mattnelson: They're They're really cool with
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mattnelson: the cool statistical programs, and they've got the computer. Um, you know, Gis mapping and modeling um system stuff down. But you take them out in the woods and um, they have no background. So we we joke about.
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mattnelson: Yeah, that's why my professor brought me in. She was like just saw a dearth of these skills, and it was like horrifying her
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mattnelson: colleges. Don't want to kick any money out towards that, and unless unless it's credited,
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Lee Burton: the kids have no motivation, we we should talk more offline because i'm working in well, and I think there's some headway being made. But I totally agreement with you. One hundred, and you know it's backed up by each semester. I it's part of their final project. They say you know what you learn how this valuable and I mean the testimonies are incredible, You know, by all this summer I was in turning it. You know this national park, and I was able to recognize this sign, and you know, even if they're just leading tourists or something. But a lot of them are game wardens,
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Lee Burton: you know, forensic sciences like hey? I was able to, you know, bust this person for poaching, or you know, so I mean it. It truly is a valuable skill, and I I think you sum that up perfectly, and you know, even with the Gps collar. Yeah, you may know where it goes. But when it stopped here, whatever you don't know for sure what it was doing,
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mattnelson: you know. Backing answers a lot of those questions right as you well know. Yeah, yeah, A Gps caller can't
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mattnelson: tell you necessarily about uh, uh, someone's motivation like a cast motivation, or for for why it did a straight be line ten miles through really good deer habitat to make a kill over here Right? Why, why didn't it kill any of these deer along the way. But it was it,
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mattnelson: you know. We could see that this thing went straight. Ten miles made a kill, and um!
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Lee Burton: We don't know anything about the wise of that. So, anyway, go ahead. No, I think that's great, and that that's a good illustration of obviously technology is not going away. It can be very useful. They go hand in hand. It's not necessarily, you know, one or the other right, I mean, even if we do in some cases like to, you know. Hearken back to an earlier time. You know that that's not going to happen, and so um! But you know they can still be very valuable. Oh, I do see this cat. Will this pick up its trail, you know, and find out what it was doing. Why did it do that
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mattnelson: right?
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mattnelson: Right? So
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mattnelson: uh a little story i'll share just from a couple of days ago about just just that
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mattnelson: I was um scouting for a tracking class down here in San Diego County at the Uh,
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mattnelson: the Santa Isabel. They nature preserve up here, and the the the Ranger uh his name was Doug. He
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mattnelson: He took me out, and was showing me some cool places where where I might find some tracks or whatever, and it's largely sort of um,
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mattnelson: you know it's a like between four and five thousand feet elevation, and it's sort of rolling oaks, and and it's pretty hot and dry in the summertime. But there's these,
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mattnelson: and it's grassy, you know. There, there's these corridors of of trees where there, where there's water,
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mattnelson: and so he goes. Well. Let's hike over to that creek over there, and i'll show you There's some sand, you know. You might see some footprints there you could use in your workshop, and and we went over there,
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mattnelson: and immediately
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mattnelson: we spotted the trail of a of a big male mountain line running,
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mattnelson: and so
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mattnelson: that that may or may not mean anything to to somebody. But
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mattnelson: but the first thing that I thought of was, Hey, this cap might be running from us right because I've kicked off lots of animals, and and when I, when i'm in the woods, and I notice an animals gate change right amount line doesn't run. Unless
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mattnelson: it's it's running from something, or it's chasing something. They they don't just run across the landscape. They they sneak at a at a baseline walk. Really, that's how they move. And
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mattnelson: so, whenever I see tracks of a lion, for instance, in A, in a running gate. I immediately go. Okay. Something's happening.
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mattnelson: Um. Doug and I got to got to looking around the the Ranger, and we found where the cat had
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mattnelson: come walking up the ditch,
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mattnelson: and and and we were coming uh perpendicular towards the dis right, and So the cat climbed up on the bank and and looked directly at from where we were coming, and then bound it off.
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mattnelson: And
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mattnelson: you know there there's there's ways there's things that you look for right. If this cat was was running to chase a deer, for instance,
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mattnelson: it's toads would be dug in deep, and the claws would show, and and while this cat was running it wasn't digging real hard, it was just getting out of there quietly,
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mattnelson: So um right off the back, we were able to say, Hey, we just bumped into a mount line. We didn't see it, but we just pushed this thing out of here, you know. So we followed him down down the creek, away, and he he ran for little ways, you know, and uh, and then went back into a sneaky um
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mattnelson: posture or whatever, anyway. Um from a practical sense A as a as a mountain line researcher that's a lot of information, right? I know this cats of mail. Um. We know that it's right here. We know this is fresh, et cetera, and so forth, and and so much um
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mattnelson: quote unquote scientific information can be gleaned that way just from a familiarity with tracks and sign and patterns on the landscape. That's all
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Lee Burton: you know. You just um.
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Lee Burton: We're talking about gates there, which is very interesting. And and again, I think one of the things with tracking is that people are new to it. They just think of it in terms of identification, You know species
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Lee Burton: um. And And when i'm teaching bird language kind of similar thing that people have done birding before you know they they i'm not saying it's bad, but they're oriented more towards that, you know, or a specific, you know, behavior, that individual bird. But really, with, you know, tracking it. It's so much more than that.
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Lee Burton: And you know Gates tell you exactly. I mean you just beautifully illustrated. You know about what an animal could be doing, and you know why it's doing that. Um! What about some other aspects of it that you know you have to look at
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Lee Burton: when you know you're out tracking. So, for example, you know aging tracks, or you know, sometimes we refer to the the Five W's. You know the what. Why, where you know when? Who? Obviously, um, can you just talk about a little bit Some of the other aspects that you learn, or or you want to tune into when you are tracking that you're trying to. Uh, as you said, glean from the situation,
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mattnelson: you bet. Yeah,
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mattnelson: I like the the questions. You know the the you called them the other day. The five W is the um Who? At When? Where? Why? And
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mattnelson: um
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mattnelson: Yeah. Oh, let me just step back for a sec on this, and make a a sort of a metaphor, a parallel. So many folks have heard um tracking us as as language. Right learning to track is like learning a language, and
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mattnelson: and um for those who have heard that sorry. But if you haven't heard that I I like the metaphor, because to me,
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mattnelson: to me it is a language. Um. When when i'm learning the alphabet, when i'm learning to sound words out
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mattnelson: and piece them together,
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mattnelson: i'm slow. I'm deliberate, and I had to go. Okay. This word is
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mattnelson: tan yun and yun right, and I I don't. I'm sounding things out, and i'm i'm sort of it's slow and and painstaking now.
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mattnelson: Fast forward fifteen years, and I read the word Canyon, and it and it means something to me without having to hardly even look at that.
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mattnelson: So my my fluency has come up, and I I now can read whole sentences um easily, and and and have a an understanding of of what was of the information that was given to me. So
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mattnelson: tracking is similar. Right? It's it's we're learning the alphabet. We're learning the basics, you know. A, B C D. This is A. This is a hoofed track. This is a a fresh track. This is an old check. This is a you know, a a soft padded foot. Um, and
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mattnelson: and and I know you're going to ask. I know that you're going to ask about learning tracking, but this is a part of that. So
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mattnelson: uh, when we're learning language, we stumble and stammer, and we piece things together, and and when we're learning tracking. We we stumble and stammer, and we try to piece things together. These stories. Now, this is literally the the story of this animal's life,
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mattnelson: written on the tapestry of the land, the the the um,
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mattnelson: you know, the substrate right substrate could be paper that you're writing on, or it could be the dirt that you're
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mattnelson: so. Um,
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mattnelson: we help steer me back to your question again. Now
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Lee Burton: you know there's the five W. Questions, but you know you're not just who you know it's, and I love this by the way, as language. Just interject here, because I use that with bird language, you know. Obviously the nature of it, but it's almost like a a foreign language that someone was speaking in your house, and you never learned paid attention to.
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Lee Burton: And you know, if you had a a foreign family that was with you, and then you learned it and say college, whatever you went back, and all of a sudden they're telling you, hey? You know, uh Mailman came by, dropped a package off uh, you know. Uh
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Lee Burton: your brother tried to steal your allowance yesterday. You know someone tried to break in the do you? You just miss, and all this stuff. And so I I love the way you say that because tracking is like that, it. It really is a language. It's a story.
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Lee Burton: And so yeah, I I guess the original question was, You know, these different aspects of you know it's not just identification. But you're you want to know, for example, aging. When was this animal there? Right? And
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Lee Burton: you know what was it doing? What you know? And you've already kind of touched on these. But um! It just seems you know to me. Obviously i'm out there, there's so many different aspects, you know of it than just saying, Oh, this is a mountain line track, you know. Front, right?
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mattnelson: Yeah.
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mattnelson: Yeah. So back to the five W's: the So we're we're learning the alphabet. We're learning the who
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mattnelson: um,
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You know we we're learning to identify these patterns. It's like seeing a
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mattnelson: a A. Mcdonald's emblem. You don't have to think about what that means. It just it's a symbol, and you know what it means If you're hungry and you see that
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mattnelson: your your body might have a literal physiological response to seeing that symbol
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mattnelson: and um. So So learning to recognize these some symbols is is really a a simplification of just learning, track and sign identification. Now the I the questions that I really like are the um,
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mattnelson: the what? And why? Question? Because to me that that's
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mattnelson: That's
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mattnelson: more of a verb than a noun. Answer.
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mattnelson: Right? So it's it's It's looking for more of a living answer than a than a static. That's that's the meaning that's to me the contextualization. Exactly. It's significant.
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mattnelson: Yeah, Yeah, it's story, right? Yeah. And and humans work in story, this how we pass information along. It's how we um. You know what we're doing here right now that we're both just telling stories, and uh,
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mattnelson: to be able to to to. You know, my friends and I. We We joke around about tracking at a glance,
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mattnelson: because so many um, so much of what I've done in the past has been to stare at a track and pick apart all the details and go. Oh, look at this claw, mark and this this metacarpal pad, mark, you know, and um
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mattnelson: uh,
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mattnelson: I like to.
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mattnelson: So
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mattnelson: I would consider myself more of a practical tracker than an academic tracker um, and and
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mattnelson: neither is good or bad. Uh It's just That's just my style more so. I like to see things and recognize them at a glance and move on like um. I like to move down a trail and follow follow an animal, and I like to recognize things that i'm seeing along that trail.
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mattnelson: Um,
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mattnelson: yeah. So the What's in the wise? Those are great questions that that lead us to
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mattnelson: actual interpretations of how these animals live on the land.
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mattnelson: How is it that this black bear can survive out here?
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mattnelson: What in the world is it eaten right? Well, there's one way to find out, and that's to follow on. Go follow them, and you'll start to recognize you'll start to say, Hey, look! These plants have all been bit off right here right by these black bear tracks, or Hey, look! This yellow jacket nest has been dug up and eaten. Um,
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mattnelson: Oh, hey! So So from my experience i'm learning about the natural history of the bear
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mattnelson: from seeing these signs that are left behind. So yes, it's literally reading a story, and um
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Lee Burton: what? No, no. If if somebody is, you know again starting the journey, starting, learning,
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Lee Burton: can you talk about um,
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Lee Burton: the different types of tracking, and what I mean by that is,
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Lee Burton: you know, depending on where you are. You know your location. You know the habitat ecology,
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Lee Burton: but also, you know time of year, right uh weather, and of course you know the substrate, you know, if you're trying to track in hard pan,
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Lee Burton: you know, or you know versus a fresh snowfall that that's very different, right? So there, there's really different buckets. Is Is that that How How do you kind of, you know, get someone new to it? How would you explain that to people? Or,
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mattnelson: Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good. This is
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mattnelson: again sort of a layered question.
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mattnelson: Um, yes, we can separate these things out in their separate buckets, and that's a great way to learn, and and it's a great doorway,
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mattnelson: and sometimes
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mattnelson: you might only have the the space or the the ability to to work on one of these buckets at a time, and that's great. I encourage that. Um, uh, yeah, so.
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mattnelson: And and to take it to another level or layer, they're all related
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mattnelson: the the way that weather works on a track the way that that um a tree that fell over a hundred years ago and left the hump of dirt um it. That's a track, you know. That's a that's a story. Um, In some cases you can. You can see that
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mattnelson: that out in the upper midwest, where there's these big thunderstorms, you can see that
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mattnelson: this huge gust of wind came through, and blue drought blew down a whole forest, and now it's all regrown. But you can still see how all these
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mattnelson: little mounds of dirt and trenches are are in an alignment, so all the trees tipped in the same way, so you can, on some level look back at
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mattnelson: a a, a a weather event,
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mattnelson: and so and that's a super deep layer, right? That might be fifty years ago. But um! But it's a layer that that
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mattnelson: affects what we what we're seeing right now today, and it affects the movement of the animals around these pumps of dirt or whatever. Um,
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Yeah. So we we
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mattnelson: we say tracking,
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mattnelson: and that's a great word. Um, And we we separate, tracking out
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mattnelson: as far as wildlife, tracking into two categories in the it through the Cyber Tracker tradition, Anyway, one we call track and sign identification,
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mattnelson: which is just learning. Who's who and what's what? Hey? This is a pilated woodpecker sign on a tree. And this is how you identify. Okay, Now when I see that anywhere in North America, I can say, Oh, hey, affiliated. Woodpecker lives here. Oh,
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mattnelson: the the other avenue that uh, that's A and so B would be what we call trailing, and you've mentioned that before, and trailing is literally finding a fresh track.
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mattnelson: Um,
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mattnelson: of course you could trail an old trail, too, but but I recommend people find a fresh track and follow the traction signs on the landscape to try to see the animals to find the animal,
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mattnelson: and it's it's.
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mattnelson: It's a lot of fun um, just for on a personal note for me, interacting with large wildlife on the landscape is one of my great joys in life. It's it's when i'm fully present fully alive when i'm um, you know thirty feet from a big bore hog that doesn't know that i'm there
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mattnelson: I it's It's a powerful experience.
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mattnelson: Um,
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mattnelson: uh yeah. So
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mattnelson: if if if i'm going to follow this animal,
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mattnelson: the things that you mentioned are important to to know about, like if if it rained yesterday,
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mattnelson: and I can see that this track has not been rained in
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mattnelson: that. That gives me a lot of information towards knowing when this animal passed by here, and and if there's any hope for me to try to catch up to it
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mattnelson: uh aging. Aging is is a an aspect of that what we call aging sign, and i'll just say this. It's a lifelong study. Um! It's it's it's it's always a refinement, and and native people who hunt
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mattnelson: and track every day Um! Who who still track every day like the song people. They
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mattnelson: they're constantly talking, and they're constantly adjusting, and they're they're disagreeing, and they say, No, no, I think it's this and and the other guy saying, No, I think it's that. And um, and I chuckle about that, because when my Buddy Preston or Tim and I are out, or able or out in the woods, and we're
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mattnelson: we're following an animal. We're constantly um
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mattnelson: quote unquote arguing about what's happening. Hey? I think this this animal heading to a feeding area? No, no, it's heading to a bed. Well, let's find out right. I love it. I've been on evaluation for that happens, and they start arguing the evaluator. So it's It's It's awesome. But I mean, yeah, it's iterative. That's how you get better. It's how you learn more.
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mattnelson: Yeah,
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mattnelson: Yeah,
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mattnelson: um,
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mattnelson: it it. It reminds me of
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mattnelson: of
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mattnelson: of Mount Line and it and a deer
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mattnelson: the relationship that they have right. So the deer has to be faster than that outline has to see it come and has to smell. It has to, has has to um. It's life, and the life of its children depends on it. The mountain lion
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mattnelson: has to outrun that deer has to catch It
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mattnelson: has to to feed its children right? So it's life or death for both of them and
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mattnelson: and the you know,
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mattnelson: the uh, the the the Darwinian,
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mattnelson: the evolutionary sort of natural selection model of the survival of the fittest is is kind of in it. It's. It tells a lot about how the mountain line is continually
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mattnelson: shaping the deer. The deer are always getting better. They're always getting faster, smarter, better the mountain line. The deer is continually shaping the line. It
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mattnelson: um! The The lion has to be sneaky or has to come from downwind. More has to be faster, whatever. So they're they're constantly refining each other, and it's the same for us in our in our practice of tracking, and when we're out with with each other, and we're arguing about a track. Um,
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mattnelson: we we're we're refining. You know we're we're um. We're making ourselves better. We're um, we're learning together, and and if if we have some humility around it and and keep our egos out of it, and just stay open to what we see and not get too locked up here Right? Um!
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mattnelson: It'll work itself out, and we'll learn and grow.
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Lee Burton: Yeah, you know that's um,
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Lee Burton: you know, competitors and true competitors like in sports. They'll say that you know someone else. It's really. It seems like, Oh, they made me better at what I do, you know, and and I I love hearing that the way you phrase that. And I was thinking, too, you know, in terms of
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Lee Burton: you know, trying to figure all this stuff out. Not that you ever figure it all out, but
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Lee Burton: you really have to do it in different conditions. You know, different times of years to really understand the animals. They do different things, different times of years or and a couple of years ago we had a,
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Lee Burton: you know which. We almost never get down here, you know, Blizzard, like one in a hundred year, and we had a decree. I mean. It was like Wisconsin weather down here for about ten days, you know, close to zero at night, and
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Lee Burton: anyway, it's snowed twice. Pretty good snows and man I was out tracking, and you know I felt like Well, I know the area, and you know a lot of animals. I was just blown away by how many animals were out there, and and I knew the species. I mean it wasn't surprising, but just the number of tracks and trails, and you know, so it was. It was a real eye opener, and it's like well, just because you've been doing it in one spot, you know, one time year, whatever
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Lee Burton: you know, if you get different conditions, man. You can learn so many things that you didn't know, you know. And I I saw these like Kyoto trails, and I started. Try and interpret what they were doing, you know. And then I could tell one was courting a female, and you know, lying down the tail. Swoosh. You know all this stuff right? And and so and that that kind of Segways. And another thing which you know, maybe people are listening or gonna think this,
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Lee Burton: How Do you advise someone again? That's new to this. It it's fantastic like you said It's a lifelong pursuit, but it's easy to get overwhelmed right. Given You know just the number of species. But then you know difficult level Again my students will say, Hey, you know i'm i'm struggling some of the quizzes. I can't recognize the tracks, you know, not to mention all these other aspects of it that you really done, You know, good job of outlining for people. You have any advice on that. And and then, along with that, you don't want to get overwhelmed. But what are the keys to be coming?
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So you do become better.
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mattnelson: Great? Yeah. Good questions. Um.
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So
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mattnelson: just sort of to stick with my my um, my pattern of of using metaphor.
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mattnelson: I I i'll say that
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mattnelson: What if you want to learn the guitar?
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mattnelson: Um,
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mattnelson: you're going to start practicing, and if you start practicing ten minutes a day
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mattnelson: you're you're you're going to learn, and you're going to advance, and your fingers will start to get less clunky and and and um you'll make progress, and if you I I knew a guy who
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mattnelson: all through high school in his summers he would play the guitar for ten hours a day every day the whole summer.
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mattnelson: And the guys, you know, obviously a master masterful musician at this point. So to some on some level, it's as simple as um
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mattnelson: the the the harder you work, the luckier you get right. The the more uh
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mattnelson: the more time you put into something the better you're going to get at it now.
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mattnelson: Not everyone can drop everything in life, and go out and just train tracking all the time. And and many people uh wouldn't want to do that. So it it. It really varies from lifestyle lifetime. If you live in the middle of of um Los Angeles, it's going to be more difficult for you to learn tracking, although there are some really cool online
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mattnelson: uh workshops, including I saw your yours, You I haven't seen your material, but I I see that you're doing some online stuff. There's another guy down here uh in the South West doing the same thing. Um, Bob, and that that's a great way to learn. And actually I've been evaluating some of Bob's students,
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mattnelson: and they're pretty good. They they! They come out of this online training, and they are pretty darn good out in the field. It's amazing. It It works so there's many ways to do it.
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mattnelson: Some folks
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mattnelson: um
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mattnelson: measure, you know. Okay, this bird track is inch and five, sixteen, and and and that you know, and that's how they learn, and they and it's great.
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mattnelson: Um, you know there's teachers who say to do it that way. There's teachers who say, I never, never measure anything, You know I i'm not a measuring type. I see a a robin track, and I go. Oh, that's about the size of a robin track. Right? I don't. Oh,
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mattnelson: I have an eye for size on the ground and in the woods and stuff, and uh, whatever way works for you whatever combination of ways um and I will say, uh, when you're learning
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mattnelson: it's great to find a teacher.
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mattnelson: It's great to find someone who can just help, for one thing, show you what's really possible. There's a lot of myths out there in the tracking world, and
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mattnelson: I like to try to dispel some of those right tracking it.
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mattnelson: Um, let's let's take the the mystical out of it.
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mattnelson: Let's let's just think of it as it's purely mechanical.
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mattnelson: You know you. You see it. You see a deer track, and then you see the next year track, and you see the next deer track, and then you move on, and you see the next deer track, and and it's sort of a mechanical process right? It can be like that. Um, uh, and with fluency. You you might see some dear tracks, and just have a a internal gut, feeling that, hey? The deer is probably hidden over there and go over there and find out. So
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mattnelson: there's a lot of variance there. But um,
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mattnelson: I I like that a lot. Just interject, because
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Lee Burton: I enforce in my class the University students. It's very rigorous thing, and i'm I I don't do a whole lot about size, either, because I want them on morphology, you know, to get that pattern recognition, you know. But then I go through an exercise every module, and it's like, Okay, you know, I want you to analyze this and do. And you're familiar with this course but primary and secondary perception. What do you see? Describe it? You know shape. You know what's their toes? Are there nails there, you know, spacing, negative space. All these things right, you know. Shape of the pad, et cetera
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Lee Burton: A. And then, after you get all that, you know, then use your intuitive faculties or our own, built in Ai, which is really silly because we all have a Do you want to call it that? You know it's like, Okay, what does that look like, you know? And and you know, based on well, you know, it has four toes what has four to, you know, et cetera, et cetera, you know, had nails, no nails whatever,
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Lee Burton: and so I I love that approach because I think that's a really good yet, like you, said some people just naturally intuitive or more so. But that's always a great default to go back to, you know. And then, if you get the fluency, you know, and you just know what a coyote track is. You go. Yeah, I know It's kind of track, you know. But for most people that takes a while to get to that that level
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mattnelson: you. But and and learning the the morphology is a great way to get there, you bet. Yeah, uh,
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mattnelson: yeah, What What do you? How would you tell people? Um,
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Lee Burton: You know we're talking about, you know, not getting overwhelmed. And I just reminded of uh the the slogan, which is very apt, I I think, in this particular case I think a coach said this, but you know they were asked. You know.
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Lee Burton: How do you keep going, or you know you don't get overwhelmed, or whatever, and I think this absolutely applies to tracking. As I said, it's not about
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Lee Burton: the capture. It's about the chase,
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Lee Burton: you know, and and I think in tracking same thing it's not about, you know. If you in an Eval or something, whether you got right or wrong or missed it. It's about, you know. What did you learn that day, you know? Did you process as much as you could, and put it in, you know. And now you better than you were beforehand, and
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Lee Burton: that to to me that's a good motivator to do your whatever ten minutes a day, or whatever you can do, you know, once a week, or whatever you know, so that you don't
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Lee Burton: kind of go Well, i'll never get this kind of thing, and you know we've all. At least I've had that, and i'm sure you probably would through some stages like that at some point, you know. Frustration. But um, I I like the way that you vers that about just you know, regularly getting out there
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mattnelson: a a regular practice is amazing. Yeah, yeah, I would highly recommend it.
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mattnelson: Find a teacher. If you can go, take a uh um, do a little research and go take a a workshop.
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mattnelson: It's great to see what's possible. It's great to know what's um um realistic
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mattnelson: um
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mattnelson: One of the best things that I could recommend. I think right off the bat is to is to
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mattnelson: keep a curious mind. Keep an open mind. Um. Part of learning. Tracking is is a personal process as well. We learn how we perceive the world. We learn about how we figure things out and and about our own internal dialogue. And,
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mattnelson: um I, One thing I see people do is they get hung up on something, and then and then they're stuck.
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mattnelson: No, I think this is what it is, and and and they literally can stop seeing evidence.
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mattnelson: They they can get stuck in their own emotional, interpersonal, emotional life, you know, be a trauma memory whatever, and and get stuck. And then all of a sudden are not able to see anymore um, and not be able to take in any more information. And
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mattnelson: I really try to encourage people to keep an openness. Um learn to to say, hey? I don't know.
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I don't know I
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mattnelson: This is what i'm seeing, and I can't figure it out right now with the book that I have, or with with the tools in my toolbox. Um!
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mattnelson: But I recognize this. I see it. I look at it. I i'm, i'm curious about it, and then I
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mattnelson: the next time I see it, maybe there will be more,
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mattnelson: or maybe i'll be in a conversation with somebody talking about some animal, and i'll say, Hey, that's sounds like what I saw that time, you know it. So So, asking these questions, staying open, and just not being too hard on ourselves. Just um that that's what I would recommend for folks
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Lee Burton: uh that's happened to me several times. Evaluations. I know exactly what you're talking about getting fixated on something, and it just becomes like a mental block, you know, and you have to force yourself step back and can be really challenging to do that. Um,
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Lee Burton: It's It's funny how the human brain works in that regard.
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mattnelson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you. You You mentioned the email several times, and I don't know if if listeners
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Lee Burton: no actually could you go into that, you know, Talk about, or both, you know, in your case, you know, taking a workshop from your evaluation? And can you speak to how that works, and also just the the learning value that you can get out of that in addition to certification level.
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mattnelson: Yes, yeah, you bet.
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mattnelson: So the organization that I work work with is called um cyber tracker
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mattnelson: and um it's it's sort of a on some level. It's sort of a marriage of ancient and modern right. It's it's Um, the the founder of the outfit from South Africa. Louis Berg.
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mattnelson: He created this this um
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mattnelson: software that could go into a handheld device,
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mattnelson: and it's all icon driven so that that
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mattnelson: illiterate people can gather data. You know people who are masterful in the landscape and and have long running relationships with the wildlife from the land
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mattnelson: can actually uh
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mattnelson: gathered data and and um contribute to science,
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mattnelson: and in that way maintain a a traditional life way, and yet make a living in our modern world. So
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mattnelson: so what happened was Louis Louis showed up with with some of the software. And people say, Hey, i'm a tracker, right? Pay me
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mattnelson: and um. So Louis had to design and develop this system of evaluating people's, tracking skill
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mattnelson: and
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mattnelson: um. The idea being he takes a group of people out in the woods
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mattnelson: and he'll. He'll show them tracks and sign they'll, They'll circle a koodoo track in the in the sand, and and ask each person what is this?
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mattnelson: And some of them will come up and say, uh, it's a you know it's a hippo, or some might say it's a lion, or and some will say it's kudu. And so um this system of of evaluating or assessing someone at skill level. You know we we it. It winds up being sort of a test. You're being tested. We're we're testing
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mattnelson: your literacy, your tracking literacy.
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mattnelson: Um.
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mattnelson: So the the way that that happens is is uh like like me as an evaluator in North America, I'll take a group of people, and i'll circle a track in the sand, and i'll say, who you know who who's track was this, and it say it's a raccoon
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mattnelson: um. Each person will give me the answer, and some people won't have any idea they won't have ever seen one,
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mattnelson: and they'll be, you know it's pretty hard to. Uh if you don't have a search image already, or or know which animals are on the landscape, it's sometimes really hard to imagine who left this print, especially when you start getting down into small little weird animals right? And um,
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mattnelson: so we'll. We'll do a string of three or five questions, and i'll ask each each person you know, What is this? What is this animal doing? Or when did it come by here, or which food is this? And
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mattnelson: I like to say that that for for those of us who are biologists and working in the field we we like to work. We like to train at a higher level that we have to perform at in our jobs. So so these evaluations can ask a lot of stuff that might people might say, what's the point?
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mattnelson: Who cares the difference between a vole and a mouse track? Right? Only a a vole researcher would need to know that. But
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mattnelson: but What we're learning is that if we take people across the board with a super broad base of knowledge as a starting point um that that their literacy goes way up fast. Now, if if we're talking about the difference between a two tracks that are this big,
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mattnelson: and we're looking at the morphological features and the and the gate patterns of how these animals move. Then, when we start to look at animals the size of a coyote
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mattnelson: right,
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mattnelson: it'll be a whole lot more easy to see this subtle sign the little differences here in there, so
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mattnelson: we'll look at a string of tracks,
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mattnelson: and then we'll go back to each track as a group,
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mattnelson: and i'll say
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mattnelson: so. What is this? What What is? How,
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mattnelson: Whose track is this? And we'll have a discussion about it, and then i'll. I will share with the group what it what it is that I see, and why this is a raccoon track, and and we'll we'll look at all the different morphological features in the track. And
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mattnelson: uh, we might throw in some uh, we'll notice how the animals moving. You know a raccoon. All is the only animal that moves in this particular gate. So just at a glance, seeing the gate right, so we
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mattnelson: we have a it, it winds up being a heck of a, a, a learning experience in a workshop,
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mattnelson: and before we walk away from that record track we all agree that we can see what what it is that we're talking about, and then we move on, and um, and we do that for two days straight, and it is intensive. Now, as you know, It's
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mattnelson: looking at tracks
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mattnelson: all day, you know, and and I remember in the early days when I was being evaluated, I I go to bed at night, and I close my eyes, and I would see track images in my mind's eye, because I have been focusing all day on it. Um! So
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mattnelson: we'll go. We'll do this for two days. I will keep track of what you got right, what you missed, and then i'll crunch it all into some numbers, and we certify people at different levels. Um, we have what we call level one, two, three of four,
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mattnelson: and
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mattnelson: um. The scoring system is kind of complex. But but i'll give you a brief,
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mattnelson: a brief analogy of how this works. So
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mattnelson: we we ask three different levels of questions uh levels, being, you know, easy, more difficult to extremely difficult, and and we have a a formula for that. So if if i'm asking the track of a of a large animal
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mattnelson: that is clear, and that there is no other species in the area that I could ident, that I could misidentify it, for then we would call that a one point question.
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mattnelson: Now, if I add a bit of obscurity, or if
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mattnelson: maybe the the rain had beat the definition out of the track, or or the animal had turned and smudged it somehow.
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mattnelson: Then that increases the difficulty level to a two point question, and then,
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mattnelson: and then, you know, if you go into like small animals, or more layers of obscurity, or other animals that could be confused with. Then we bump them up to a three point question and I ask uh
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mattnelson: a percentage. I I shoot for about twenty-five. One point questions about fifty, two point questions, and about twenty-five percent. Three point questions, and the questions are weighted. So if if a person,
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mattnelson: Mrs.
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mattnelson: A one point question like a a you know a clear horse track,
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mattnelson: uh which which we would call an easy question. If they miss that. That's hard on your score
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mattnelson: uh you, you'll get three points against you, and if you get it right you only get one point towards you, and and as we get to the other end of that that spectrum a three point question. If you miss it, you only get one point against your score, and if you get it right, you get three points towards your score like a difficult track. So
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mattnelson: the way this,
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mattnelson: algorithm so to speak, works is is that the questions are weighted, and you can miss more hard questions and still do pretty well. You know, you start missing an a a higher number of easy questions, and that can really hurt your your score. But it gives us an accurate
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mattnelson: cross-section of a person's knowledge of wildlife tracking where
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mattnelson: it's It's a rigorous enough system that we can take luck out of the mix, and we can see what people know,
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mattnelson: and that's all that we're doing. We're we're, you know, the the of cyber tracker originally in my mind is basically to low to to um locate and recognize
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mattnelson: um expertise in the field.
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mattnelson: We're looking to to find trackers who who who can be certified at these levels? Well, what we found
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mattnelson: is that the certification process itself
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mattnelson: creates good trackers.
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mattnelson: The The literacy
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mattnelson: um increases at a at a at a speed that we don't see in any other um
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mattnelson: ways of tracking, and and we speculate as to why that is.
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mattnelson: And
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mattnelson: my hunch is that this the the
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mattnelson: the bit of pressure, the um, the performance, anxiety, the the me asking you to come up with a story here. Um
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mattnelson: somehow helps cement that in people's Psyche, and it makes it a a potent memorable process,
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mattnelson: And it's actually been scientifically studied. Uh Jonah Evans's wife. Cl. Did a study Where in Texas, there where um you know, they they looked at
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mattnelson: people's tracking ability, um. They did an evaluation. They looked at their and then they did. Three months later did another evaluation, and their scores all significantly climbed. So, just being evaluated
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mattnelson: um
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mattnelson: increase these people's tracking literacy, and we're seeing that all over the place. Go ahead.
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Lee Burton: No, I just gonna say It's an amazing learning experience. You spilled that out in a lot greater detail than I could have said. But I completely agree with you, and and then, especially once you've done one. If you go back, you you know what's kind of expected. And so then there's a pressure of you know, studying and preparing properly and again using the language metaphor. It's like an immersion class, you know. You're throwing everything at everybody, and that's been shown in language that's by far the best way to learn,
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Lee Burton: right? And so, yeah, I I can't
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Lee Burton: highly enough recommend the evals. And if you can't do that, or you know vice versa, a workshop, and and also just the the usefulness,
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Lee Burton: you know. I mean a lot of people do it just for personal enjoyment or hobby, but from a scientific perspective it's essentially. I I knew that story as well about Lou Lebenberg, and I remember back in the day I was in a lab, and my colleague was programming. It was the palm pilots. They had a little Gps A. And I remember reading the story. This is before I was tracking other than knowing a few basic tracks, you know, kid growing up,
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Lee Burton: and I remember hearing that if I recall correctly they were, they were doing it for a scientific reason to get census counts on animals in South Africa, and they were getting this data back. That was mostly rubbish. They're going in the handhelds. These guys were like, Well, you know, it's a cudi track. No, that's a you know. Whatever Thompson Gazelle, you know, whatever the case was. And so Mr. Lever had say, No, no, hold on a second here, and that started the you know the the formal process for training, anyway. Hence the name Cybertrack,
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Lee Burton: because a lot of people hear that, and they're like, you know. So just to So people are aware of there's no computers involved when you get out in the field right uh so uh, but anyway, Well, hey, Matt, this has been
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Lee Burton: awesome, incredible. Appreciate the explanation. If people are interested and want to find more
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Lee Burton: about cyber tracker, but also yourself where they can find you. You know your own workshops, emails, et cetera. How can they do that? You tell them where to go?
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mattnelson: You bet. So uh evaluations that I run are are put on on the collective trackers. Certification website, um, which is the the cyber check in North America website, and that and the website is tracker certificationcom.
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mattnelson: I have a personal website or two actually. Um that you could reach me through uh. One is called Wild Wisconsin
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mattnelson: dot org,
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mattnelson: and the other one is called Redwood Coast Animal Tracking Dot Com. And Um:
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mattnelson: Yeah, yeah, I I I would say that that anybody who's listening to this, and uh,
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mattnelson: and who is struggling along their journey to become a tracker. Um, if I can be of service, send me an email uh i'd be happy. I I typically respond to emails. And my email is Nelson, Matt. W. At Gmail, and that's Niel S. O. In M. A. Ttw. At Gmail Dot Com:
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Lee Burton: Yeah. And I can personally attest. Matt is a great teacher. Um,
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Lee Burton: he's, even if you get it totally wrong. He's very patient. He won't make you feel like a moron, and he's great at explaining it. Um, yeah, he's just a wonderful teacher, and I know you said early, you weren't. But I I think you are a really good teacher, and I highly recommend his services and any other cyber tracker evaluators. But if you get a chance, take a workshop or an Eval from Matt. Um, you're going to learn so much. So, hey? Listen. Thank you very much for your time. I hope we get to do this again, because
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Lee Burton: I could talk to you for hours more on a variety of subjects, but really appreciate all your insight.
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mattnelson: You're welcome and and thank you as well. I I appreciate the opportunity here to to talk. Yeah,
