Games In Spooring

Track Memory

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

Track Drawing

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

Spot the Thief

Get a stranger to make a track unseen by the Scouts. The Scouts study his track so as to know it again.

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

Follow the Trail

Send out a "hare", either walking or cycling, with a pocketful of chicken feed, nutshells, confetti paper, etc., dropping a little here and there to give a trail for the Patrol to follow.

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

Author

Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell (Chief Scout, London, UK)

Date of Creation

1908

Learn A Continuation:

to the next page: Reading "Sign" or Deduction

Back in The Past:

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