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Scarily Competent Tracker: Difference between revisions
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* Aragorn does this in ''[[The Lord of the Rings (film)|The Two Towers]]'' (book and film), first tracking the Uruk-hai then later explaining how Merry and Pippin escaped them during a battle. That later example is interesting because it takes him no effort to find the traces of both hobbits over a battlefield. To be fair, Aragorn discovers the footprints by accident while mourning them. Everything else he does after he chances upon them falls under this trope though.
** Far more realistic in the book, where Aragorn is only able to notice signs because the hobbits had dropped their cloak-clasp as a sign on the way before they escaped, and had been carried away from where the main battle was. Even then, Aragorn is only able to deduce fairly basic information from the signs, and outright admits that a lot of what he sees doesn't make sense unless he acknowledges that a few pertinent facts will have taken place elsewhere, or will otherwise have left no visible signs. Nevertheless, he does have impressive tracking skills, which is justified by having been raised and lived as a Ranger of the wilds of Eriador. He does mention having limits, being unwilling to continue the chase across the plains of Rohan at night, as the trail is harder to see compared to when they were in the forest and the risk of losing it in the dark is too great. Also the only reason he finds Pippin's lorien leaf clasp in the book is because Pippin ran from the Orcs to drop it away from them, so the clasp wouldn't be trampled and hidden. In the movie, Aragorn finds the clasp after it's been trampled and buried in the ground. At another point, he's completely baffled by what he sees, because he's never encountered Ent-tracks before.
** The original novel also mentions how he tracked down and captured Gollum, one of his most impressive feats. It had been decades since the only solid clue of Gollum's location had gone cold!
* Prince Humperdinck does it on the location of the duel between Inigo Montoya and the Man in Black in ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'', noting that both men were expert swordsmen based solely on their footwork. He does it again on the location of the fight between the Man in Black and Fezzik. And then again at the Battle of Wits site, where he is able to identify the colorless, odorless poison as iocaine powder by ''smell'', though this one was intended as a bit of a joke for observant audience members.
** According to the book version, Humperdinck actually ''can'' track a falcon on a cloudy day.
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** When the FBI agent sarcastically asks how much change was in the man's pockets, the sheriff gives that information too. Given that Crow Horse is a [[Deadpan Snarker]], one assumes that he's joking.
* In ''[[Rabbit Proof Fence]]'', the 'school' employs an Australian Aboriginal tracker Moodoo. When the girls run away, they do what they can to conceal their tracks, yet he manages to follow them. (It's implied that he deliberately lets them get away from him.) The DVD commentary reveals that the ''actor'' who played the tracker could do the same thing.
* Etain (Olga Kurylenko) in ''[[Centurion]]''. She tracks the Romans relentlessly through the whole movie, even after they use every trick they know, including riding river rapids. One of the Romans remarks, each time, "How does she ''do'' that?"
* In ''[[Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid]]'', Butch and Sundance are pursued relentlessly by a group specially outfitted to hunt them down and bring them in, dead or alive. The group counts Lord Baltimore, a famous Indian tracker, among its members. Lord Baltimore is talented enough to track Butch and Sundance across stone cliffs, much to the pair amazement. They only escape the group by {{spoiler|jumping off a high cliff into a river}}, made doubly frightening for {{spoiler|Sundance because he can't swim.}}
* In ''[[Rango]]'', [[The Quiet One|Rango's deputy Wounded Bird]] can ''[[The Nose Knows|smell]]'' blindess. Or an enlarged prostate.
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* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "[[Beyond the Black River]]", the Pict spies are easily able to track Conan and his company.
* Famous Shoes the Kickapoo tracker in the ''[[Lonesome Dove]]'' series can track pretty much anyone, anywhere. He can also walk further and faster than you can ride your horse.
* In the [[Belisarius Series]] the title character has Abbu, a bedouin chief who is doing mercenary service as a scout with the Roman Army.
** Rana Sanga has a Pathan who does this for him. In his case Rana Sanga captured him in battle. The Pathan serves him on the grounds that any warrior great enough to capture him must be worth serving.
*** The fact that Belisarius is able to fool the Pathans tracking him and escape, makes him an instant legend among them.
* Muldoon shows himself to be one in ''[[Jurassic Park]]''. He finds the crashed tour car after the T-Rex kicked it, the last known place where Tim and Lex were known to be. After finding Tim’s watch left behind, he notices that while the face is cracked, the band is uninjured, deducing that given the toughness of watch face crystals, it could have only broken during the attack, but the uninjured band means that the T-rex didn’t tear it off the kid. So Tim must have taken off the broken watch after the attack, meaning he survived.
** The paragraph before, though, Muldoon subverts this. He remarks that it’s usually very difficult to track anything after an animal attack, and while most people assume the aftermath of such encounters are filled with blood and gore, the truth is that there’s usually nothing, since a predator can easily kill a child just by shaking them to snap their neck, making it look to the detectives as though the child just walked out.
* ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'' has James, who at least justifies his skills by having "can track you anywhere" as his vampiric gift.
* The titular rangers from [[Ranger's Apprentice]] can track amazingly well - even on horseback.
* Lew Wetzel (a/k/a "Deathwind") and Jonathan Zane in Zane Grey's ''The Last Trail.''
* ''[[Animorphs]]'' had an insectoid alien version of this, Taxxon trackers. The Animorphs had a very hard time losing them in the book they were featured in.
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* Benton Fraser in ''[[Due South]]'', taking the stereotype of all Mounties well past the point of parody. This usually involves whatever the best [[Gross Out]] is, such as [[Fingertip Drug Analysis|licking something horrible]] and [[Absurdly Spacious Sewer|diving into the sewers]].
* The Huntsman ([[Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep"|natch!]]) does this in ''[[The Tenth Kingdom]]'': after emerging from the Dwarf mines, he puts his ear to a boulder and is able to hear through the rock (complete with cool shrieking hawk sound-effects) all the way to the Royal Estate where Virginia and Tony are walking. Either something they say is indicative of their location, or he can tell how far the sound traveled, because he's able to know exactly where they are.
* ''[[The Adventures of Brisco County Jr]]'' has Lord Bowler. "Dirt talks to me, Brisco."
** And Brisco himself.
{{quote|'''Brisco''': (studies tracks from the saddle) Hmmmm...
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{{quote|'''Hammond:''' *spotting the tire impressions in the mud* I can see tracks! I'm using my tracking skills; I'm not even using the hounds. *walks into a low branch* Ow, a tree!}}
* Ian Edgerton, from ''[[Numb3rs]].''
* The black tracker Fuller uses to pursue the bushrangers in the second episode of the ''[[Wild Boys]]''. Despite the bushrangers uses every trick they know to lose him (riding along a creek, etc), he stays right on their tail. And he isn't fooled by the pig caracass they blow up in an attempt to fake their deaths either.
* One episode of ''[[Criminal Minds]]'' had an Apache tracker come in to consult on a case that had Native American themes. The man was able to deduce an insane amount of detail, including seeing from Hotch's footprints that he wore a gun on one ankle, because his footsteps were slightly deeper on that side.
* Despite the show's title, the protagonist of ''[[Tracker]]'' is ''not'' one of these, although he still has a number of superhuman abilities due to the fact that he's an alien [[Energy Being]] taking human form. In one episode, though, he meets an elderly Native American named Wahota Keene (played by [[Don Francks]]) whose son was killed by one of the escaped alien convicts Cole is tracking. Keene immediately recognizes his son's killer by simply looking at him and then shows remarkable skill at tracking his movements in the woods. Cole does find that he likes Keene, given that they're both trackers.
* Hawk, the Native American deputy, can do this in ''[[Twin Peaks]]''. However at one point he leads everybody to the wrong cabin in the woods.
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** Certain elixirs and [[Health Food|food items]] grant the ability to track specific creature types.
** Through a certain combination of class, profession choice, and quests, it is possible to be able to track ''everything'' in the game. This is only possible if you roll a Hunter (Track Beasts, Humanoids, Dragonkin, etc, etc) who is an Herbalist (Track Herbs) and a Miner (Track Minerals), and who has also managed to fish up a "Weatherbeaten Journal" which, upon reading, allows you to Track Fish.
* Similar to ''[[World of Warcraft]]'', in ''[[
* Geralt can be this a few times in ''[[The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings|The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings]]'' as long as he swigs the right potion that heightens his awareness.
* Ezio Auditore is the most prominent one in the ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' series - [[Justified Trope|Justified]] by his genetic Eagle Vision/Sense ability.
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{{quote|'''Belkar:''' "Oh, that's it! I'm gonna track them down and kill their whole family!"}}
*** The next strip, however, Belkar forgets that he was tracking anybody.
* Parodied early in ''[[8-Bit Theater
* [[Deconstructed Trope|Deconstructed]] by ''[[Abstruse Goose]]'' [http://abstrusegoose.com/384 here].
* This is known and ridiculed as "the [[Lord of the Rings|Aragorn]] syndrome" in ''[[The Noob]]''.
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