Being tracked or followed is a helpless feeling with heaps of anxiety and pressure. Anti-tracking shoes make those following you second guess their own eyes and will make their job a nightmare. So how do you make anti-tracking shoes?
Anti-tracking shoes are an effective way to drop your pursuers and protect yourself from being found by those who would do you harm. Stay vigilant to make your escape and find safety. Read on and learn all you can about how to make anti-tracking shoes and their uses.
Making Anti-Tracking Shoes
Anti-tracking shoes are a deep section of prepping and survivalism that most people never get to. They love learning about healing plants or ways to build adequate shelters but often avoid doing anything that requires them to spend excessive hours in the woods or hiking. Making the shoes requires several steps, and the shoes don’t take shape until the last few iterations.
The Terrain is the Most Important Part of Making Anti-Tracking Shoes
When you make anti-tracking shoes, the terrain will impact everything about them. Therefore, you must take the time to thoroughly inspect the area and draw what you need from there. Anti-tracking is a cross-section of camo and tracking; take the time to learn your basics, and the shoes will come together.
A few bits of the terrain to pay attention to are:
- Substrate – Substrate is the material that is underneath the grass and undergrowth. It could be sand, desiccated leaves, or even gravel. This substrate material will be where your shoes meet the ground and reveal lots of things about you, like how much weight you are packing and how fast you are moving.
- Foliage – You must pay attention to the grass and trees in the area. The indentions made by your feet will impact leaves and bend grass in the direction you are traveling. Foliage will also be used as parts of the anti-tracking shoes and help cloud your trail.
- Water – Water is another thing to pay attention to when scanning the area. Trackers will pay attention to the water if your trail disappears but can regularly spot tracks in dried creek beds. Pay attention to how the water interacts with the environment to get design ideas for your anti-trackers.
Once you grasp your environment, you can think about what your shoes need to do to keep from being tracked. Again, the terrain is crucial because it will be the canvas that marks your every movement. Trackers will use it to determine where you and your family are hiding or where you keep your goods.
Gather Materials to Create the Anti-Trackers
Now that you know the area you will be traveling through, you can start to piece together the shoes. The standard grab bag of items should be put together to make them work, and by doing some camo work, you will have a set of boots that won’t leave any trace of your passage.
Some things to gather up to make your anti-tracking shoes are:
- Paracord – One of the most powerful bits of cord you can get will come in handy when you make your anti-trackers. Paracord will be used to attach branches and bits of foliage to your shoes and make them quiet and hard to track. Paracord is cheap and will last forever if it is out of the elements.
- Knife – It goes without saying that you need a sharp knife for this process. The cord is impossible to break without one, and you might need it to snip off branches. It should be a knife with a case that is sharp enough to chop and slice.
- Foliage – The trees and leaves surrounding you will be wrapped around your shoes to make the anti-trackers. Using the other materials, you attach bits of branches or tall grasses to minimize the impact of your shoe on the landscape. Once the shape is distorted, you become much harder to track.
- Grocery Sack – A great thing to have with you is a couple of plastic bags from the grocery store. These thin bits of plastic can go over your regular shoes and provide a base for everything needed to make the anti-trackers. Please safely discard the bags to protect wildlife.
These are an odd assortment of items, so take the time to get what you need. Clouding the shape of the foot and passage over the terrain is the name of the game in anti-tracking. Once you have made a decent base, begin building shoes. Don’t be afraid to go over the top, but avoid excessive weight additions.
Creating the Anti-Trackers is Serious Fun for Everyone
Ghilli suits are the prominent uniform of snipers in movies and television shows. Making a type of suit for your shoes is what anti-trackers are. You use elements of the surroundings, leaves, and roots to camo your prints. Remember that these are temporary and not full-time anti-trackers. You must replenish often to keep your tracks secret.
The steps to create your anti-tracking boots are:
- Bag them Up – If you use a plastic bag or a cloth pillow case, you must put your feet inside and strap them down. These bags need to cover your boots, but the choice is yours if you want to make them higher. The bags will work to create a barrier between your boot or shoe and the ground.
- Attach the Branches – Now your feet are prepped, you can work on attaching the branches and leaves. You must attach larger pieces to make an odd shape. Overlap the branches with bits of leaves to keep a soft barrier between you and the ground.
- Take some Laps – Now that you have weird-shaped limbs and branches on the bottom of your covered boots or shoes, it is time to go for a walk. Take some pics of the area before and after you move through a few times. Check to see if there are any patterns in your movement. If there are, go back to adding or removing limbs.
- Replacements – Your anti-trackers have a short lifespan. You must stop to replace all pieces. Once your foot assumes a standard shape, you are subject to tracking. Take replacement pieces with you to keep the pace up.
One of the most fun jobs about making anti-tracking shoes is everything. Taking the time to make a mish-mash camo of leaves and trees in the area drives your creative and survival instincts to new levels. Once you have a good set of antis ready, taking them out is just as fun as creating them.
Other Options for Anti-Tracking Shoes
When it comes down to it, tracking depends upon the shape of the foot or boot and the terrain around it. There are giveaways to your position in every inch of the land if you know what to look for. You can add value to your anti-tracking shoes or buy a set if you desire by altering your foot shape and a few other tricks.
Soles on Anti-Tracking Shoes are Something to See
The main goal of anti-tracking is to remove any patterns from your shoes. Unfortunately, the logo, the design on the bottom, the weight, everything is subject to expose you to your pursuer. However, there are ways to throw your tracker off with some inventive work by shoe designers.
A few ways that soles can be altered to help with anti-tracking are:
- Backward Soles – Believe it or not, you can buy and alter your shoes to have the treads facing in the opposite direction you are traveling. British soldiers used these innovative shoes in Africa to avoid being tracked back to their camps. They look astounding and work well if you move into a heavily trafficked area.
- Slick Soles – Others believe that having a slick sole works best for anti-tracking. The smooth sole shoe masks the shape of the boot by mimicking roots or limbs resting in the snow. Slick-soled boots might be dangerous in saturated environments, so pay attention to areas that might cause them to lose traction.
The sole is a great place to cause distortion. Once a tracker realizes they are following a root path or set of backward-facing soles, you will be gone. If you have a distorted or untrackable foot shape, you are well on your way to freedom from your attackers.
Stalking is Another Critical Aspect of Anti-Tracking
Retreating at full tilt across any area will leave a trail that any decent tracker can pick up with little or no worry. Making measured strides and only walking in areas that won’t leave a trace of your surroundings is an art called stalking by combining stalking with your anti-trackers increases your chances of getting out alive.
Some of the most prominent aspects of stalking are:
- Speed of Movement – To escape, you must be swift but not so swift that you can’t cover your tracks. By being economical and only making the strides, you need to get from one bit of cover to the next is your best bet. Walk slowly and land with the balls of your feet lightly, with a bend in the knee.
- Choice of Steps – Another great way to keep someone off your trail is by moving to places that won’t show signs of your passage. Rocks and logs that are not slick are great examples of sites you should consider. Again, look at your surroundings and choose the best path with minor obstacles.
- Constant Vigilance – If you are being chased by one of the greats, like Tom Brown Jr., there’s not much you can do but stay constantly vigilant against any disturbances to the terrain. You will move more efficiently and with a better purpose by keeping your mind on your escape and nothing else.
Stalking is an art form that takes time to master. Moving about the woods in a manner that doesn’t disturb anything is hard. Don’t be upset if you stutter and stall at first. Once you have a system in place in your head, everything will make better sense.
The Pitfalls of Using Anti-Tracking Shoes
There are also some drawbacks to traveling with anti-tracking shoes, but once you know them, you can mitigate the damages. In contrast, these may seem like hurdles to clear, take faith in your masked prints to give you a head start, and then pull out all the stops if you can hear the hounds baying.
Some of the pitfalls of using anti-tracking shoes are:
- Paracord Tracks – The more you move with anti-tracking shoes, the more the paracord will break through the foliage. As it breaks away the leaves and sticks, it will have a tell-tale sign of cords on the ground.
- Terrain Patterns – Every time you reach a new terrain, you must make new anti-trackers. If you move to a different substrate, you must also start over. This means you must pay constant attention to your trail and keep it clean of mistakes.
- Slow as Christmas – Moving with these anti-tracking boots on could make you slower than Christmas Day. You must move slowly to conceal yourself, which works against you when you are being chased or tracked.
Though the drawbacks of anti-tracking shoes and boots are big ones that don’t harm their effectiveness one bit, by being cautious, you can protect yourself against being seen, and the need to move fast is eliminated.
Final Thoughts
Anti-tracking shoes are a fantastic way to decrease your impact on your terrain and make it hard to track you. By making the shoes with bits of the landscape, you use camo to make your feet have an odd shape. Trackers search for patterns in the land. Removing that marker gives you a leg up on the competition.
The best way to describe what homemade anti-tracking shoes look like is to compare them to ghillie suits used by snipers and long-range military operatives. They will be made from bits of the surrounding area and make your feet look like tiny unplanted trees. However, don’t mistake their looks for positive benefits in a chase situation.