Practice!

compression mark analysis on sauvie island

Tracking takes time and effort to learn...raw time spent out in the bush practicing - on a constant basis. Time spent getting muddy and calloused tracking snakes through swamps, tracking coyotes through thickets, climbing trees to examine squirrel nests', or sitting and meditating beside babbling streams in forests somewhere far off the beaten path.
Always tracking through your neighborhood and out in the woods, always visually searching for materials to build a primitive camp with, always listening to the bird language around you...what the birds are saying, and why? Always asking the sacred question: What has happened here? What is this teaching me? And why? Always studying the wear marks all around you in your environment. Always asking yourself questions like, "where is the nearest deer to me right now?"
Envisioning people, dogs, etc., as if you're actually witnessing them making their tracks before you, by "fleshing" them out with your mind's eye, based upon what the shapes of the tracks are telling you. Always looking deeper.... This is called tracker vision. 

emerging from beaver tunnel