Jim Corbett, famous for his books on hunting maneaters, did lead jungle warfare courses for Burma in which tracking played a big role. While books like "Jungle lore" or the more well-known ones like
Men-Eaters of Kumaon only touch tracking they give a great insight into the mind of a great naturalist and sportsman. His great love for nature, his thirst of knowledge and his iron will coupled with great human qualities enabled him to finish the job where few dared to try and nobody else succeded.
It is of course important to point out that he basically grew up in the Jungle with "catapult", bow, muzzle loader and a 450 Martini rifle with which he bagged his first Leopard at the age of ten or eleven, stalking alone through a dense scrub jungle. He also had quite a range of good tutors from a very young age, from the his elder brother to local poachers. Such a skill set is of course rather difficult to match for men growing up in Western societies, but he seemed to be confident that his jungle training courses did make the soldiers very competent jungle fighters.
The stories are terrific and his attention to detail and his willigness to solve those "jungle detective stories" (or to bag alone a cunning man-eater) are amazing as well has his ability to think from the perspective of animals and other men alike. I personally tried to adopt some of his way of thinking into my hunting and I had good success although it is quite literally a different world here.
P.S: Interestingly the Elizabeth, which celebrates her 60th anniversary this year has become the Queen the night spend with Corbett in the "Tree tops" in Kenia, 1952. The day before the couple attended a polo match despite the "terrorist" threat. While the police guarded the event he felt nervous about a small scrubby creek leading right to the polo ground and checked personally the area for footprints, something which didn't seem to have come in mind of the security forces.
Bookmarks