How To Evade A Professional Military In The Winter Mountains

Right flank, right flank. Hey, bad intel man. Hey, Smith's gone. We got 250 moving on the right flank. We need to go right now. Come on. It might seem like what we're teaching today is crazy, but I can tell you for a fact that many people who have found themselves in situations where they have to evade a modern trained fighting force wish they had this information ahead of time. So whether you think it's silly, whether you think it's LARPing, the fact of the matter is, is that this information is valuable, not when you need it, but right now. So make sure that you are taking notes, that you are paying attention, that you are continuing to learn more after this. Because here's the thing. I have taught survival professionally as a military instructor for a long time. I'm retired now, but it would take months to get somebody to a proficient level, years to get somebody very good at it. This is not something that you're going to get excellent at just because you watch this video. You need to get out there with your buddies. You need to try this for real. You need to put on your gear, you need to put on your kit, and you need to try it out. Because I can tell you for a fact that the people feeling the terror of actually being pursued wish they had this. There are tons of good guides. There are tons of good other channels. Inhale all the survival content that you can. Because the fact of the matter is, is that this information is valuable when you need it. The difference between going home to your family, being back with your kids, with your mom and dad, with your wife, or not being home at all, could be the difference between actually studying and applying the stuff, going out with your buddies and actually doing this, and just not caring at all. So sit down, get a nice glass of water, get some notes ready. Let's get into it. Of course, this content is free. We have to give a big thank you to Primary Arms for sponsoring and making it free. They make awesome optics, great price. You can buy it from ACOG's, to many other things out there. Make sure you go and check them out. We have to give a big thank you to Night Vision Network. You can say the Night Vision Thermal, you can rent it before you buy it. Try it out. Do whatever type of LARPing. Hopefully get out in the mountains a little bit and check it out. And it's a great resource. Of course, Mantis will make you a better shooter due to making dry fire that much more fun. So go and check them out. That being said, let's get into it. Okay, we're going to set the scenario here. So we are in the very near future. We are fighting a first world military somewhere near your home. And you found yourself in a situation where the fight is unwinnable. You are not able to win, and you must now flee, you must evade, you must lose your attackers in a winter mountainous environment. How do you do that? So as you can see there, me and Sawyer, we're just cornered. We have guys flanking on us. We are vastly outnumbered. We do not have the resources to win that type of fight. We need to be able to retreat to fight another day. So when you find yourself in your first evasion situation, the first thing that you want to do is phase one. That's going to be your initial movement. What is that going to be? It's going to mean getting the F out. So we're just going to haul ass. Let's go. So what I'm doing is I'm putting time, distance, and terrain between me and my attackers. I'm just going to run until I can't run, walk until I can't walk. I'm going to crawl into the initial hide cycle. Let's keep going. The tree line right here. Let's get in the tree line. Okay, two shoots came off, whatever. Drive them. Keep going. Let's begin to the tree line here. We're going to start making erratic movements. The nastier the terrain, the better. Get into those draws, places you don't want to go. Make sure that it's difficult for them to follow you. Okay, we got into the tree line right here. This is good. This is going to give us overhead cover. For sure, they probably got drones or something. We want to make it more difficult for them to track us. Let's continue to move it and see if we can lose overhead. How far you move is going to be entirely dependent on your terrain. Here in a winter environment, up in the mountains, longer. So miles. Me and Sawyer have been hauling, hopping through valleys until I'm pretty exhausted. I'm starting to sweat, which is not good in a winter environment. We'll talk about that. So we need to get a little hide site to get situated. So I'm looking for my initial hide site. There's going to be something that's low to the ground. Something that blends with the terrain below the line of sight. I want to make sure that my sound and any type of shine that I have is not going to be showing or present. So for sound, the further we have hills and trees between us and whoever's pursuing us, you can make that better. So let's get into our initial hide site. So in my initial hide site, we're now in phase two of our evasion. That's going to be our initial hide site. I have a good amount of cover from stuff around me. A lot of high cover above me for drones. This isn't my best site to hide in, but I need to find something, find something that's going to suit your purposes because we're just going to be getting ourselves situated before we continue moving. So the first thing that we need to take stock of is understand that we have priorities. We have needs as a survivor, as an evader, that we need to make sure that we're taking care of. Depending on your environment, those needs are going to change. The first thing we need to think about is of course going to be our health. We need to make sure that we're healthy and that comprises a lot of stuff. We'll be talking about that as we go. We need to think about sustenance, food and water. We'll be talking about that. Of course, personal protection that comes down to both your clothing, any type of shelters. Then we have travel, which we're doing right now, slash evasion. And finally, we're going to have communication. So the first thing I want to think about as a survivor in this environment, I just evaded, I'm probably pretty good on water and food, but comms are going to be the first thing. This big old antenna right here, awesome for communicating with my teammates. Awesome communicating with, you know, all your paramilitary buddies or your military buddies, depending on what the fight is. But evading and being against a first world enemy, we're going to want to kill any type of signal that we have that we can put out that could possibly zero us. Because there are incredible pieces of technology that really don't need much to track you. First thing I'm going to do is I'm going to turn off my radio. I'm also going to disconnect the battery. If I have a cell phone, don't. Make sure that cell phone's either in a Faraday bag or that it's off and battery's out. You just want to make sure you're not emitting any type of energy that can be tracked. So we have that taken care of. And one thing that we also need to think about is we should have some type of plan with the base that we're working with. So whoever my home base is, maybe it's my wife, maybe it's your parents that you need to have comms with. If you're in a situation like this, you should have a comms window. That means at like, let's say the 39th minute of every hour, that's when you both are going to have your comms on, check in with each other. Even if you're in crypto, it can still be broken, but it keeps your transmission short and to the point. And it's also a way of ensuring that you are talking to the right person by having them on that channel at that time, as well as some type of code word or some type of phrase that you have cooked up. So we have communication taken care of. Beside that, obviously I have my buddy Sawyer with me. He's also evading with me. So these are a couple of things to think about. Now let's go into health. I just evaded. I was just in a gunfight. We're running, we're eating crap, running down this mountain. So I want to do a quick blood sweep to make sure that I wasn't hit. With the adrenaline going, you might not always know. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to go ahead and check for blood by wiping down, check under my armpits, check under your kit, check, check, check, check, check your buddy as well. He's going to check himself. Just make sure that when you're with your friend, that you're keeping an eye on them. If you see a bunch of blood on him, let him know. Another thing that we really need to think about is going to be our personal protection. So with that is going to be clothing. Clothing is a big one that I'm going to harp on quite a bit because a lot of people don't know how to dress for the cold. Essentially, at minimum, you're typically doing two to three layers. So your most innermost layer is typically some type of insulating layer. Some type of merino wool top is what I typically recommend. This one's from Norarm. Any of the Nordic countries or even hunting, backcountry hunting places have great underlayers. From there, if you need it, you can have a warming layer, that warming layer being much warmer. So like, for example, I was in the Arctic Circle, my warming layer was a lot puffier, a lot more warmth compared to what I need right here where, you know, it's just getting close to zero as opposed to negative 80 where it was down there. Finally, above your warming layer, you'd have some type of weather layer that's going to protect you from water, from wind. That's a layer you're pretty much always going to have on. In addition to that, in these types of environments, it's a good thing to have over whites. These are white camouflage, whether it be pants or tops, that you can wear, that you can quickly throw on over your equipment that you have. They're typically worn very loose. You don't look super cool on them, but you guess what? Snow camo is a Sawyer snow camo vibe. It's a vibe. It's a vibe. Understand that you should have those things. You should be able to add camouflage to your rifle. You should try to keep everything as non-shiny, non-reflective. This is also a chance to take a look at that. So while I'm in this initial hide site, I'm just making sure that I'm not freezing to death. And especially if you're starting to sweat, you need to layer down. The best way to think about it is if you're getting going in a cold environment. I mean, sometimes I even layer down to like a t-shirt when I was going through this because you're just hauling ass so, so hard. So understand that you might need to drop a lot of those layers while still keeping that camouflage because the standard for evasion is always going to be any showing skin should be camouflaged. So obviously right here, I have a lot of face showing. There's a couple of ways around that. You can have like a face covering. So like any of your just run of the mill hunting wraps will work great. They're cheap. They're actually pretty great. So you can just put that up and that could really camouflage a lot of your face. Or we can do a little bit of camo on our face. We'll do a little bit of camo right here and then we'll get going. Okay. So I have my camo compact right here. Put on a little bit of makeup. I understand this will make me very popular. So a lot of people when they get into the snow are really tempted to go all white. But the fact of the matter is, is all white is really only good for like the tundra where literally everything is snow covered and that's a whole nother ballgame. Right here where we are typically in a forest or mountain, you're typically going to have quite a bit of trees, rocks, not everything is all white. So don't come out in your camo like in a Bonneville snowman, like white plate carrier, white, you know, pack pack, white top, white everything, because that's just not how nature looks. Break yourself up. Typically what the Marine Corps does and many other militaries is they'll do white snow bottoms with a green or a multicam top because that kind of matches the natural kind of, you know, trees that you have around you. You kind of tend to blend in a lot better. There are times and places to have just a white top, but it's certainly not always, even though the white top looks super cool. Sometimes we need to go for what's effective rather than what's cool. Now in this type of environment, trees, I typically do these nice diagonal slashes going across my face. It's making sure to cover everything up that I can and this is going to work pretty well. I'm not going to put really much, if at all, white on me because honestly it's not necessary. Now because we are at our initial height site, I'm not going to go too crazy spending too much time because really I need to keep moving and keep myself getting away from these people. So I'm going to get good enough going and then that's the beauty of having the face mask. It allows you to camouflage up a lot easier. Now being out in the mountains evading, you're going to be losing water fast. Last thing we want to do is sweat. Try to keep that sweat to a minimum. Why, you know, what is it? Why survive when you can thrive? So with your water, water's going to freeze easily, especially under zero degrees Fahrenheit. So like when I was in the Arctic, man, everything freaking froze. So typically we have these like on a lanyard around our neck right up against our inner layer to keep it warm. You also put it in your innermost layer on your leg against your thigh to keep it warm. That's usually where I keep mine. It's not terribly cold out here. It's approaching zero, but really ain't that bad. The greatest thing about this is you can of course drink your water and in addition to that, oh, I just drank my water. I can instantly replace it with this wild trick. Government doesn't want you to know this, but the water is free. I have a hundred free gallons of water from the Arctic. So make sure that you're getting your free water. This is going to allow you to continue to do it as you move. So as you travel to scoop up some snow or ice, put it in there. Ice is typically best. Mind you, if you're near a coastal environment, that deep blue ice is the fresher water. That whitish ice near the, right on the coast, that's frozen. That's saltier. Just as a quick note. So with all that being said, we've done all we can do at the initial site. In fact, we took way too long. Let's get into phase three, evasion movement. We're getting into our evasion movement. Now you want to move like you're hunting. Think about the most quiet hunter. Think about like a leopard going to the jungle. Move like a sexy leopard. So go to go to a first point. What I'm doing right here is I'm stop, look, listening, and smelling. Looking around. I'm listening for any footsteps, any absence of bird noises. Okay. I don't hear anything. From cover and concealment to cover and concealment. Every time I move, I'm just taking short little jumps, maybe 10 meters or so, stomping, and I can look around and see what I see. So there's going to be lots of animal tracks. And in addition to that, there's going to be human tracks. So I can see some human tracks here. They'll look a little bit older, a little bit sun faded. This is likely before we pass through the tracking us, but that's the great. And the bad thing about the snow, your footprints, not a whole lot you can do about them. Snow shoots do help, but if you can move an inclement weather, such as snow or rain, that's going to help erase your footprints. Or there's a couple other techniques we'll talk about as we go. Let's continue. Now look at these footprints. Now that we're close, those are simply deer. Wonderful. So right up here, you see some plants. That's actually really good. That can help us conceal our footprint. I'll show you how. If I have these wet, springy bushes right here that aren't going to break when I step on them and they're able to bear some of my weight, that's going to help obscure my footsteps. Any type of bushes are actually going to be good to step on. So long as you know, they're not going to break and have that nice white showing from their stem. So let's I can make it a little bit more difficult for them to track me, especially if there's a large collection of bushes, because how a tracker is going to work, a trained military tracker is not going to precisely follow your trail. The reason for that is they don't want to get counter-ambushed. What they'll do is they'll typically have a line moving, especially if they have more than one, they're going to be going down your trail and tracking it slowly, making sure they're watching for the direction, making sure they're looking for false trails. Snowshoes makes it a little bit more difficult because your imprints aren't as deep. And on top of that, to be honest, in the snow, you just need snowshoes. Otherwise, you're post holding up to your hips and you're just dying. So make sure you have snowshoes on your kid. Now, by stepping on those, you can make it more difficult because once they lose your trail, so say a walk through a big old thicket of bushes, they're going to have to stop there and then do concentric circles out from there until they re-pick up my trail and then they can follow it. So it's just delaying them, making them mad, making it more difficult. And by taking difficult trails, that makes it even better. The crappier the terrain, the better. The more I can make my cameraman Sawyer suffer, the more I'm going to make him suffer. Let's continue. You ready, buddy? Oh yeah, let's do it. Now, you can see right here, we have this nice tree well. So what a tree well is, is as snow builds up right under the branches, it creates a little pocket, a little opening. They are great little initial hide sites. They're also places that people will typically look for. But for a first hide site after we travel for a couple miles, that is not bad for a hide site. Now, when we're coming to these, the thing you're going to notice is if you look down, you're creating a big old trail. So typically what we want to do is we want to jayhook into these areas. So we'll typically go about 100 meters off. We'll make a big jay around and loop back to it. That way, as we're in there, if anybody is following our trail, we're going to see them following our trail. We can either counter ambush or we can evade from that area once they've passed our location. By the time we get into this hide site, you are likely freaking smoked. I'm sure I feel it. So are you feel it? Oh, I feel it. Yeah. The winter is a brutal condition to live in, but what's even more difficult for a survivor, for evader, is keeping yourself. Not only are you fighting and evading from enemy, but you're also fighting the elements. So let's talk about what we're going to do to keep ourselves alive right here. So we're in our hide site right here. We're drinking water and we're figuring out what we're doing next. A big question that I receive a lot is how do I know what direction to move? And that's actually a very good question because it's not as straightforward as you think. Obviously you'd say towards safety, right? And in a military sense, it's quite easy. Where am I moving? I'm moving towards friendly forces. I'm moving towards the United States. That's an easy, but if we're in a complete breakdown of society, it might be that the only safe area might be your settlement, your home, and that might make it more difficult because you might be attracting a lot more people to that area where they're not able to properly defend themselves. So in these situations, I'd like you to also think about creating false directions in which you're heading. Obviously I know in our case, if we head south, I hit back to my homestead, to my settlement where all my friends and family live and can protect me. But there certainly isn't 250 of them. It's a smaller settlement. So what I'm going to want to do is I'm going to want to cut different directions. I want to make sure that I completely lose my attackers, my pursuers before I head back home. And you need to do this because you don't want to get everybody killed at your house. And also you'd probably feel really terrible if that happened. So make sure that you completely lose them before you get back to your house, unless you're at a point where you can retreat to friendly forces, where they're strong enough to be able to fight who you're possibly bringing directly to them. There's a lot more than just heading straight for home. Now, another issue you're going to run into is thermal. The fact of the matter is, is thermal is winter's thermals game because everything is super cold, even the trees. And on top of that, you're super warm. In fact, you're probably warmer because you're hiking up a hill. You're going to die to somebody with thermal. If you don't have thermal, as you can see on this particular rifle, we have a thermal clip on in front just because it's so effective. And we'll show some clips of it right here. But you need to be very aware of thermal. But here's the biggest thing about thermal. Everyone thinks it's some magic wand they can see through x-ray vision through everything. But thermal is just like an eyeball. If the eyeball can't see you, thermal can't see you. So long as you're putting time, distance, terrain, micro-terrain, cover, and concealment between you and that thermal eyeball, then it's not going to be effective in detecting you. So make sure that you're thinking about that. That's why we're choosing thick cover, thick forest in order to travel in. To one, protect us from above. Just always assume you're being pursued by some type of drone. As well as to protect us from eyes on the ground if there are thermals. So that's how we mitigate that threat. We've been in this hide site for a little bit. We're feeling pretty good. This isn't the best hide site. I want to continue down. And also I want to put more time, distance, terrain. I want to start getting further away. I haven't detected them or seen them. And that is a good point. If we do see them, if we're re-seen, we're basically restarting everything. We're going right into initial movement, into that initial hide site. Again, we're hauling for a mile, two miles, three miles, just until you can't. That's why, as I always say, if you're not fit, you're going to die. Right now, we are still pretty healthy, hydrated, motivated, ready. So let's continue moving. Now, in this case, we're going to include Sawyer in this. So we're going to do what's called high threat evasion movement. So these phases start blending together a little bit. Understand that at this point, we're going from evasion movement to hide site, to evasion movement, to hide site, until we get to safety. So this high threat evasion movement is assuming that we're being watched. And we're always going to assume that until we have good proof that we've lost them. How do you know when you lost them? That is harder to say. And it's going to be dependent on your environment. Out here, I'm going to know once I see a absence of vehicles, foot patrols, and any lack of information. But I'm still honestly just going to assume it until I'm in a urban environment where I can completely lose my pursuers. Should always have a nice little change. Be ready to ditch your gear. Don't be too attached to your rifle. It might get a little crazy. So high threat evasion movement. We have Sawyer right here. He's very tall. Okay. We have me, not as tall as Sawyer. Sawyer, how tall are you? I'm like 6'2". We have me and Sawyer. Here's our first point of concealment. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to move real stealthy-like to my point of concealment. At that point, I'm going to look back at Sawyer. Sawyer's not moved. He's completely still. When I'm looking at Sawyer, he's going to be stopped looking, listening, and smelling that entire time. When I've stopped, we're going to wait until we have a complete silence. I'm going to look at him. I'm going to give him a thumbs up right in front of my face. If he can't see me because I'm nice and camouflaged, kind of wiggle it around because he might be like, wiggle it around so you'd see him. That happened to me all the time when I was training this. Like you get a little too far. So don't go too far. We usually say about 15 paces. So each pace being your left foot. Give him that. He sees me and he's going to give me a thumbs up if he doesn't hear anything, if it's good to move. You move from the rear. Once I see Sawyer stand up and start to move is when I'll move to my next point. So you kind of slinky it going. Now understand that as Sawyer's moving, he's going to my first point I went to, but he's also watching me to see where I am going. So let's go ahead and doing it. You did a good job. Thank you. That goes for the audience members as well. Good job. So nice and quiet. So you have these moments of movement and then you have these immediate lulls of silence. This is really good when you're being pursued because it is going to make it excruciatingly difficult for a pursuer to stop precisely when you stop unless they have eyes on you. If they have eyes on you, well then you have other problems and we'll get into those, such as a gunfight or initial evasion movement, depending on what you can do. So that's why that is such an effective movement style. You might be hearing it as the audience member saying, my God, that sounds so loud. You know what? No matter what you do, you're going to be loud in the woods. The longer you walk in the woods, the quieter you get. There is a huge difference between a guy who has lived in mountains and walked and somebody who has not. Um, when we take students out to train, we spend all of our times in the woods and they sound like lumber trucks, you know, just going through the forest and we feel a lot quieter. Of course, people who spend even longer, such as, uh, weird people who live in, uh, is it Appalachia, Appalachia? How do you say it? Uh, sure. Sure. Or, you know, the mountain Jews, whatever the Mormons, uh, super quiet out there. So again, this is why training is so important. The last thing you saw me do is we went point to point to point. And then I got to a point where I wanted everybody to rally up. In this case, it's just me and Sawyer. So once I got to that final point, rather than giving a thumbs up, I just did the rally up signal. So Sawyer, of course, give me a thumbs up and then he'd come to my position. Once the next person was there, we give them the rally up. They thumbs up once they're good until we had everybody. We had a group of 10. We do that all the way until the 10th person came in. We're rallying up for what reason? Maybe it's to discuss our next plan of action, uh, apply fresh camo or something along those lines. So we got to another point of good overhead cover, kind of a nice hide site right here. So one thing that I want to do is I want to improve my camouflage a little bit. So some things that we can do to improve camouflage is we have a lot of natural, um, branches, trees, bushes. These are things that you can use to your advantage. So there's always a little bit of, um, a danger in taking some vegetation because you do leave that nice little white mark there. So you have to kind of balance it out with what's acceptable in your case or what feels necessary. But adding a little bit of natural clamped matter to your ensemble is always going to be a good thing. Now I've seen guys go way too hard. Like I tell students this, I'd be like, Hey, like just add a little bit. You really don't need a lot. And then they'd come over looking like, you know, just a little bush. You don't want to also have so much on you that every time you move, a bunch of bushes move and everything. You want to be nice and stable and not really making too much movement on your head. You just want it to be nice and natural. So in this case, I'm just going to add just a few. Now, another strategy that you can do for this as well is you can also grab, um, pieces of tree from different areas. So if I want these needles from a different area to make sure that I'm not just like stripping one tree completely bare when I am doing this. So I'm just putting it through these loops on my booty. Pretty simple. Have a little bit of extra camouflage on me. I'm going to reapply some of my face paint. I'm going to keep going. You also add a little bit of extra plant material to your, uh, good old pack and stuff. Now, a thing to notice on all these is like needles often have a certain direction they travel. Certain needles will be a certain color, depending on which way. So make sure you have those oriented the right way. Like you don't have these like just sticking up because as you can see they're sticking down. So make them look natural. And this might look stupid, but at a distance, it's actually really effective. I was hunting some students down, just tracking them by their tracks, just to scare them and stuff. And, uh, they had all this stuff on and they were just in like, just OD green like this. When they laid down under like a next to a fallen log and like it was snowy and kind of foggy, dude, I could not find them. So finally I just like yelled at them. I'm like, all right, you freaking win. And I hope they're proud of themselves because that was some good evasion right there. So even against a trained tracker, which I am, I've been to multiple tracking courses. I still had a lot of difficulty just with a student who had been trained for three weeks. That's how effective these techniques are as stupid as they may seem. Now we're going to be moving here again. Now we've talked a lot about movement techniques, but what about tracking? How do I do some good old counter-tracking, especially in the snow? And isn't that a fun topic? So let's get into my favorite topic, counter-tracking. So we set up at our ambush location right inside these trees right here. Now what's going to be important is that from the trail, they can't see your prints coming up to them. Make sure they're obscured by trees, by that rise, so they can't see that trail that you took up where it's obvious. In addition to that, so if you look right down there Sawyer, you also want to make sure that depending on their search party and how they're doing it, that it's not so wide that that's going to hit where your ambush site is and that you're still within that flying wedge as they're going forward. That's not going to be a good day for you. We set up here, we're going to wait for them to pass, execute that ambush, because in the case of what we're dealing with, we know we're being pursued by a few, maybe one or two, and we know we can take them. I set up, hit them in an open area, get them, wipe them out to allow us to proceed to safety. Once you're in an evasion posture, militarily speaking, you're not allowed to conduct war. Obviously, once things go to hell, it doesn't really matter. You got to do what you got to do, but understand that trying to pursue objectives or pursue attrition against the enemy is not the best idea, because again, you're going to bring a lot of that heat onto you that you might have been dodging at this point. So that is the J-hook to an ambush. That J-hook can also be used like we talked about before to get into your shelter. Now, another thing that we can talk about is, what about your footprints? What can we do about that? Because I mentioned that there's something that could be done. So let's show you how that works. There's not a whole lot you can do to obscure your footsteps beyond time, distance, terrain. We talked about stepping on bushes, making obscuring trails, traveling in inclement weather. You can also sweep your tracks, but this depends on the quality of the snow. The more dusty it is, the fresher it is, the better that you can brush it. But using nature's broom, if it's hard and slightly baked by the sun, it ain't going to do too much. I've seen a lot of people say, hey, just tie this to the back of your pack and it's going to just completely obscure your footsteps. Possibly, not in all conditions, but in very early snow, it could definitely be a technique, but much better is brushing. You want to be a little bit more precise on what you're brushing. So specifically what it's typically used for is you create your trail, and then as you're going to your J-hook, to your initial hide site, to a hide site, that's when you're brushing that trail. So it kind of looks like your trail disappears, makes it easier for you to get away. So that is another technique when it comes to counter-tracking in the snow. We're doing some nice evading, coming out of our hide site. Let's continue evading. If I'm traveling on a slope like I'm traveling on right now, it's a natural human tendency to want to go downhill as you travel. So one way to ameliorate that issue is you're going to step on the uphill portion of a tree. So here is our slope right here, and I'm stepping on the upward part of that slope of the tree I'm traveling on. That's going to keep you from getting sucked down because as much as possible, when possible, I want to travel what's called the military crest. So that is one-third to two-thirds up a hill, up a mountain. That way if somebody comes from the bottom, comes from the top, it's easier to go over the top or down to the bottom in order to get away. You want to stay on that military crest. It is going to be dependent on your environment and where you're at. In the snow, I prefer to stick to the top one-third because it is travel harder to travel uphill. Especially in snowshoes and stuff, it's easier to go downhill. Let's continue. We're going to talk about a few tracking techniques here and the way that they are tracking you. So especially in the snow, leaving such great footprints, it does make it more difficult to navigate. So one thing that you really want to stick away from as much as possible is going to be branches and trees and stepping on these because on the bottom of your snowshoes, you typically have cleats of some type. Even if you don't, there's a greater chance that you're going to end up scraping off some of that wet bark and you're going to leave a very discernible trail. So if I step on this guy right here, very discernible. So I stepped on that, especially going over larger logs or anything like that. If I come over on this guy, one, it's easier to slip as you're stepping because they might be rotted, but also you're just gouging into that. And as a tracker, that is something that I'm looking for. See that nice white area, very freshly gouged, that is fresh. I know what to look for as a tracker. That's something that's going to catch my eye beyond the prints that we're taking. This lets me know I'm on the right trail or how fresh your tracks are because if we're in an area where it hasn't snowed for a while, but we have snow sticking to the ground, tracks can be very deceiving. So that is a way for me as a tracker to tell. This also translates to branches on trees. Now you're going to have a lot of kit on if you're conducting war of any type and it's easy to catch branches and to snap them. So if I snap this guy right here, we'll break it off so you can take a good look. Again, when it's freshly broken off, you see how white that is? So that's going to be obviously a fresh break. Now let's take a look at another part of the branch that's broken that's older. So see this guy right here that practically fell off. This one is all gray. It's aged, it's weathered, it's partially rotted. So seeing that nice white area on a tree, on a broken branch or something is a good indicator that human or possibly an animal came through. But in any case, if I'm on the trail of somebody and I see those, those are all good indicators that people have been there. Obviously trash and smoke is a big one. So that's going to bring us to our next topic, fire. Fires, evasion, don't make them, you're going to die. Now, if you absolutely have to make them, make them close to the base of trees or use it to cut a hole. Essentially, you're going to dig down, dig under the ground, dig back up, build a fire so that the top of the flame is below the level of the ground and it will create less smoke, so it'll be quite efficient. But in any case, I don't recommend building a fire. If you really need to get warm, you can carry an emergency sternocan, you can light it, hover over it, warm your hands. It makes a problem for thermal though. Any type of fire is visible from thermal, but especially night vision. You light a ladder, you can see that thing for over a mile. We've done these tests before in the military. So just fire, stay away. You're going to be cold. Make sure that you keep your warming stuff in there. And at night, when you have to sleep, have those really puffy, big things, whether it be sleeping systems or static jackets. Jackets that are made for static, sitting in place, and observing areas. Okay, all that being said, let's continue talking about counter tracking. So right here, if I had my buddy, I'm looking back to him, giving a thumbs up. As soon as I get that, I'm going to continue to move as soon as he moves. Right here, we can see a lot of deer tracks, deer droppings, all of that. You can sometimes, depending on the amount of animals that you're running into, partially conceal your tracks with animal tracks. Not only is it the best option, but it's a option. But there's another problem with that. If you see converging animal tracks, it means one thing typically, they're going to water. So any type of water, we're going to consider a linear danger area. That is an area where human beings are going to be. If we can stay away from water, let's stay away from water as much as possible. Obviously, you have to get water, but luckily with all the snow on the ground, it's really not as big of a concern. You should be filling up your water as you go. Okay, patrol coming. Get down. Whether it be a vehicle, whether it be people, if you hear it, if it's nearby, see saw movement, get prone, try to get in an area of concealment, but stop moving. The eye is drawn to movement. So I was in a nice exercise with the military. I was getting hunted by DA and border patrol, and they stopped within five meters of my position. So they drove right up on it, thought I was somewhere near there, hopped out. So I immediately dropped down in a, in some a rush. And I had to lay there for a couple hours as they searched the area. Now there's a big old pile of bear shit right next to me, and there are flies all over it. So the flies were going from the bear shit onto my face, back onto the bear shit, into my nose, back to the bear shit. It was really gross. I was getting eaten up by ants. But the fact of the matter was, is I could not move. If I moved, I would have been caught. Obviously it's just an exercise, but you got to take this stuff seriously, and you got to train to it, because there could be a situation where that's real life, what's going to keep you from dying. Getting captured is never a good thing. You never know what things are going to be like, if they're actually going to follow prisoner of war rules, or whether they're going to consider you a terrorist and just, you know, I don't know, went around to the back of the head Russian style. So we're going to not move, not make any sound. We're going to lay here. We get a little frost snip. Oh well. Got a little frostbite. Oh well, we'll deal with it later. Once the patrol has passed, I typically like to wait an extra 30 minutes, or longer depending. And I'm not going to initial move, because they could be nearby. I'm going to go immediately to high threat movement. And very slowly, quietly, away from the direction that they went. So they went off that way. So I am going to F off this way. Probably the most terrifying sound you can hear, is this one. That is a bad day right there. So dogs are extremely good at tracking human beings. We talked previously about evading dogs, and there are techniques, but the best technique that you can use for evading dogs, is to defeat the handler. It's what we always said. So by defeating the handler, what I mean, is you need to make the handler either lose faith in his dog's ability to track, and or just have a really, really bad time tracking you. So a couple ways that we can do that, is we can travel through really thick, very crappy vegetation. So see this vegetation right here? This is something I would travel through for at least 500 meters, to make his life a living hell. In addition to that, we can also make it more difficult for the handler to completely trust his dog. How we're going to do that, is by leaving scent trails in different directions, and by breaking our scent trails in various means. I'll show you how that looks. So if I hit an area where I'm not going to leave tracks, so say I get through these thick, this thicket right here. This is already disturbed from animals. What I'm going to do, is I'm going to do big circles, a couple of them. I'm even going to figure eight on different stuff. The dog's going to track that scent, so when he gets to this area, the dog's going to start figure eighting around that area. I'm going to continue to do weird evasive movements like this, that are nonsensical, in order to make the handler lose faith in his dog. Let's continue. Now, a classic one is going to be doubling back. So all I'm going to do when I double back, is I have my footprints, and this works really well with snowshoes. And all I'm going to do, is go backwards, back all my steps, to create a false trail that I was taking, and double back to a different area. So what's going to happen, is the dog's going to hit a converging trail, and your converging trail should be going off somewhere where it's harder to track your steps. That way the dog is confused, and is going to go for the stronger scent, which is the more time I spent on that double back trail. So those are a couple methods. Previously I'd know people have put cayenne pepper down, they put down hot sauces, or various things to **** with the nose. That's not something that I specifically recommend, simply because there's probably going to be more than one dog. If there is one dog, it can possibly work. It's just not the best thing you can do, and it also is a clear evidence of presence that you were there, that you laid it down. So they're going to put more guys on the trail of you. So not recommended. Now another question is going to be, when is the best time to travel? So there's going to be a lot of factors here, but generally what we like to say is dawn and dusk. Night can work, if you have night vision. If you do not, not specifically recommended, because they're going to be hunted. When it comes to sleep, there's always a question of like, when do I sleep? Well the answer is, you're probably not going to sleep too much, but there will come a time when you do need to sleep. As a lone survivor, this is difficult, because well, you can be found when you're sleeping. You might snore, you might make noise. These are all things to think about, and this is why choosing a hide site is so important. You want to make sure to get that hide site that is as far away as possible, and there are some ways to beat that up, which we'll talk about in just a moment here. But before we do do that, if you have more than one person, what you can do are watches. So essentially, everyone will take a watch during the night. So no one's going to sleep completely through the night. Usually two to three hour watches, or maybe even four, if you only have two people. And you take turns sleeping while the other stays awake. My best recommendation when it comes to that, from my experience, would be you want to be as uncomfortable as possible while you're on watch, because if you get into a comfortable position, you're going to fall asleep, and you're going to put you and your buddy at risk, and you don't want to do that. So put yourself in an uncomfortable position, and you're going to be halted. You're going to be looking. You're going to be listening. You're going to be smelling. You're going to be watching with any type of observation device, if you do have it, as much as possible. Beyond that, there are a couple ways that you can make your shelter a little bit bigger, specifically in counter-thermal technology. So let's go ahead. Let's look at a hide site, and how that would look, and then let's finish up, guys. All right, guys. A couple notes to make here. First off, with your natural vegetation for camouflage, understand that camouflage, excuse me, vegetation dies once you pull off a tree. So make sure that you're updating it constantly. That way, you're not just a traveling dead bush, and you don't stick out. That you stick out to everybody, because there's probably a whole lot of reasons. But just make sure you're updating that as you go. That's going to be good soldiering right there. So another question is hands. How do we keep the hands warm? How do we keep ourselves from getting frostbite? I've gotten frostnip on like every single extremity that I have, and it sucks. First off, when you're working, that keeps your hands pretty warm, but you do want something that's going to keep the water off. Honestly, hunting and skiing gloves do great. So like right here, we just have like some basic skiing gloves with liners that are inside them, and they work amazing at keeping you pretty dang warm, and they're pretty dexterous. So something like this is great. A lot of people are big fans of hand warmers. I'm not, simply because a hand warmer is an expendable item. I want stuff that just always works. So whether you use gloves, but if you're in a colder environment, then you're going to need something a little bit better. So when we get below zero is when you get into mitten territory. So with a mitten, you're going to have an inner warming glove, as well as a insulating glove. So we have just some surplus Swedish mittens right here. They also have that trigger finger, so you can shoot when you have them on. And then you do any type of liner, whether it be wool, some type of synthetic waterproof. I know the steel gloves are pretty good. Any type of hunting glove works really well, or you can just do the military surplus wool gloves. That's what I used when I was up in Alaska, and in addition to Mukilux, giant old snow mittens. But the point is, have both, and have what's going to work for you. These will keep your hands warmer, simply because your fingers are together, and they're able to keep that heat trapped against your hand a little bit better. So choose wisely. Another thing is going to be socks. Your socks are just going to get wet. Even in the driest climate on earth, which is, you know, the Arctic Circle, you still get wet because snow gets in no matter what you do, and your body warms it up, and then it freezes against you. So you'll have to change your socks and change them often. So when you do change your socks, those wet socks, once you take them off, all you're going to do with them to dry them off is one of two things. If you're active and moving, take them and hook them inside of your belt. Make sure they're nice and secure in there. You don't want them falling out. And the part that is against your body is going to dry. Once that has dried, you're going to swap them, flip them around with that wet site, and you're going to put that into your pants, and then you're going to continue to move until they are dry, and then you can put those back in your pack. So make sure that you're taking care of yourself. That's going to be very important. And then the other thing is, of course, going to be our shelters. So if we find something great like this, it's nice, low to the ground, it's obviously just a part of a fallen tree right here, we can actually camouflage that up a little bit better and give ourself a little bit better of a chance. Let's get into that. So when we get to our hide site, the thing we want to think about is how can we make it a little bit better? You can do this with natural vegetation. Just make sure you're not taking it from the same area. Again, you don't want a bunch of stripped trees and one giant bough bed out there. But another thing that we can do is we can use manufactured goods. Just do a little bit of preparation. You should have this on you anyhow. And this is just a basic thermal tarp. This is made by Ralph. Full disclosure, they did send this to me. That being said, I mean, also, point is we like him. He's awesome. And they make some really cool camo. But what's cool about this is it does a really good job of defeating thermal. So in addition to that, it's also a great camouflage. So if we're able to add this to our nice little shelter here, just by hanging it off branches and that type of stuff, we can vastly improve an open area that we have. What's great about this is this is also a multi-use item, because in addition to that, we can also use this for an observation point if we're trying to get information on the enemy, if we're trying to do any type of reconnaissance or anything like that. So when this is in front of me, it's going to do a very good job of obscuring my position and especially obscuring me from thermal. So improve your shelter. Use what you have. Ralph also comes in different camouflages. There are other companies that make these as well. These are just what we typically recommend. So this isn't a gear kit breakdown video. At the same time, there are pieces of kit that you do need. Snow goggles, something to protect your eyes is important. So when the snow blindness hits you, it's going to suck. Sun's going to hit the bright snow, reflect right back your eyes. It will eventually sunburn your eyes and you'll be unable to see. It's not a good way to evade. So I understand that goggles are reflective. There's different covers that you can put on them that reduce your visibility a little bit, but kill reflection. That is always an option. But these are just a little, I think these are the Snow Hawks. These work pretty good. Just basically just snow goggles. In fact, before we got these out, we were just using Oakley snow goggles. So just make sure you have something because snow blindness really sucks. If you have nothing, you can take some tree bark and cut little slits into it and you can tie a little piece of 550 around your head and it will prevent snow blindness. It looks crazy. You look like some type of villain, but it works. Okay. There's a few more considerations that we need to talk about. So we talked a bit about footwear, but in general, what I recommend is something that's treatable, like not like a Gore-Tex, but what we have right here, I was issued these Kenetrex Mountain Hunters, whatever the heck you call them. And it's a $500 boot. It is very expensive. However, they have lasted me well over 10 years of pretty hard use, whether it be from this type of environment all the way up to the Arctic. So this is something that I recommend. Now, with that being said, snowshoes are an absolute necessity and stuff like this, because otherwise you're going to end up post-hulling and I'll do it for you guys. You can see how much I suffer. You're going to end up burning a lot more calories post-hulling because at times you're just going to sink up to your knees or even worse up to your hips. It wasn't too bad right here, but it can get pretty bad. We were in an area earlier today and I post-hulled way up almost to my chest. So having snowshoes is an absolute necessity in these types of environments. With your boots, make sure that you treat them with snowseal or some type of wax. For snowseal, I use a heat gun. I know they say not to, but it's worked great for me. And then if you don't have some type of snow pants, like you just have Kryzon or something, wear gaiters. That's always a necessity. These snow pants, it's not really a big deal. And then make sure your boots are high. You will see even our camera guy, he also is wearing snowshoes and his boots are a little low. They're a little low. We're getting wet in there. But the point is there's a lot of weird little considerations when it comes to the Arctic. And in general, the best things I can tell you is get good boots that you can treat. Remember that cotton kills. Don't wear cotton, stick to merino wools and a good weather layer and snowshoes. And you're going to be able to most of these environments. For any of my Swedes, my Finns out there, I would love to hear some of your information. We worked with you guys quite a bit when it came to the Arctic and wintry conditions. So again, this video is not going to feel to barely even scratch the surface. I understand that I only have a certain amount of time to talk to you guys before your attention wanes. So we're going to cut this video to make sure that we're not losing your attention, but understand we have far more videos coming on these exact topics, going to far more advanced techniques. These are the intros to different environments. Hope you guys use this as a launching point to learn more. Most of the stuff that we did as survival instructors in the military was based off the Air Force 64-4, which is called like the Survival Bible. Basically, it's the Air Force Survival Guide. You can buy it online. It's free. The government doesn't, well, I'm sure you get a PDF of it. But point is, buy that. I read that like almost every night. I'm such a nerd. Take it to heart. It's all extremely good information. It's still all extremely relevant information. The pictures are a little dated, but it is a wonderful guide to reference when it comes to survival. So guys, remember to take this seriously. We do have fun when we're doing this, but understand that these topics are deadly serious. And I hope that you take this information and that God help that you ever have to use it. But I hope if you do, that I was a good enough instructor to get you guys to a point where you're able to get away and get back to your families because that's the thing that matters to me most. So with all that being said, guys, make sure that you train. Make sure you do this with your buddies. Make sure that you have fun. Make sure you enjoy life. And don't take yourself too seriously all the time. That's the dad advice for today. Take care, guys.