Two hundred and some years ago, a little girl living in a cottage near some marshland in Scotland was killed in her home. Her last name was Richardson. The investigating constable located footprints nearby and followed them. They led him to a few drops of blood and a bloody handprint. The constable interpreted this footwear impression evidence: determining they were boot prints; that there were numerous nails in the outsold; that they were made by a running man, and that the boots had recently been patched.

He made a rude plaster cast of the impressions. Later, at the victim's funeral, he compared that cast against the people who'd come to pay their respects. In this way he was able to identify the suspect and, with that done, pursue other evidence collection to use against him.

A little over a hundred years ago, Colonel Sir Baden-Powell wrote, "...we can read a great amount of information... from the ground at our feet. We can see by the absence or presence of tracks whether an enemy is about in the country we are in, and we can follow him up whether he is a large force or merely a patrol, and so find out how he is posted, and so on... with a little practice yon [sic] will be able to recognize the track of one man, or one horse, from another by the shape of feet, length of stride, etc." The good Colonel insisted that any scout had to have a talent for tracking, and be able to interpret what he'd found, else he wouldn't be much of a scout at all.

He compared their job to the police of the time. "Being able to track is of little use unless you can also read the meanings of the tracks. In tracking you find a lot of small signs, and then comes in the art of 'putting this and that together' and so getting information from them. This is the first step in detective work, and a detective's work is very much like that of a scout, who has to notice every little sign with regard to an enemy and then to read their meanings."

Twenty-nine years ago, detectives and constables of Koevoet in South-West Africa were deployed to Tsintsabis (after some headbutting with the local Army forces). There a grandmother and a young girl were shot and a younger boy's brains smashed out against the wheel of a tractor by PLAN insurgents. They examined bloodstains and spoor at a house at the house and reconstructed what had happened, including the presence of at least one man in Grasshopper brand hockey boots.