Man renowned as authority on wilderness survival
Tom Brown Jr., who was considered the country’s foremost authority on wilderness survival and who taught thousands of people how to track deer, fletch arrows, forage for food and generally thrive in the great outdoors, died Aug. 16 in Neptune, New Jersey. He was 74.
His son Coty confirmed the death, in a hospital. He said his father had recently been in failing health.
Although Brown’s trim, sturdy build and neatly coifed mustache were more reminiscent of media magnate Ted Turner than John Rambo, he was in every way the quintessential outdoorsman.
His preferred wilderness was the Pine Barrens, a vast, unpeopled expanse of sandy forest that stretches across the middle of New Jersey. He would disappear into the woods for weeks at a time, often with nothing but the clothes on his back, and emerge ruddy in health and even a few pounds heavier.
“If you have clothes or a knife, then you aren’t really surviving,” he told The Maine Times in 1998.
By way of income, Brown ran Tracker School, a series of weeklong courses in the intricacies of bare-bones wilderness living and what he referred to as “the wisdom of the track.”
There is nothing cozy about Tracker School. Students sleep in tents on the ground, eat around a campfire and use field latrines, in between classroom instruction and hours of what Brown called “dirt time,” which they spend bent to the earth, looking for traces of woodland creatures.
Tracker School proved immensely popular: Brown and his instructors welcomed hundreds of people a year, including middle school students, bored computer programmers and seasoned outdoor professionals from around the world.
Among Brown’s fans was film director William Friedkin, who hired him as a technical adviser for “The Hunted” (2003), about a Brown-like survival coach, played by Tommy Lee Jones, who comes out of retirement to track down a murderous former student, played by Benicio Del Toro.
Brown laid out his origin story in his first book, “The Tracker” (1978). When he was 7, he wrote, he befriended a boy named Ricky, whose grandfather Stalking Wolf was a Lipan Apache from New Mexico who had moved to New Jersey to be near his son. Over the next decade, Stalking Wolf taught the boys the ways of the forest.
“He taught me how to teach myself,” Brown wrote. “I have been using the tools he gave me ever since.”
In 1977, he helped police identify a man suspected of multiple sexual assaults, winning him national news attention and making him a go-to guy for search-and-rescue operations.
He wrote a total of 16 books on survival and tracking, selling about 2 million copies in total. He also put his name on a line of survival knives sold by knife-maker Tops.