Otto, as I said before- the lack of tracks or tracking information never made good sense to me.
As I recall, around NR there was very little, if any, snow when Ben
went missing. It didn't snow any significant amount for several
days after he went missing. even without snow, horses leave
indentations in the soil and leaf matter. Heck I track my horses'
whereabout in my pastures all the time and I have ultra soft
sandy soil. Where the soil is firmer packed, they leave distinct
hoofprints and one can even tell which horse went where by
the hoofprints- horses have distinctly different hooves, size wise
and the depth of the prints are different also due to size and weight
of the horse.
Too bad the searchers didn't bring in a real tracker. KR could have been an asset if he is indeed a 'professional' tracker.
I know the good people on SAR teams try their best but they
are all volunteers and may not have skills for tracking.
I'm in complete agreement with you. Summer or Winter, it's easy to see animal trails if you know what to look for. Every animal has a distinct print, so I'm confused that searchers were confused because other animals are in the area. A domestic horse is not going to join wild horses, so even if there are wild horse prints, at most the prints will cross Ben's horse prints.
SAR is trained to do grid searches and spot things that don't belong, but that's not the same as tracking an animal. Perhaps searchers were looking for Ben rather than tracking the horse movements, although that doesn't make any sense since the horse tracks should lead directly to Ben if he was riding the horse.