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Mantracker star hunting down funds for Portage College
Canadian Mantracker star Terry Grant is helping Portage College hunt down funds to further the expansion plans at the Cold Lake campus.
Grant is a veteran of the Alberta Foothills Search and Rescue Team, a Chief Scout for Scout Canada and an expert in utilizing clues such as footprints and broken twigs to track humans.
His hunter-gatherer ability to seamlessly navigate through the wilderness and locate prey is to a legendary level.
On Sept. 23, the Alberta cowboy will be visiting Cold Lake to serve as the special guest at Portage Collage's second annual Building Futures Gala.
"Well it's always an honour to be asked to go to these events and to be able to help out and do my part is kind of cool," said Grant. "I try to make a living by traveling around and speaking and anytime i get a chance to do something for schools or education it's a little easier to make time for it."
Grant will be entertaining attendees with thrilling tales about his adventures in tracking.
"I've been a full-time cowboy my whole life, working on ranches up and down the foothills and all over Alberta and I've enjoyed tracking right from when I was a kid," said Grant.
According to Portage College communications supervisor Jaime Davies, Grant is the epitome of an outdoorsman. She encourages anyone who watched Grant's reality TV show Mantracker or is interested in the art of tracking to come out to the event.
"When he starred in the show Mantracker, he would use his skills to track people through the woods, through the mountains, across rivers and everything. It was excitement and adventure and it went back to the age of tracking that doesn't really exist anymore," said Davies. "So for anyone who watched the show, they should definitely come out to this event."
Grant became a Canadian reality TV show icon when he put his human tracking skills to use as the star of Mantracker from 2004 to 2010.
Each episode followed Grant and a local guide as they used professional tracking skills to locate two individuals in the remote Canadian or American wilderness.
The pursued, referred to as "Prey", were given a 2km head start and had to elude capture while attempting to reach a finish line within 36 hours. The only items provided to them were a map with the location of the finish line and a compass for navigation.
The Prey would often go off-trail and travel through dense brush, over hills, over rocky ground and across rivers to reach the finish line and escape Grant, also known as the Mantracker.
The steely-eyed Grant and his sidekick traveled on horseback as they relied on Grant's tracking skills and a pair of binoculars to catch their human prey.
While Grant has retired from his Mantracker days, he remains passionate about the art of tracking.
He travels across Canada to teach tracking workshops to people of all ages.
"I'll get there the day before and with some help from a couple local people we'll drive around and find a suitable area and I'll set up a tracking course. The next day, I'll take all of the 12 to 15 people out and they have to follow me to where I went last night," said Grant. "It's a lot of fun and I don't just throw them to the wolves, I kind of tutor them every step of the way and teach them the search and rescue methods and the whole psychology of tracking which is all pretty cool."
According to Grant, the skills in tracking can also be applied to hunting.
"You can apply the tracking skills to hunting different animals or tracking people and stuff like that," said Grant.
When Grant visits Cold Lake for the Building Futures Gala in September, attendees will hear about Terry's wild adventures in tracking.
"I talk about how I went from cowboy to mantracker and then I'm going to open the floor to questions," said Grant.
Attendees will also enjoy cocktails, dinner, an auction and an autograph session with Grant.
The event will be taking place at the Lakeland Inn on Sept. 23.
Tickets are $100 for adults and $50 for youth. They are available at both the Cold Lake and Lac La Biche Portage College campuses.
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