Name: Tracking: Freedom to Hunt Style
Brand: Thinkific
Price: 195.0 USD
Availability: InStock

What you get when the system is right

More clarity. More reliability. More confidence.

When your tracking system is built on the principle that the dog is in charge of problem solving, everything changes. The dog owns the hunt—it’s up to them to figure things out, not you. Your job is to observe, read how your dog works through challenges, and stack new ones so they keep sharpening their skills. That’s how you build a dog that doesn’t just follow a track—they own it. Driven, resilient, and dependable, with the hunt and the find as the ultimate reward.

Build the game with the dog

Start with a proven approach that gets your dog invested in leading the hunt—so every session is driven by real motivation, not just routine.

Scent discrimination that works

Your dog learns to hunt for the right person, not just any person—building true reliability and real-world problem solving.

Handles contamination and variables

Teach your dog to work through distractions, cross-contamination, and unpredictable scenarios—skills that matter when it counts.

True independence

Your dog learns to solve the puzzle on their own, making smart decisions without micromanagement or constant handler input.

Real-world confidence

Build a dog that’s ready for anything—confident, adaptable, and dependable, even when neither of you knows where the track goes.

A system you can trust

Follow a clear, step-by-step roadmap that takes out the guesswork and gives you confidence every time you hit the trail.

Liesel Weapon & I
Take on US Army

We taught the Army how to try and beat a dog team—then we used the same tracking system you’ll learn in this course to hunt them down as the test. Helicopters, wild country, and one hell of a training day in Montana.

Watch Video From This Training Day

What changes with this type of system

Before Freedom to Hunt Style vs After Freedom to Hunt Style

Before Freedom to Hunt Style

You’ve done the footstep drills with food, micromanaged every move, and hoped for progress. But you get bored, your dog gets bored, and practical results never show up where it counts.

Tracks are all about food and control—no real hunt, just repetition
Sessions feel slow, repetitive, and directionless
The dog never truly leads; you’re stuck managing every step
Progress is fragile—add variables or distractions, and things fall apart

It’s all micromanagement, and nothing prepares you for real-world deployment.

After Freedom to Hunt Style

Now, you and your dog both know who’s in charge of the hunt. Your dog leads, you observe, and your real job is to stack challenges and stay out of the way. Only step in for obedience over obstacles or to reset when your dog truly loses the track.

Your dog hunts with motivation and clarity
You trust your dog to work, and know how to read when they’re in odor (or not)
Skills progress naturally—independence and problem-solving are real
Teamwork is built in: handler and dog working together, not against each other

Now, you get resilient, reliable results that hold up in the real world.

WHY LEARN FROM CHRIS WILLIAMS (WITH LIESEL WEAPON)

Real-world tracking, taught by people who actually do it—and filmed so you’ll actually get it.

I’ve spent nearly a decade immersed in tracking—studying, training, and teaching everyone from law enforcement and military teams to family dog owners, from Alaska to Arizona. I’m hired for seminars, teach at police academies, and have even shown the US Army how to evade and defeat dog teams. Liesel and I have worked in the field (and even dangled under helicopters). You’ll also see guest instructor Chad Miller—an experienced trainer whose practical expertise runs throughout the course.

This is my favorite dog training discipline, so I went all out: cinematic drone footage, graphic overlays, and real-world tracks you won’t see anywhere else. It’s the system I use and teach.

Common questions

Questions people ask before they start

These answers are here to remove guesswork so you can move forward with confidence

Is this for new handlers or only experienced trackers?+

Both. The course breaks down tracking and trailing from the ground up, so you’ll build real skills whether you’re just starting or have years on the trail. No ego, no gatekeeping—just clear, actionable training.

Do I need special equipment?+

Not necessarily—especially at the start. But as you get into this, you’ll want a solid harness designed for pulling and a long line. My favorite leash is a 30-foot rolled leather tracking leash. Start simple and upgrade as you go.

Do I need a particular breed?+

Not necessarily. Any dog with good drive, motivation, and a desire to sniff and hunt can do this work. Some breeds excel more than others, but I’ve taught everything from Boston Terriers and Malamutes to hounds, Malinois, and everything in between.

Is this just a bunch of drills, or is there a real system?+

This is a real, step-by-step system. You’ll learn how to build the game, layer in challenges, and actually teach your dog to track in the real world—not just run through the motions.

How do I access the course? Can I watch at my own pace?+

Yes. Once you enroll, you get instant access to all modules. Watch whenever you want, as many times as you want—no expiration, no pressure.
This is a discipline you could spend a lifetime mastering. Some concepts will click right away, others you might not even reach for years. Enjoy the journey, get out as much as you can, and become a student of your dog.

Don't take our word for it

★★★★★
Top Notch! This course is amazing! It packs a ton of information into bite-sized, easy-to-follow, and highly-entertaining segments. The course covers everything — from getting your dog comfortable with the right gear, to “jump start” exercises that will put your dog on a track from day one, to drills for refining double-blind searches and all the steps in between. The videography, production value, and graphics are fantastic — they really enhance the course content, especially the visuals showing how odor reacts to factors like wind and topography and how dogs behave when working through those variables. As the handler of a dog with other (non-tracking) scent detection experience, I also really appreciate that this course spends time on scent theory and related concepts. Those foundations are so valuable to understanding how and why the exercises in this course will build a motivated tracking dog, and I know that understanding will make me and my pup an even stronger team as our detection work expands into the tracking discipline.
Tucker Miles

★★★★★
I’m glad I snagged this, Chris and his team did a fantastic job putting this all together to create a radical course!! I’m pumped to start with my Mal! Happy hunting, awesome work WYP!
Alex Early

★★★★★
From Copenhagen and Chaos to Sport, SAR, and Scent-Sation...The year was 1990. The internet had just launched, Ice Ice Baby was polluting radio waves, and an eight-year-old with more confidence than coordination was about to learn his first real tracking lesson the hard way.The morning began at 2:30 a.m.—because that’s apparently when bad ideas and mountain lions wake up. I’d been handed off to a group of uncles who looked at me, looked at the snow, and thought, “Sure, let’s give the kid a dog. What’s the worst that could happen?”Enter Dinky—a little Walker × Blue Tick hound with the personality of a jackhammer and the impulse control of a grenade. Like me, Dinky was young, unproven, and overconfident. Nobody explained (or maybe I just didn’t listen) that when a lion dog hits a fresh track, you don’t lead—you hang on and hope you don’t lose your footing.So there I was, leash wrapped around my waist like a death belt, marching proudly down the road when Dinky locked onto scent. One heartbeat later I was face-first in the snow, being towed into the timber like a human plow. That’s when it hit me—literally and figuratively: you can’t micromanage a motivated dog. You can’t command instinct, control drive, or negotiate chaos. You can only learn to let go and trust it.Fast-forward a few decades and the lesson still holds. Nowadays I spend a lot of time training Search and Rescue (SAR) dogs and their handlers. I see it all the time—handlers overhelping, overtalking, overthinking. Not out of arrogance, but out of love and habit. SAR handlers pour their hearts into their dogs and build them from puppies, but too often they don’t get access to structured, progression-based training that teaches them how to let the dog lead. And that’s exactly what makes this course different.This course is the antidote to overhelping!It demands you check your ego at the tailgate and accept a fundamental truth: the dog leads, you follow. If you’re still convinced your dog needs your constant guidance, you’re not helping the dog—you’re just soothing your own ego. And “ego is the anesthesia that deadens the pain of stupidity.”The brilliance of this course lies in its structure. Each module is a carefully scaffolded progression designed to build independence, motivation, and drive. You’ll see dogs come out curious, optimistic, and fully engaged—dragging handlers into the scent picture with conviction. You’ll see them fail, recalibrate, and re-engage, each time stronger, more confident, more alive.And that’s the point!In behavioral neuroscience, struggle isn’t failure—it’s a catalyst for growth. When an expected reward doesn’t appear, dopamine dips, signaling the brain to adapt. When success finally follows that adjustment, dopamine rebounds even higher—engraving persistence into memory. This “Reward Prediction Error” (Schultz, 1997) isn’t just science jargon; it’s the biological blueprint of learning. In simple terms: struggle builds capability.Wolves figured this out long before we did. They don’t lecture pups on hunting technique—they let them chase, miss, recalibrate, and chase again. Each near-miss hardwires determination because it links effort with possibility.In modern dog training, we often destroy that process with good intentions—helping too much, correcting too soon, preventing struggle. We strip the learning out of learning.This course fixes that!Every exercise is designed to set up the dog for discovery, not dependency. The less you interfere, the faster your dog evolves.By the end, you won’t just understand how to set up effective training scenarios—you’ll finally grasp why your dog works the way it does. You’ll stop asking, “How can I help?” and start asking, “How can I help them struggle and learn?” And that shift changes everything.If you’re tired of dragging your dog through training like I was dragged through that snow by Dinky, this course is for you. It’s not about perfection; it’s about progression. It’s about trust.It’s about understanding that the real art of tracking begins when you stop trying to control it.So leave your ego in the truck, trust the process, and let the dog lead. Because when you finally do—you’ll see what real tracking looks like.
brandan lyons

Tracking: Freedom to Hunt Style

Build a Tracking Dog That’s Driven, Confident, and a Critical Thinker on the Hunt.

What does “tracking” mean here?

Tracking Like You’ve Never Seen It

Most people dread teaching tracking—because traditional methods are slow, boring, and often miss the point.

The real issue

It’s not about micromanaging—it’s about setting up the problem and letting your dog solve it.

What clarity creates

A clear progression you can follow, so your dog builds real-world tracking skill.

Build the Game

Scent Discrimination

Fresh Track Challenges

Proofing & Contamination

More clarity. More reliability. More confidence.

Build the game with the dog

Scent discrimination that works

Handles contamination and variables

True independence

Real-world confidence

A system you can trust

Liesel Weapon & I
Take on US Army

Before Freedom to Hunt Style vs After Freedom to Hunt Style

Before Freedom to Hunt Style

After Freedom to Hunt Style

Real-world tracking, taught by people who actually do it—and filmed so you’ll actually get it.

Questions people ask before they start

Don't take our word for it

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Tracking: Freedom to Hunt Style

Build a Tracking Dog That’s Driven, Confident, and a Critical Thinker on the Hunt.

What does “tracking” mean here?

Tracking Like You’ve Never Seen It

Most people dread teaching tracking—because traditional methods are slow, boring, and often miss the point.

The real issue

It’s not about micromanaging—it’s about setting up the problem and letting your dog solve it.

What clarity creates

A clear progression you can follow, so your dog builds real-world tracking skill.

Build the Game

Scent Discrimination

Fresh Track Challenges

Proofing & Contamination

More clarity. More reliability. More confidence.

Build the game with the dog

Scent discrimination that works

Handles contamination and variables

True independence

Real-world confidence

A system you can trust

Liesel Weapon & I Take on US Army

Before Freedom to Hunt Style vs After Freedom to Hunt Style

Before Freedom to Hunt Style

After Freedom to Hunt Style

Real-world tracking, taught by people who actually do it—and filmed so you’ll actually get it.

Questions people ask before they start

Don't take our word for it

Liesel Weapon & I
Take on US Army