A search begins with a question: Where is the person?
Sometimes the answer brings the team to another question: What happened here?
A mounted searcher may encounter clothing, personal property, disturbed ground, a vehicle, or human remains. The moment a location appears potentially significant, the team’s priorities change. The search has produced a place that may need to be examined as a scene.
From the saddle, that requires restraint. A horse is large, and its hooves can alter ground that may matter to investigators. A rider who approaches for a better view may cross tracks, compress vegetation, or disturb the relationship between objects. Other searchers may follow the rider’s route without realizing why the team stopped.
The first useful actions are straightforward: stop at a safe distance, identify the location, note what is visible from where you are, and notify the appropriate search leadership or investigators. Follow the procedures established for that operation. Record your route into the area and the actions already taken.
There may be immediate safety or medical needs, and people on scene must address them. Those decisions and movements also become part of the record. Scene preservation begins with knowing what has already happened, not pretending the area was untouched.
I want our MFOS riders to distinguish between what they saw and what they inferred. “I observed a blue jacket beside the trail” tells the next person something concrete. “I found the missing person’s jacket” may be premature until the item is identified. The difference may sound insignificant, but it really does matter when others use that report to make decisions…especially someone like me whose job it is to reconstruct the whole thing.
The horse matters here too. Where did it travel? Where did it stop? Did it step into the area before anyone recognized its significance? Those details help investigators understand the condition in which the scene was discovered.
A mounted team can contribute to a death investigation by locating a significant place and giving investigators a reliable account of its arrival. Sometimes the most valuable thing the team does next is hold its position and keep others from unknowingly changing what remains. This is a core principle of my new Mounted Forensic Operations System.
Finding a scene is only the beginning. Protecting the opportunity to work it so we can understand it is part of the work too.
Series Note: This article is part of The Horse Knows Something, our fall 2026 blog series leading up to our inaugural NASAR Academy in part of Laura Pettler & Associates International Forensics Institute’s new Mounted Forensic Operations Program. The NASAR Academy will be held November 15-22, 2026 at Crossroads Ranch. Register now for our spring or fall 2027 NASAR SARTECH II + Wilderness First Aid academy today at LPAIFI.com.
