New Training Hones Marines’ Visual Skills
(USA Today)…Jim Michaels, June 27, 2008, Pg. 10

Combat hunter program is ‘a great example of outside-the-box thinking to defeat an adaptive and wily enemy.’

Faced with an alarming increase in sniper attacks in Iraq, Marine commanders in late 2006 began looking for ways to turn the tables on an elusive enemy. Among the experts they consulted: a renowned African big game hunter and a former big city cop.

The result is the combat hunter program, an experiment in training Marines to fight insurgents by making the Marines as wily as the enemy they face. The training combines outdoor skills culled from hunting and tracking with the street smarts developed by police and Marines who grew up in cities.

"The motto we … try to instill in these guys is Marines are always the hunter, never the hunted," says Ivan Carter, the safari guide and hunter — born in Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe — who helped the Marines develop the program.