The RCMP rely on a profiling system when it comes to finding missing people. From The Siesta and the Midnight Sun: How Our Bodies Experience Time.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s search-and-rescue protocol is based on a profiling system. According to the statistics, a hunter will be found heading downhill 83 percent of the time; in contrast, a “despondent”—someone de­p­ressed after a marital breakup, for example—is likely to be sitting on a prominent outcrop, a high point of land where he or she can survey the scenery.

Children under three years old have no concept of being lost, and they may be in or under objects, perhaps asleep. Officers have to keep in mind that six-to-twelve-year-olds in the woods might be sulking and may not respond to their names being called—some younger kids have admitted they thought searchers were monsters.

And when a man is not found at the hunting cabin he told his wife he’d be at, one of the first RCMP processes undertaken is what’s called “the bastard search.” The man is often found at a motel or house with another woman.