LOOK FOR WHAT'S OUT OF PLACE.

Buddy Melges worked into his sailing lessons an experience he had partridge hunting, where his companion bagged a lot of birds.  How did he do it?  By looking for something that was out of place.

It helps to have knowledge of the place, to see something that looks out of place.  Consider the arrest of a man with a gun outside the fence at Trump National.  "Would-be Trump assassin exploited security hole that Secret Service has known about for years — and the pictures prove it."

Not quite.

The gunman who allegedly staked out former President Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course with an SKS rifle was able to exploit a security hole that the Secret Service has known about for years.

News photographers — including those hired by The Post — have had no problem repeatedly securing spots around the perimeter of the course to snap pictures of Trump playing golf or driving around in a golf cart.

They have even taken images — which require a clear line of sight to the 45th president — unnoticed through the bushes with telephoto lenses. Some have gotten as close as 75 yards — without so much as a sideways glance from the Secret Service.

Because the signature of a paparazzo is a familiar sight to a security man, and because the good photo spots are well known to security personnel, paparazzi, and the detained suspect alike, it's possible that the presence of a person in a spot photographers and security men alike know isn't a good photo location registered on the Secret Service agent's consciousness and he gave that location a closer look.  That the suspect stowed two backpacks on the fence might have changed the background enough to suggest a closer look, in this case not for a partridge, was in order.

Photographers typically announce themselves to the Secret Service so they are not mistaken for threats, but the source said agents are easy enough to evade.

Sources told the Washington Post that the Secret Service knew about the security risk, and tried to warn Trump about it — but he believed his golf clubs were safe.

Almost oops.

Note, though, that mobile phone data places the suspect outside that fence line from early Sunday morning.  That suggests an element of improvisation to his adventure.  Think of a deer hunter going to his tree stand and hoping a twelve-pointer will come down the path.  You don't know the hour.  In like manner, you don't know when the former president is going to play golf that day, but it's a good bet that if he's in Florida and it's a good day to play golf, he's going to play golf.