Get on the Map
These new programs allow you to create a veritable
instruction manual to where you hunt.
By: Lionel AtwillIf you want to find your way home, work on your sense of direction. If you want to find deer, develop a sense of place.
A sense of direction is a genetic trait. Some people - and I'm not one of them - have a more developed internal compass than others. A sense of place, though, does not come naturally. It is cultivated over the years, and all of us acquire it to some degree. Most often we do so by hunting the same land year after year and remembering things about the area - tracks, trails, scrapes, rubs, droppings, sightings, wind, weather, and the like - that collectively tell a story.
The obsessive members of our clan augment this mental process by taking notes. I've met a couple of guides and one or two hunters who have compiled elaborate journals that are no less than instruction manuals to the country they hunt. I'm not the obsessive type - plus I can't read my own writing - so the journal technique has never been an option. What little sense of place I have I got the old way: through miles and years and fuzzy memories.
Of late, however, I have discovered a technology that makes journal-keeping pale. I have embraced it, and it has made me a better hunter. You might consider it, too.
Waypoints on Your Topo
This cutting-edge technique combines computer mapping software with a GPS that has computer downloading capability. I use a Garmin 12 GPS with a cable that connects to my computer's serial port and Maptech's Terrain Navigator software plus a Maptech CD-ROM containing all the topo maps of my home state of Vermont.
Whenever I go into the woods, I carry my GPS. When I find something of interest-a scrape, a rub, a bed, a trail, droppings, tracks, a sighting, any sign whatsoever-I enter the location in my GPS as a waypoint. I name that waypoint something that will trigger my memory when I get home. For example, I'm apt to call a big track "BGTRK." (If I cannot think of an appropriate moniker, I mark the position with the default waypoint number and attach a comment to that waypoint.)
At home, I download this data onto the topo map of the area. Along with the name of the waypoint and the location, my GPS records the date and time of entry (supplanted by my comment, if I made one). Maptech's Terrain Navigator allows me to enter additional comments about my discovery. I can list which way the track was headed, the size of the scrape, the sex of the animal spotted, and so forth.
These entries draw a picture of game movement, a connect-the-dots schematic of what may be going on. When superimposed on a map, which provides a "big picture" look at the land well beyond the boundaries of the country I've physically scouted, such information can answer those plaguing questions of why and where. And when you can answer those questions, you develop a sense of place.
For example, a game trail marked by a series of waypoints low on a ridge and running up its spine logically should tie in with a trail marked on top of the ridge. A bedding area just over the crest of the ridge (waypoint "BED") likewise should tie into the trail. Suddenly, a picutre of deer movement evolves: from bed to trail and down the ridge. Seeing these signs on a map is more revealing, more informative than the fuzzy facsimile of these events that forms in my brain.
Custom Plotting
Other map tools are useful to the hunter, too. If I want to intercept the trail running down that ridge, I can approach it from several directions. By drawing various routes on my computer map with a route tool, which assigns wayoints to that route, then downloading those waypoints to my GPS, I can slip into the woods in the dark and find that trail as if it were a four-lane highway. Moreover, for each route I can create an elevation profile that will indicate which way in is the easiest climb.
With an area tool, I can circumscribe the land I plan to hunt and obtain an exact measurement of acreage. It is all too easy to bite off to much country from a map reconaissance, but with an acreage figure in hand, I have a better idea of whether or not my eyes are bigger than my legs.
In forested, mountainous country, which can swallow a hunter on an overcast day, I can preplan on my computer a track that zigzags throught the woods, thoroughly covering ground but still maintaining my orientation. I then can download this track to my GPS, providing a "bread-crumb" trail to follow, a route that I know will let me cover a mximum amount of woods while still maintaining a general heading (into the wind, usually). I no longer have to risk getting lost to thoroughly check an area.
Best of all, I can print out my computer map with an overlay of waypoints and other annotations and take it with me. In effect, I've created a personalized topo map. The Maptech program also allows me to superimpose UTM gridlines, a coordinate system far superior to latitude-longitude (lat.-long.) for land navigation. And the latest incarnation of Terrain Navigator lets me view and print out abutting map quadrants. (Inevitably, the area in which I'm interested falls at the intersection of four quadrants. That has always meant buying four maps, taping them together, and either cutting out the corner areas or folding all four sheets into a wad as bulky as a Sunday newspaper. Now, however, I can print just the area I need on an 8 ½ X 11-inch sheet of paper.) If you print your maps on tear-resistant synthetic paper that renders inks water proof, they will last for years.
Technology cannot replace hunting skills. Nor can a computer and GPS substitute for a firm grasp of land navigation and woodsmanship. But they can augment those skills and add to the pleasure of the hunt by letting us carry our memories and our hunting grounds home and play them for weeks upon weeks. No computer game is as much fun.