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Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

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Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby WapitiTalk1 » 05 11, 2021 •  [Post 1]

Just curious to see who may be ready if their GPS croaked on them deep, deep in the elk woods. Individual, non electron, land navigation skills i.e., using a compass, map, protractor, and terrain association (minimum skills) are essential in the elk woods in my opinion. Possessing good non-electronic based navigation skills can certainly help avoid some bad things if the GPS decides takes a dump. Army Field Manual 3-25.26 (Map Reading and Land Navigation) is not classified and you can actually download it for free from many sites. If a hunter does not possess some of the basic "non-electronic" land navigation skills, he/she probably shouldn't venture too far from a road/trail system until they do. These are my opinions and may not reflect yours :D .

Soooo.. let’s do this kind of like a poll. "I rate my map/compass skills as follows":

1. Exceptional - I am a human compass needle.. Just follow me.
2. Good - I use a map/compass effectively with no issues.
3. Poor - I'm a bit too reliant on my GPS. Need some work on my map/compass/map reading/terrain association skills.
4. No so good - Call for the search party; I'm not making it out of the woods if my GPS dies.
5. Other… (please provide comments).
6. Does RJ do anything productive besides starting these threads?
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby 7mmfan » 05 11, 2021 •  [Post 2]

I rate myself a 2. I have a good sense of direction, and know how to use a map and compass. I also do my research before stepping foot into new areas, looking at Google earth and topo maps, and develop routes and plans of attack. I check myself multiple times throughout the day with my compass to make sure I'm on track and viewing the country correctly. I have now a few times had to pull a compass out and use my map skills to find my way out. Usually because of fog or darkness. I have also found routes that I planned via maps and satellite images that were impassable, and had to reevaluate my route. I've never been left in a bad spot because of it, but I've had to add significant mileage a few times. GPS's and satellite imagery on my phone has definitely made getting around a lot easier though. I do like showing off to my wife when we go for off trail hikes and I can walk out of the woods within feet of where we walked into them, she is always impressed. :lol:
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby Swede » 05 11, 2021 •  [Post 3]

I was trained to navigate with a map and compass. I do not rely on my instincts. I am no human compass. I try to keep track of my location. If I have no GPS I will head in a little early so I have a little room for error. I may impress you with my ability to come out at the truck, but it is not instinct. It is from knowing the country and keeping track of my location. I would rate myself a 2, but I get there following a different trail than 7mm.
Finding your way back to the truck is a no-brainer if you park at the mouth of a creek and just walk up the drainage. Ditto if you can just walk downslope to a long road. Call yourself a human compass if without a compass, map or GPS, you can walk off the end of the road through flat lodgepole country, hunt all day and walk right back to the truck. Swede wants his GPS or he will purposely go to one side or the other and past the truck then cut over to the road. Like I said, I know better than to go on my "instincts".
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby Lefty » 05 11, 2021 •  [Post 4]

I'am a 1, no doubt!


I will say Ive always been good mapping and using a compass. And have referred to my compass once in the past 40 years,,, and yep it was right :lol:
Typically I know where I've started or I've been tipped off by the sun moon or stars , road direction etc.
Knowledge or the region, a valley or waterway runs a certain direction certainly helps
That train it is 20 -30 miles away is south
That glow is from a city 100 miles away,
The road runs north-south.
Wind directions or expectation of the weather is another thing. Camp is it uphill? Or downhill?

I've been most confused in places that are foggy and I'm unfamiliar with.
Once while checking traps in Washington State I had no idea which way was out, however the sound of running water some distance away got me going the right direction .

I'm not sure why I tend to set up a tent I tend to set the door facing east: and my bed when I'm alone, I will point to the north nothing other than when I wake up I know which direction everything is. Certainly not a solid thing that I do but it is just something that I do.

Well duck hunting on a large resivioour, a deputy buddy of mine was just learning how to use a GPS at the time and we had a few miles to shore
Fog rolled in , we couldn't see 30 yds in front of us. We had plenty of gas and he challenged me to the boat launch. After 40 minutes The fog was getting lighter and about 80 yards away was the beach where my truck was parked. He showed me the GPS tracking he said it just blew his mind that while it wasn't straight to the ramp we didn't waste much time.
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby Billy Goat » 05 12, 2021 •  [Post 5]

I'm a 2, I think.

when I leave the truck every morning, I always think about:

1. I am hunting up/down from the road
2. I am east/west/north/south of XX creek or ridgeline
3. etc
as a basic frame of reference

that way in an instance of lost/emergency/etc I can just start walking (insert direction here) until I hit the road.

and of course....I'm always carrying paper maps of the area I'm hunting for reference too.

havent gotten "lost" yet, but always get a little nervous in that last hour of the day, watching sunlight fade.
"First teach a child to love God,
teach them second to love their family
and third, teach them to hunt and fish,
and by the time they reach their teens, no dope peddler under the sun will ever teach them anything".

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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby Elkhunttoo » 05 14, 2021 •  [Post 6]

2...I thought I was a 1 until I hunted rolling mountain tops, thick timber and a fog/snow storm so thick I could only see 5 or so yards. I finally came to the old logging road I knew super well and felt relief and headed down it back towards my dad and brother. About 10 minutes into the walk on the road I realized I was walking the wrong direction on the road. Those thick storms can do wonders when your not in a steep canyon.
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby >>>---WW----> » 05 15, 2021 •  [Post 7]

I have no idea where to rate myself. But I guarantee you if I have a compass, I can find my way out of just about anywhere! So probably I'm somewhere between a 1 and a 2.

I have a good friend (an army vet) that got lost while snow machining. He was taught how to use a lensatic military compass. But on this day he had a normal one and couldn't remember which end of the needle pointed north, the red end or the white end. LOL! So I suppose even with a compass you can get lost if you don't know how to use it.
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby Swede » 05 16, 2021 •  [Post 8]

Years ago I was plot cruising (taking measurements for timber volume) on a unit we planned to advertise for sale. My partner and I walked from our truck up the road and around a bend for about 200 yards. We had parked on a turnout so we would not block any traffic that might want to use the road. We ran a compass line through the unit, taking sample plots, from west to east. We then turned and went a short way south and came back heading due west. We came back to the road about 50 yards farther up than where we started. My partner insisted on going farther up the road to get back to the truck. I let him go and went down. I was having my last cup of barely warm coffee when he arrived at the truck. On one occasion I let him get lost within that same harvest unit and it took hours to find his way back. The man was always lost from the time he lost sight of the vehicle, unless someone led him.
Other people have a great ability to navigate in the wild and seem to never get disoriented. I have run into several people like that. To be honest, most of us are somewhere between the extremes. Without a map, compass or GPS I am probably a 5-6 on a scale of 1 to 10 in strange country where there are no easily identifiable features. I do not fully trust my instincts, but learned to use a map and compass early. Now I rely a lot on my GPS. I really appreciate the GPS. When I must navigate in the dark it is a great instrument. That is a whole different world and getting turned around in the forest in the dark is very easy.
My advise is to have your truck, camp or whatever you plan to return to, set on your GPS and marked on your map. Nobody really cares if you navigated to get back to camp in time for dinner.
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby Tigger » 05 17, 2021 •  [Post 9]

I got invited on a fishing trip to rainy lake on the canadian border with a bunch of my company's management. I had my boat and as luck would have it, the first day I got the CEO in my boat. We fished in the bays and islands and made a great big circle. Just before dark, the fishing was fantastic and we finally decided we better get back. i knew camp wasnt far, but i didnt know the lake and didnt want to be running around in the dark. The CEO pulls out the map and proclaims we need to go straight east to get to camp about 10 miles away. Uh, camp is around that point to the west. "No, it is that way" in his big, deep CEO voice. Hmm. What to do. I said, let's just stick our nose around that point, and if we cannot see camp, we will go your way. Man, did he have a funny look on his face when camp was right where I said it would be (about 1/2 mile away!). I had been fishing big Canadian lakes my whole life and know how to navigate on them. He didnt.
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby >>>---WW----> » 05 17, 2021 •  [Post 10]

GPS is great so long as they work. But they can fail for several reasons. And I might add that a compass is great so long as you know how to use it properly.

When I was a kid, we chased coon hounds almost every night when the season was in. We were poor and never could afford the luxury of owning a compass. So I learned to navigate by the stars at an early age. During the daylight hours I used my watch to find direction with if needed. Back then a compass was a luxury item kinda like a GPS is today. ;)
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby 7mmfan » 05 17, 2021 •  [Post 11]

I've been turned around two times in the woods. One time was on an island on a local river, deer hunting. It was foggy and the island was doghair thick. More time either 5' off the ground, or crawling in deer tunnels than walking upright. Anyway, I went to the far end of the island, which was about a total of 400 yards long, and started pushing back towards my Dad who was in the stand. After about 20 minutes, I thought I should be close to my Dad, when suddenly a boat ran by on the river. I was perplexed. I should be well away from the channel by now. I pushed my way the 20' or so out to the waters edge to find myself literally within feet of where I'd started 20 minutes before. Somewhere I'd gotten turned around and didn't even know it. Luckily that situation was very contained and easy to solve.

The 2nd time I got turned around was elk hunting in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest in WA. I'd hiked a few miles in past the wilderness boundary that morning and then dropped down into a deep canyon. I had a plan and route picked. I was familiar with the area, but had picked a route out that I'd never taken before. It was a ridge that would take me back to a road near the trailhead instead of the trail itself. After hunting most of the day, a storm moved in and I found myself in the clouds. I got to my ridge, started up and was in pea soup so thick I could only see 50-100' max. This was a well defined ridge, so I wasn't worried, I just needed to walk up it and I'd hit the road. I found myself on horse tracks indicating that I was definitely in the right zone. But suddenly I was cliffed out. I could not find my way around the damn cliffs no matter how hard I tried. I checked my compass and confirmed I needed to get past the cliffs and continue north. Finally I caught an elk trail but it took me down the east into the next canyon which was deep dark old growth timber. Every time I'd try to gain the ridge I'd be cliffed out again so I had to keep pressing along through downfall and steep sidehill terrain. Darkness was close and I began to lose my cool a little. I had been following my compass to the best of my ability but my expectations of where I should be by now and what the terrain should be like were not matching reality and I began to question my compass. For a short period of time I trusted my gut and forged off in the direction that I knew I should be going, but quickly realized that was wrong as I was beginning to move downhill again. I finally took a seat, ate a snack, and calmed myself down. I had no visual reference around me because of fog and forest, but I finally convinced myself that the compass isn't wrong, you need to head north and stick to that heading. I headed straight up the hill, clawing over deadfall for about 200 yards and walked out onto the road I'd been trying to get to for hours now. There was an enormous sense of relief, and I took off down the road at a fast pace towards the truck. It was basically dark now and I came around the corner and ran into a guy walking the other way. That was my first blinking red light. Why is this guy walking in so late? We chatted for a minute and I think he had the same question, but he voiced it. I told him I was heading for the trailhead and he gently reminded me that it was the other way. We walked together and chatted for a bit when we got the shortcut trail that connected us up to the trailhead. I was very thankful for his guidance that night. I'd have certainly found my way out now that I was on the road, it just might have been a couple hours later than intended.

The moral of that story is, trust your equipment. That was the only time that I felt my compass was off somehow, but my mind was disoriented by unfamiliar ground and lack of geographical reference points. My inability to find my way around the cliffs still makes me shake my head today, because there had been horses on that ridge, so there was clearly an easy path down there. I just couldn't find it in the fog.
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Re: Hey Buddy... Are You Lost?

Postby Swede » 05 17, 2021 •  [Post 12]

7mm, I appreciate your story and agree. Trust your equipment.
I was hunting with my brother in law in the Wallowa mountains. It had been snowing hard all day and it was time to head in. Just out of curiosity, I asked which way do we go to get to camp. I wasn't sure. He pointed in a direction that did not seem right, but I was not sure. I pulled out my compass and it said we needed to go 180 degrees away from where he pointed. We were disoriented, but I insisted in trusting the compass. We got back with no problem.
I have navigated using a compass and also the GPS. I trust them. I do not go all day then pull out my GPS to find out where I am or how to get back to camp. I keep track of where I am periodically throughout the day. When I need to head back it is just another update. If something happens to my equipment or I lose it, I still know approximately where everything is and can pull out my compass.
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