Let’s talk old-school navigation

[Alan]

Hey everyone, I'm wondering how many of you still get around without GPS. Ever used a map, compass or even just the sun to figure out where you are? It's a good skill to have. So if you've got any tips, tools or stories about getting lost and finding your way back? Share here

 

[Quark]

Well one thing I've learned in walk about in the woods is to turn around and look at what is behind me every few steps. Things look very different when you turn around to walk out of the woods. Got turned around a few times to learn that one.

 

[Godzilla]

Good call, Quark! I made this mistake before, I literally walked in circles because I was following my own footprints.

 

[Slick Nick]

Everybody should have a good compass and a topo map also gives you a good idea where to look for a number of things trails cover and liquids possibly. Just a thought and when I change locations in the states I try to get a set just to have them in the go bags. Of course I still have a gps because I’m a simple man hahaha

 

[2Roosters]

I had an incident while elk hunting in the Castles a few years ago. It was a place that I had hunted many times and had twice walked out in the dark. The spot looked familiar and I realized that I had walked in a giant circle. “Well, I won’t do that again”, I thought to myself. Of course I found myself in the same exact spot about 20 minutes later. Disturbing to say the least.

 

[Quark]

When I first moved to Montana and started hunting I rarely got lost or turned around and rarely used a compass and map. People were amazed and could not figure out how I could do that. Well military training helped but also Montana is wide open country compared from where I had come from which was pretty much rain forest country. If you learn how to navigate in that stuff everything else is a piece of cake.

 

[Alan]

I had an incident while elk hunting in the Castles a few years ago. It was a place that I had hunted many times and had twice walked out in the dark. The spot looked familiar and I realized that I had walked in a giant circle. “Well, I won’t do that again”, I thought to myself. Of course I found myself in the same exact spot about 20 minutes later. Disturbing to say the least.

Wow, that must’ve been unsettling, did you end up figuring out what threw you off your bearings that night?

 

[2Roosters]

It was in the early morning, but daylight. Frankly, I was following a couple of elk tracks on the second pass, so paying less attention to where I was walking. Funny though how I wound up in exactly the same place. Elk made the same big circle.

 

[Quark]

Damn I can't get rid of annoying ads but at least I'm back.

 

[Howdy]

About 20 years ago I bought a hand held GPS. It was so procedure intensive I figured that if I got lost I wouldn't have time to read the manual and figure out all the steps anyway. I returned it. Common sense is so much easier. No gadgets needed, no "special procedures" to memorize. Usually I study topo maps before I leave to understand the lay of the land. It might be easy to get lost in flatland forests, but in the mountains we have drainages and they are my landmarks. I have a cheap bubble compass attached to my fanny pack.

 

[2Roosters]

Yes, a compass is a good idea. In the above example, I could have walked downhill because I knew there was a road at the bottom. I would have wound up about 10 miles from my pickup. The terrain was in the mountains but was uncharacteristically flat, which is one reason why the elk liked it. It was just unsettling. My dad and I backpacked into the Scapegoat 40 years ago. We had compass and map and knew how to use them. One morning, we woke to 6 inches of snow and it was still snowing-hard. We had a couple of days left but decided to pack up and walk out. Somehow, we missed a fork in the trail. In our defense, there was no improved trail to the lake we had gone to, just a faint mile and a half track down the drainage to the main trail. When the snow slowed down a little we could see that we were not where we thought we were. I wasn’t exactly frightened because we had lots of food and gear and would have been fine until things cleared up. It was again, unsettling, to be so sure and then find out we were so wrong, so we backtracked to the fork and walked out. We caught 50 fish each for each of the two days we were at the lake. So it was worth it. It was mid-July.