doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com In The Big Woods

Guys your stories of getting lost are just great! I teach map, compass and GPS to about 600 students each year. I will print out your stories as examples of how not to navigate. YOU ARE GOING TO BE FAMOUS!!!

A FEW of the points I try to get across in the classes:

Carry two compasses (Keith explained this above). Both need to have adjustable declination feature and to be of good quality. And something many don't know, they need to either have a global needle or one adjusted for your region of the world. Your Northern temperate zone compass doesn't work accurately in Africa for example.

Have a topo map of the area you are hunting. Use the topo enough and you will begin to understand even the smallest features delineated by the contour lines which helps immensely in those "featureless" places. Navigation by topo alone is better than compass alone once you are skilled with the topo but they so much better together. Learn to use UTM coordinates on your map and GPS. It will assist you to understand distances much better and will enable you to coordinate with search and rescue units all of which use UTM coordinates for operations.

If you get a GPS, get a good one, not the cheapest one. Cheap ones have lousy antenna's. I prefer those which accept an Aux antenna. If you rely on GPS alone it will fail you when you most need it. Carry twice as many spare batteries as you think you might need. I have students giving me their failed GPSs as examples to show others after they have gotten lost with a GPS. Usually this is operator inexperience,antenna failure or total reliance on GPS device alone.

Neither the compass, GPS nor topo map will do you much good in your back pack. Position them so you will refer to them frequently.

Take your cell phone. It is a very viable emergency navigation device in more places than you might suspect. Conserve the batteries (turn it off) until you need it.

Don't wait until you are lost to use the tools!!!

While hunting Blue Quail by myself in the Carlsbad, New Mexico area I got lost one late afternoon.

I had a new GPS but hadn't bothered to learn very much about it. When I first realized I was lost I could just barely read the screen because I had forgotten my reading glasses. After it got dark I couldn't read it at all because I was without glasses AND without a flashlight. I didn't know how to turn the backlight on and if I did I probably couldn't do it because I couldn't read the screen without my glasses.

After three of hours of stumbling around in the dark I found the right ridge, then the right fence, then the right road and then the right truck.

Sure did feel stupid.

Best,

Mike

Mike, were the dogs already back at the truck ?

I'm a pilot. I've never been lost. Maybe just temporarily disoriented. :craz y:

Ken's story reminds me of a heated debate I had with my older brother and sister.

This isn't a "Big woods" story, but it is a lost story.

My folks and we kids were visiting an Uncle and Aunt in Missoula, from our little berg in N. ID. I was probably about 4, my older brother 10 and an older sister about 6 years of age. This would have been in the late 50's.

We decided to check out the area around my aunt and uncles place. After walking around a bit, we decided to head back to their house, and weren't able to find our way back! My brother and sister were insistant that it was one direction, I on the other hand disagreed with their assessment.

Since they wouldn't listen to me, the best thing to do at 4 years old was to throw myself to the ground and throw a fit!
One of my older Missoula cousins found us with my brother and sister trying to coax me off the ground.

No, they kept hunting. Found a couple of coveys on the roost and it took me awhile to find the dogs after they went on point, since they are tailless and small. Altogether an uncomfortable and exasperating few hours.

Best,

Mike

While bowhunting in N. Idaho I became disoriented one day. The sky was featureless and with the fog, I couldn't see any sun. I was in a large flat with thick second growth timber. I wandered around for some time before finally striking a logging road and following it until I came out at a recognizable location. It was well after dark before I got back to camp. What was going to be a quick look-around became a 6 hour march.

I was fortunate in that this area is bordered on all sides by roads and it was only a matter of time before I hit one.

Sure enough, I did't have a compass. It was an area I have hunted extensively and knew fairly well.

I've never spent a night out, but have had several friends that didn't show up until the next day.

There was this one time I made badger stew as a joke, but my partner never made it back to camp in order to fall for my joke meal.

Rob.

Similar to King Brown's story, I relate to my Junior Hunter Safety Course kids how I got lost on my own farm deer hunting. It got dark and I walked straight through, (I thought) a 10 acre patch of bush heading towards my yard, and wound up within 20 feet of where I started in. Yes, you can go in circles without being aware of it. I have heard that and now believe it to be true. After that I always take a Mini Maglite flashlight and a compass,a compass does not have batteries which run down like a GPS, although I carry one as well if I am far from home. I have another story, scared stiff, panic stricken, to the extend I thought my compass was "broken", lost in a bog, duckhunting on my own.
Cell phones have reduced the dangers too, where they can get a signal
Mike

Mine takes place in the White Mts. of NH. I was deer hunting with two friends one of which had a Aunt who ran a girl scout camp, she let us use it after the season ended. The first day we hunted around camp the second day at o dark thirty I'm in the back of the car headed some where my friend had in mine. We pull into a tote road and off I go, No sun and light snow.First thing I find is a set of Bobcat tracks I think I'll follow them, not good, I found my self in a Cedar swamp with less than twenty feet of visibility in any direction, the good news I found a set of deer tracks and thought that deer had a better chance in finding it's way out of this swamp than I did so onto the deer tracks. The deer ditched me on a set of R.R.tracks about noon time, off I went and about dark I heard a gun shot and thought I could hear a truck. This was the part I was dreading, hitching a ride with some one and not being able to tell them where the car was. Luck found me and I was picked up by a elderly gentleman who asked where I was going so I gave him the few landmarks I could. After a seven or eight mile ride It turned out I had started my day on his property so he was able to bring me back to the tote road. My friends where out looking for me and we sat and talked for awhile and he told me how for sixty years he had been avoiding that cedar swamp with his rabbit and coon dogs.

While walking those R.R. tracks I saw twenty plus Partridge always wanted to get back there.

"Most people will give up and die in less than 2 days when lost, disoriented, and discouraged."

Not me I have been married 30 plus years. Been disoriented and discouraged often over the years.

My worst times were not in the woods but on the water. Now if you want to get a dry mouth try getting a dead outboard motor stated, in the dark, with a tide and wind making the water rougher by the minute, ice forming fast on everything and the temperature dropping like a rock. I love duck hunting to the extreme, but do not miss that type of fun. Love putting in a shear pin, as the boat floats out into the Chesapeake, with waves coming into the boat, cold numb fingers getting worse by the minute and a hunting partner telling you not to drop the shear pin. I swear if I had dropped it over board I would have sent him after it.