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Author Topic: Planning and Maps and Such Rob Love Knows what it's all about Member # 723 posted November 23, 2005 10:37 AM                    How many of you plan your hunt then hunt your plan? In doing this planning I've become a hobiest cartographer and arial analyst. So another question is how many of you have learned something in your pursuit of calling and or hunting in general that has carried over in to other areas of your life? Posts: 24 | From: TX | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged Kokopelli SENIOR DISCOUNT & Dispenser of Sage Advice Member # 633 posted November 23, 2005 06:17 PM                      I tend to hunt proven stands but will also go into the 'wonder where this road goes?' plan of attack. Hate being tied to a carved in stone schedule. Re your second question; I seem to have become a bottle collector due to coyote calling. Never planned to, I just keep finding the things out in the desert & bringing them home. -------------------- And lo, the Light of the Trump shown upon the Darkness and the Darkness could not comprehend it. Posts: 7579 | From: Under a wandering star | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged Rob Love Knows what it's all about Member # 723 posted November 24, 2005 10:27 AM                    In the idea of a hard time line...... It just can't be done or I've never been able to. When I plan it usually means I'll make 2 or 3 trips to cabells or bass pro to see if if I've left anything out. Then about an hour or so of taking aerials and getting vectorized contours to make my own topo. Then I look at them and try to decide where is most likely to produce and what the predominate wind patterns are for that area. Whats the oldest bottle you have found? Posts: 24 | From: TX | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged Kokopelli SENIOR DISCOUNT & Dispenser of Sage Advice Member # 633 posted November 25, 2005 07:55 AM                      I'm not sure how old any of the bottles are. I had one that had gone purple from the molibdanite (sp) used in the glass. Lost it in an earthquake. One is a 'Carroll Rye' brown glass pint whiskey bottle that goes back a ways. Another is a wine bottle that seems to have been hand blown. Basicly, if it looks old, unusual, or took a cork, I'll bring it back. The last one I found was an Ovaltine jar, brown glass w/screw on lid. Probably not all that old but it looks nice up on the shelf with the rest. -------------------- And lo, the Light of the Trump shown upon the Darkness and the Darkness could not comprehend it. Posts: 7579 | From: Under a wandering star | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged 2dogs Knows what it's all about Member # 649 posted November 25, 2005 08:32 AM                   As for callin. I use Satt-maps, then figure in the wind. As to my approach/set-up & cover. Spot/stalking, I've hunted the same area's since 1964. I know where they historically hunt/bed. As [Patton] once said, " I've read your book" As for [carry-over]. Their more intelligent, than most people . Always a challenge! for sure. They beck'on me, gotta love it, eh Posts: 1034 | From: central Iowa | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged Doggitter Knows what it's all about Member # 489 posted November 25, 2005 04:28 PM                    I just pick an area and go hunting. The only scouting and planning I do is watching an area I go through while out, and remembering it again later. The times I've planned everything out it was a total failure as far as an enjoyable trip. [ November 25, 2005, 09:52 PM: Message edited by: Doggitter ] Posts: 273 | From: Oregon rain forest | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged scruffy Knows what it's all about Member # 725 posted November 28, 2005 08:06 AM                   I've tried to pick the exact spot I was going to sit many times by looking at sat and topo maps but nearly every time I have to make changes because the topo maps didn't include very suttle changes in elevation that created huge blind spots. So I look at the maps to find the areas that should hold coyotes, both on the farms I have permission to hunt and in a 1 mile radius, so I know what areas or directions to call to. I try not to use the maps to determine the exact spot to sit because in my area it's more often than not been a waist of time. I have a small collection of bottles as well. My last one I found was a very old Pepsi bottle. It rode around in the back extended cab part of my truck for a week or so and I forgot about it and when I opened the back door it rolled out and shattered on the concrete floor. My father in law has a really old mountain dew bottle, very very old, that still has the mountain dew in it. Lots of "floaties" in it. I think he found it in a barn or something. Anyway, they seem to be everywhere. later, scruffy -------------------- Git R Done Posts: 361 | From: south central Iowa | Registered: Nov 2005  |  IP: Logged DAA Utah/Promoted WESTERN REGIONAL Hunt Director Member # 11 posted November 28, 2005 10:51 AM                       I study the Hell out of topos. Probably too much. But I've always enjoyed it, so what the heck... I always study topo's before calling a new area, and often before (and after!) calling an old familar place. My situation, out West here, is that I have access to hundreds of thousands of square miles of public land. Most of it isn't very good calling though. And it's completely impossible to cover it all in one lifetime. "Scouting", by looking at maps, has been tremendously productive for me over the years. When looking at new places, I find the topo's most useful for elminating a lot of area quickly. There are types of terrain easily identified on a topo, that I basically try and avoid calling. If nothing else, this kind of map study has saved me some gasoline over the years. And of course, when calling the vast stretches of public land I haunt, it's always invaluable to have at least a rough idea of where the two tracks are (or used to be), and where they might go. Most of my best "runs" (a stretch of road to make stands off of), are very faint two tracks that might not look too promising without having some knowledge of where they actually go. A couple of them, the roads don't actually even exist anymore, even though they show on the map. I'm not shy about driving cross country, following the faint trace of these old paths, and have found some great calling runs on some of them. Since I'm most often calling the same basic type of terrain, and I've found that there are characteristics that good runs tend to share, I'm also looking for these on the maps too. Often, they don't actually pan out, for whatever reason. But occasionally, they do, and it's always nice when that happens. Especially the times I'm able to navigate straight to them over many miles of back country, in the dark, on my first visit (I'm Hell-on-wheels navigating with a GPS and topo). I'm planning to spend some time one evening this week, studying the topo's for an area fairly close to home, that I've hunted many, many times and already know very, very well. It's getting that time of year around here, when it pays to start throwing changeups, in terms of stand selection and approach. I am often able to get some good ideas along these lines while studying the maps. Being already familiar with the area, I'm looking especially for spots that don't look very promising from the limited view off the road, that with a little extra walking can put my sound into drainages I know usually hold coyotes (extra cautious coyotes, by this time...). From a direction they probably have not been called (yet). Never took up collecting any of the stuff I find while out wandering. But have often later regretted not picking up a particular piece. Have stumbled onto all kinds of "interesting" stuff, that is for sure. - DAA -------------------- "Oh yeah, they're gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom, but they see a free individual, it's gonna scare 'em." -- George Hanson, Easy Rider, 1969. Rocky Mountain Varmint Hunter Posts: 2676 | From: Salt Lake City, UT | Registered: Jan 2003  |  IP: Logged LionHo Knows what it's all about Member # 233 posted November 28, 2005 08:55 PM                    The USGS quads here in my part of the Ventana Wilderness were originally made off of transects & data collected in the 20's. The fellow who did that bit of surveying went to prison for fabricating contours and elevations! (Rumor has it he drank a wee bit). I discovered this only this out after a particularly nasty smash through thick chaparrel one 100+ degree afternoon, trying to find what appeared to be an official USFS trail, by following a contour line. Never again, I said... The other factor that got me out of relying on them is I used them mostly for identifying habitat edges, areas with oaks savannah and grassy meadows adjoining canyons and creeks, the more edges the merrier. Locally all this has to be field confirmed anyhow, as the brush can grow back impossibly thick in as little as one wet year. Wasn't so keen on the satellite and aerial views I'd been seeing on the web, until just the other day I had the sudden aha that there are also degree/minute/second to decimal convertors on the web. Moments later I also found on TerraServer that I could toggle between a topo and an aerial view, even zoomed to about 90%. Find this a really helpful way to get my bearings, as depending on the time of day the maps were shot, B&W aerials take some getting oriented to, even with areas I know like the back of my hand. Still would like to see better resolution for both topos and aerial photos. Too, the day when we can wirelessly integrate all this on a handheld GPS/palmtop computer in real time, with an up to the minute view, will be a happy one. LionHo Posts: 88 | From: Ventana Wilderness, CA | Registered: Aug 2003  |  IP: Logged Nahuatl Knows what it's all about Member # 708 posted November 29, 2005 08:30 AM                    It's already here. We are the little green flashing arrow. DeLorme 3-D topo maps and the Sat 10 add-on are effective. The 3D split screen shows the USGS quad on the right and the Sat map on the left. The Sat maps show "current" agriculture, usable 2-tracks (though not locked gates), and the 3D function allows you to exaggerate terrain up to 4x, slant/pitch maps from 15 to 90 degrees, and spin the orientation of your view on either the topo or sat map to any compass point to get both the flyover view and the coyote view. The mountains stand up on the page. Planning a hunt using the 3D sat maps in an area I've hunted for years revealed I was missing about 90% of the available accessable area. Not any more. DeLorme's Blue Logger GPS antenna sits on the dash and connects wirelessly via bluetooth to a PDA or laptop. Or use any wired antenna. The software shows your exact location, speed, and direction, in real time on an interstate roadmap, their street map, or on one of three topo maps of increasing magnification, and on the Sat map. Scot - Scot, do we make a right or a left at the water tank near the rock by the tree? Even in the dark, the answer is yes. [ November 29, 2005, 08:33 AM: Message edited by: Nahuatl ] Posts: 202 | From: Mount Gleason, Angeles NF | Registered: Sep 2005  |  IP: Logged Rob Love Knows what it's all about Member # 723 posted November 29, 2005 03:44 PM                    LionHo: If there are DEM's avaiable for the area you need then I could generate contours from them. I like to generate my own contours and overlay them on my arials. This really helps in locating critter hold ups and highways they travel. After I generate my map I'll place points on there to download to my gps for further investigation. Posts: 24 | From: TX | Registered: Oct 2005  |  IP: Logged

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