Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game best maps for hunting?

I bought NG's Topo! software for Idaho several years ago and I love it. It's has lots of nice features. One is optional shading that gives a better perspective of terrain.

Idaho has nice way to take the problems out of identifying public land for hunting purposes. Private range land that's not irrigated or cultivated is open for hunting unless it's posted. The hunting regs list specific ways that the posting must be done.

Utah's the same way.

Colorado is the exact opposite. Private land does not have to be posted.It is up to the hunter to know where land boundaries are and the ownership of that land.

Yeppers. IIRC, WY is the same way. Anyone know about MT, NV, AZ etc?

Montana doesn't need to be posted at all, completely the hunter's responsibility to know where he is.
Kinda blows my mind that in UT and ID you can legally trespass and kill animals off someone's private land if it isn't posted.

Here's a secret -

If you talk to your game biologist he probably uses a county assor's map.

there are typically county offices that track land ownership, often they'll work with a publishing agency to publish the boundry lines and phone numbers of the land owners.

Of course this is for areas less than very rural

Spot

Out west, we carry BLM and NGS maps. The former show public and private, the latter more detail. If Forest service maps are available take them too.
Obviously a good simple GPS is a must have as well.

The following digital ownership information provided by the State of Montana is also frequently available in a similar format in other States:

http://gis.mt.gov/

1) Turn off your pop-up blocker
2) Go to �Property Map� on the above page and click
3) Drill down through the map layers until you locate the parcel of ground that has your interest
4) Drag the �?� mark from the identify button to the subject parcel and then double click on the parcel�You will be provided with more ownership information than you probably need

Insofar as land office cadastral surveys are concerned, you can find it by your State of interest. Here is Montana�s opening page:

http://glo.mt.gov/imageviewer/default.aspx

1) Once again, just drill down through the map layers until you find the Township and Range with which you are interested
2) Submit a search request for the Township and Range of interest and you will have access to land office surveys from 100 years ago to the present

CP.

Note that I said UNIRRIGATED OR UNCULTIVATED land, not all private land. This applies strictly to rangeland.

I don't know the history of land ownership in so. Idaho, but there are small pieces, 1/4 sections or smaller sometimes, scattered all over BLM and FS land. They say that homesteaders claimed the pieces of land with water, but many of these have none. It's impossible to tell what's what if it's not posted. Even the BLM boys have to carry accurate maps to sort it out. This is a workable solution. One method of legal posting is an ALL-ORANGE fence post every 1/8 mile (the commercial orange posts with the white tips don't count). You need to be on the alert for those things as they can be part of a fence, not just stuck in the ground. You can't go by fence lines as much of the BLM is fenced in grazing allotments.

In WY, property is presumed private, hence the use for the BLM maps.