how many guys actually use topo maps to locate roads,camp sites. water sources, natural terrain choke points and potential hunter access and potential game movement and escape routes.
as I got more experience I found that a few hours of carefully using resources like terrain maps, google earth, and forest service road maps, county property boundary info, BLM maps and other resources allowed me to predict reasonably well the likely game movements as big game in many of the rougher canyon country , could be accurately predicted to leave most of the easily accessed areas near public roads and camp sites, and retreat into areas with far less hunt pressure, now at first we thought that always meant as far from roads as possible but we eventually learned thru trial and error that hunters are generally highly adverse to climbing steep terrain or crossing deeper streams requiring wading, or following a railroad right of way thru private land into BLM lands beyond and having maps and property boundrys and a GPS were valid tools to gain access to some of the better hunt areas
Last edited by 340mag; 03/01/12.
