Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Sense Of Direction

Just finished Mule Deer's Sense of Direction article in the Jan/Feb edition of Sports Afield and was reminded of past hunts in the NW part of Emmet County, Michigan. Scouting and still hunting in the forested extinct sand dunes could be disorienting on a cloudy day and the early GPS devices often could not "see" satellites from the bottom of the depressions between the dunes. A Silva Ranger and topo map let me work areas not frequented by other hunters and not get lost. In 10 years of hunting the dunes I never saw, or found sign of, another hunter past the first ridge next to the road. And this was not a vast area compared to western hunting. On windy days one could hear the surf breaking on the Lake Michigan coast west of the old dunes.

John B, I experienced a "not quite lost" event similar to Eileen's in my early 20s. I sat up in an oak tree bowhunting too long and couldn't find the trail I entered on when darkness fell. When I didn't show up at the car my buddy pointed towards my area with the headlights on and honked the horn. The straight line exit route required bulling my way through brush so heavy that I bounced off of it as much as I moved through the tangles. A discomforting situation that I've managed to avoid ever since. My oak tree post was on a large horizontal limb about 8 ft. above the ground. As twilight fell a Screech Owl attacked my hat when I moved my head...a dark flicker headed straight at me and a thump on the noggin.

Happy New Year! Looking forward to enjoying more articles.

Bill

I was trying to get back to camp in a snow storm several years ago. As soon as I took a step, my foot print would disappear in the accumulation. Every time I checked my compass, I was 180° off course. I finally just held the compass in my hand, and achieved success, discovering the location of my struggle was only 100 yards from my desired destination. The next season I purchased a compass than pinned on to my clothing for constant access, and used it for every hunt afterwards. I can't say it's kept me from misplacing myself, but it has helped me to identify my state of predicament.
:-)

In the early 2000's I went bear hunting with my one SIL in the ANF south of Ridgway, PA. It was one of those days that started out in the mid 40's with a misty rain then dropped to upper 20's and snow.
When SIL and I met up around 2:00 PM it was lightly snowing. I got out my father's old compass and we tried following it back north to the car. Ended up going the wrong way. Found out moisture got into the compass and it froze up. We ended up following a stream back up to the road. Wasn't really lost but no one wanted to believe it.

When hunting up north I'll have a Marbles or Coghlans lapel compass pinned to my coat and the larger, more accurate Silva Ranger on a neck cord and, in cold weather, hanging inside my coat. Big compass inside coat or shirt doesn't bang against things or get caught on limbs/brush. When I check the lapel compass or deploy the Ranger I make sure the rifle is arms length away from the compass.

I've never been lost.

Just took me longer to get back out a few times.

Compass pinned on my pocket. GPS somewhere on my person if I’m somewhere new or have no/few distinguishable landmarks.

No lies to tell, I could get lost in an outhouse. Though thus far I’ve always found my way out.

If any of the other TN guys on here have hunted Catoosa, well, yeah…….

I have found myself going out of places in the wrong direction more than once. When my life was quite occupied by tree hounds and such, before heading into the woods to follow the hounds I would note with my little brass compass, which way the road generally ran and which side of it I was on. Also, I would occasionally check the compass to get an idea of what direction I was moving in. It wasn’t a perfect system, but I always made it home before dawn.

Now I have a Garmin Rino. Would have been nice in those days.

There have been times when the damn truck moved….

I like to think I have a decent sense of direction but I've had experiences in fog, snowstorms, and dense trees that have been very humbling. I always have a compass and my GPS (and spare batteries) in remote areas. "Trust your instruments" is good advice.

I discovered, the hard way, that I had a highly magnetic barrel on a Sako AV. When it was on my right shoulder it would swing the needle of the compass a fair amount. A line of travel would become an arc of travel, finally after 5 hours of it the sun broke through and the snow quit, just found the pickup at dusk.So I would say, trust but verify. Another hunter hailed me once, he was well prepared, had all the stuff, knew how to use it...but was confused as to where he was. After a few minutes talking it over, I said I wonder if that walkie talkie around your neck is affecting your compass? Bingo.

I joined the army back in the steel helmet days. One azimuth shooting technique was to bring the compass near your eye. Surprising how many times north was directly behind the compass user, regardless of what direction they were facing. As for me, I may have been a mite confused a time or two.

Old70

I can get turned around in my house.

Many years of hunting just north of the Marquette Iron Range and mines in Upper Michigan. There is one particular cedar swamp area where if your compass needle is pointing southerly when you take it out, it will point south to the iron formations and stay there. If you rotate the compass 180 degrees, it will point north and stay there. On a foggy or heavily overcast day, you are left to decide which "North" is actually North.

Same here. If I’m in new territory, and it’s cloudy, I’m lost as soon as Im out of sight of my truck.

As I age I believe my sense of direction is better then ever !! or is it because I don't get as far from the truck / side x side 🤕

As long as I can get back to my mule, I have no problems.They have built in GPS and will get me back to camp if I give them a rein.

I was turned around once because I would not believe my compass. Another time in a 100 acre swamp I had to connect with my buddy by radio and have him blow the truck horn at camp to get the right direction

Before GPS, hunting off the logging roads up north I parked my truck and when I walked back later, I walked past the end of the logging road a long ways before I realized what had happened. Flintlocke's magnetic post reminds me of a couple years back when I was keeping my cell phone battery warm in my shirt pocket. It was kind of funny when I realized that there is a heck of a magnet in those things that had my pin on compass on my coat pointing right back at the phone.

Not hard to navigate in the rolling hills of the Bluegrass region of Ky. where I grew up. And about the second time I was in the Rockies, the same place I'd hunted before, I had my bearings.

But during a hunt in NW Wisconsin I soon learned where a person could get into trouble. Dark grey skies, about 10" of snow on flat ground & every tree looked the same. It wasn't snowing & I had my own tracks to backtrack with, or I would have never ventured into the forest as deep as I did. A completely different ballgame.

Haven’t had problems in the outdoors, but put me in a department store in the mall and I have no idea how to get out of there to where I parked

I had a weird experience on time while on a hunt. Before I took off, I'd checked which way the road went (East and west) and took off to the north in hopes of spotting an elk. Between zig zagging and checking gullies and draws I got a bit turned around. I took out my compass which I'v had and used for years so I could head south and back to the road and my truck. When I checked the compass something wasn't right. A rock formation I though was east of me was now west according to the compass. Am I that turned around. Well, I looked at my watch and then the sun, figured out which way I should go with that damned compass telling me I'm going the wrong way. Well I found the road and my truck. When I got home after the hung I checked the compass and it had reversed polarity so now wwhen the needle points south, that's north. It's 1i0 degrees out of whack.
PJ