Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire any knowledge of old compasses?

yes

I have been as far north as 73 deg 140 nm north of Barrow looking for open water in pack ice...a best quality high dollar compass by Sperry on the tug, didn't spin but it never settled. The damping adjustment is useless. How the old whalers found their way in ice fog is a mystery, but a lot of arctic whalers died before their threescore and ten.

Nice old compass that would look nice in a hunting pack. I own 2 military OD green map compasses that I keep in my hunting backpack. I hunted way before GPS technology. One I bought and the other was in a military pack I bought at my favorite pawnshop. Good to have old gear in case of nuclear blasts that would wipe out satellites and tech devices.

Same here. Im only in my 40's but I was raised old school and was poor. I have a GPS but I trust my military compass and topo maps way more. Im trying to teach my kids how read stars, find north using the sun, stick and watch, use sun dials etc.

Barrow is hundreds of miles away from magnetic north.


Seems magnetic north/south are constantly wandering about.



A few years back declination at my locale was 16° and now it's about 13.

While clock error was certainly an issue in the times of early exploration, declination shift may have also been a cause for islands etc depicted on early maps failing to show up when travelers came through years later.

Interesting stuff.

Yes, I'm quite aware of the approximate location of mag north...my point was that mag compasses become unreliable at around 70 deg N and are useless at 80 deg N and higher. As a matter of fact, don't ask me why, standard gyro compasses must be checked frequently. This was all before GPS, and Loran was less than accurate up there. Anyway, in 1973 when we were foundering around up there relying on RDF fixes the magpole was right near Bathurst Island Canada...now it has left Canada and is about half way to Siberia...it was moving toward Siberia at an astonishing 25 miles a year.