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

For years I have been getting by with the US Forestry maps because I normally hunt the national forest. It has only been OK because the boundaries are not that well defined or kept up to date. Since I have been starting to hunt more BLM, state lands, and going out of state the Forestry maps aren't doing me much good.

Last year I saw in Eastmans Hunting journal they were recommending the use of a vendor for hunting maps. It was an outfit that would do custom hunting maps, and the marketing was that with these maps combined with google earth you could figure things out before you step away from home. The sales point was that you could narrow things down. To me it sounded great at the time because I wasn't aware of anything else that had the different agencies information on one map. Then yesterday I find that BLM maps are available online and I can save a PDF of the map. It seemed to be good information with up to date data. The best thing is that there was selections for what you want the map to show.

I'm also looking for GPS information but it seems super technological to be able to get blm information to the gps. I thought how great would it be to have the boundary information and land ownership on the gps. I guess it is possible now but I don't really know what to look into.

Any suggestions? Is a BLM map going to be the best for defining land ownership?

The BLM maps do show land ownership well and are fairly well updated. That is as far as private versus public. They are not good at terrain feature however.

kallen:

I use a combination of maps.

I start with BLM maps and USFS maps. They are kept pretty much up-to-date and contain resonably accurate info about land ownership, roads, and trails.

Then I go to USGS maps. I transfer the up-to-date info from BLM and USFS maps onto the USGS maps. You need to be a reasonably good draftsman to do the job right. Then I take the improved USGS maps into the field.

For a few important spots, I have added GPS coordinates. I go to Google Earth, which has active GPS coordinates scrolling at the bottom of the page. I zoom into a location and note the coordinates. Then I place those coordinates on the USGS map.

Buy USFS & BLM maps on-line - http://plicmapcenter.org/
Buy USGS maps on-line - http://www.usgs.gov/pubprod/

KC

On a special hunt last fall I was hunting state trust land and BLM.I found a BLM web site that gave GPS coordinates to the corners of most of the land I was hunting.Betcha all BLM local offices have them if you do some research on it.

USFS and BLM maps are good for showing public vs. private land. Once you get that out of the way, the best advice I could give you if you plan to hunt/fish/hike a lot in one state is to spend about $100 on the National Geographic Topo software for your state:

http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/

Maps are what, $7.50 a sheet, and more for customized sheets. I have a closet full of maps and if I'd gone ahead and bought the Topo software first I would have paid for it several times over.

The advantages are (besides having the whole state) that you can customize your maps, vary the scale, center your maps where you want so that you don't have to bring multiple maps, print LAT/LON grids right on the map, and print your own on waterproof stock. Wear one out or tear it, just print another.

I print adjacent maps on both sides of an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet, and almost never need to bring more than one sheet.

Topomaps here are $10 each.Same for Forest Service Maps

Having worked for the USFS I would be VERY wary of their maps as far as own ownership is concerned. While I think you would be "in the good" for following the map legally it doesn't mean you wouldn't have a problem with a private landowner who in my experience would be right over the maps the USFS provides.

I can't count how many times I couldn't identify with any certainity that a piece of land belonged to the USFS. I had access to the most up to the date maps including the people responsible for making them and even they admit they didn't know in many situations and couldn't come up with any "paperwork" one way or the other.

Even when I contacted the Dept. of Ag (who is over the USFS) they often couldn't tell either. The advice I always got was if you can't be sure then treat it like it's not ours. Great advice.

It may vary by ranger district as well. The district I worked on didn't really care even tho they were in the middle of a series of large land swaps.

I always wound up going to the county and going by the tax rolls...then the lady there told me on the USFS stuff they just put whatever didn't wind up on someone elses ownership list they put it udner "USFS" lol.

Just saying.

As an example we had a straight line wind event one year of about 90mph and blew down a ton of timber. Lawsuits were filed all over by the USFS over people logging down trees on USFS property. Eventually a bunch of them were thrown out because the USFS couldn't prove they owned the land lol.

Like I said hopefully it varies by district.

Shows how long it's been since I bought one!

Thanks for the confirmation Nathan I had that feeling about the USFS maps. I find I get challenged every year it seems about who owns what and is the main reason for me wanting to have up to date information. At one point I am hoping to get it on my gps.

I've been questioned by other hunters, club owners, land owners, pot growers, and outfitters. I've always been on public land unless I had permission to be on the private, but I would like better proof as more and more public land is being acquired or used illegally.

Down here the biggest kink in the deal is land swaps. The forest service is always trying to get all of it's land into one giant chunk and is always swapping parcels with timber companies/private owners to do it.

I cruised timber for the forest service and in certain areas I knew it was 50/50 on who owned the land. My boss used to say just go with your gut...of course he had been convicted of timber theft on another national forest and couldn't be fired so they moved him into the office only....

I just had 8 BLM maps show up in the mail yesterday. The price was 4$ each. They are nice for showing land ownership (the Surface Management series). USGS 7.5 minute quads are nice for showing terrain features. I was given the Topo USA program several years back and I found I didn't use it much. Yes, you can print your own maps but unless you have a plotter you'll be taping 8.5 x 11" sheets together. I see the price of maps as a very small necessary cost. I do like the State "Atlas and Gazateer" book maps that are available for general reference. They are usually about 15$ and can help narrow things down prior to buying the other more detailed maps.
Brian

That hasn't been my experience. Especially if you print on both sides. I can think of one high mountain lake we fish that's six miles in. I can print a single map that shows the route plus a few extra miles. I guess it all depends on how far you're going. The area I elk hunt is 3-4 miles in, and I can put enough on one sheet that I won't walk off the map, don't want to hunt any farther in than the area I can put on that map.

i prefer usgs since i've used them the most. i might look at blm, etc., and may transcribe a boundary or new road or 2, but for navigation with a compass, i haven't found anything i like better than usgs.

I buy and use lots of different maps. I buy BLM ands USFS maps for land ownershiup and access information. Then I check this out in the field. While they are a good place to start, I trust what I see in the way of fences, signs and road closures in the field at hunting time. Not perfect, but I'd rather be safe than sorry. Private land owners can cause alot of trouble for careless, out of the area hunters. Not anything I want to fool with.
Far and away, my favorite maps are the custom made ones I buy from Mytopo.com. Made from the latest aerial photos and in whatever scale you need, they show fine details of the land, access roads/.trails and vegetation. Worth their weight in gold as far as I am concerned. My only complaint with them is they are not made for Kalifornia. E

Saddlesore mentions BLM having corner coordinates available, which is great.

I've found that the BLM info might be suspect though. The past couple years at the annual Denver Sportsman show, I have asked the BLM folks for just that (private/BLM corner coordinates). The first year after I got to talking to a BLM guy about getting GPS property coordinates he said something to the effect of "we don't provide those after we lost a lawsuit where a hunter had relied on the information and ended up on private land" (In Colorado, that is a big deal and the law typically sides with the landowner).

This past year, the answer was more along the lines of "we have that in our database (Terra or Arc something? comes to mind)....but the information is subject to error and we're always involved in land swaps, etc." He also said that some BLM districts/regions have better documentation than others.

I too would love to know how to get this on my GPS better, so I could hunt the BLM "checkerboard" land where access is tricky. It doesn't give me great confidence in the data based on the answers I've gotten from the folks in the BLM mapping department. The other issue is if the BLM land is under lease to ranchers. The BLM folks mentioned this and though I haven't looked into it more, it sounds like sometimes that land isn't really "public" as far as hunting goes. I'm sure others on here know a lot more about that.

Here's one of the BLM disclaimers: "The geographic coordinates and their associated products are NOT legal land survey records. These coordinates can NOT be used as a substitute for a legal land survey. They can be used for record keeping, mapping, graphics and planning purposes only. No warranty is made by the Bureau of Land Management for use of the data for purposes not intended by BLM."

There are free GPS maps that show ownership of BLM, NFS, etc... but I suspect they are taken straight from published paper maps.

Places like this.

GPS File Depot

It is true, that the BLM does not have the actual GPS coordinates for all the corners. Depending on state/area they may have up to date coordinates for the corners in some areas. IIRC the dataset is call GCDB. These would come from actual surveys. A call to the BLM cadastral office will give you that info. Also, beware that 'corner hopping' is not legal in all states. ArcGIS is probably what he was they were referring to. It's a Geographic Information System, which is a fancy name for a computer mapping/database program.

I am 100% certain that permitting grazing on BLM lands does NOT, absolutely CANNOT, preclude the use of those lands for other purposes. No matter whom has the grazing permit, or if the grazing is going on during hunting season does that keep you from hunting those BLM lands if you can access them, nor can the rancher ask you to leave BLM land. So, whoever shared that bit of info with you was quite mistaken.

Pointer, thanks for the info. Went through my notes and the BLM grazing-hunting info I got was actually from a Forest Service employee with the caveat of "you'll want to verify"...so that explains it. One of these days I'll have to take some time to get a bunch smarter on the GIS info available and how to use it.

I still find it surprising that they don't have the geographic coordinates of private/public corners in LAT/LONG...but maybe that will come with time. I also didn't know that "corner hopping" might have legal issues...though I could see where access to some corners could be impossible.

Learned a lot right there. Thanks!

Thread hijack over.

FYI, the National Geographic TOPO software uses the USGS maps. They're just on a CD.

Just a FYI, even if they did have coordinates for the corners it'd be in UTM rather than Lat/Long...

USFS and BLM regulations/laws differ a bit on grazing, but neither can allow the exclusive use of the area by the grazer and prevent you from hunting those lands due to the permitted grazing.