When my Dad (Ben of Outdoor Montanans) was a kid, he could go hunting anywhere he thought he wanted. In many (or most) cases, he didn’t even know whose land he was on. It didn’t matter if it was public or private, they could drive anywhere there was a two-track, because landowners didn’t mind.
That started changing in the 70s, and even more so in the 80s here in Montana. More and more private land was being leased for hunting or was just posted, “No Trespassing.” Farms and ranches were being bought for hobby or corporations purchased the big layout for retreats or tax write-offs. The hunting opportunity started to narrow, so that’s when he really started mapping his (and now my) hunting spots. He got land-owner maps, forest maps, and topo maps and had to search out the public land that was accessible to hunt. He was hunting fence lines (and still does) and learned that there was considerable public (state and BLM) land that was inaccessible because it was surrounded by private and had no public road access. This caused him to be creative and even more diligent to find those certain places. He considered this almost an art at home and in the field, one that he couldn’t brag about for fear of letting the cat out of the bag.
Not that he was the only one putting in the effort to do this, but there were not a lot of hunters who went the extra mile to search out those little spots. As a result, he came to find many locations that he could access via a section corner, maybe a fence corner off a county road or some topographical landmark that could tell a tale of exactly where he was, no GPS with pinpoint location yet in existence.
After this came corner-hopping, which he was doing before he even knew what it was. Not to say that there weren’t times when he had some uncomfortable conversations with landowners or even more so with outfitters as to what was legal access or not. Finally came the passing of the law that ended his corner-hopping days.
When GPS came into the picture, my dad was stubborn about it. He thought that technology didn’t belong in the hunting field. He made my brother and I learn how to use a compass and read topo maps. He wasn’t about to give in on the GPS thing. Finally, I convinced him that the GPS would be a helpful tool. He has come to rely on the GPS as well as enjoy and appreciate it. Not to say that it isn’t especially frustrating when you start the morning with three bars of battery life (that aren’t really there) and, come mid-morning, you check your location on the GPS only to find the battery died… but we still accept its value. Because Dad used to spend hours at home studying maps and even more time in the field finding those certain spots, we had places to hunt that the average hunter never knew about. For years, he could slip in and out of places and have quality hunts all to himself. That day is virtually over. Now anyone with a GPS can find those public parcels and know the boundaries all around. More and more hunters are running the fence lines, and there’s not much sacred ground anymore.
All this is not a bad thing for the average hunter, but for us it took away an advantage we long enjoyed. With many secrets gone, we use the GPS as another tool in the bag to help be more specific in the areas that we hunt. This is a good tool, and a very important one, considering it’s even more critical today to know where you are and equally important to know where you should not be. It allows precision hunting in areas without fences and makes finding spots in the dark, as well as navigating back to kills, a heck of a lot easier. While many places are now overrun, we have managed, with the help of the GPS, to find new places that we hadn’t before had the confidence to access, not entirely positive of boundaries. Harvesting an animal on private property without permission is a mistake no hunter wants to make, and GPS is a great way to prevent that from happening. It’s baffling how often people are trespassing or hunting and they don’t even know where they are. Some of that may be due to the eroding of hunter ethics that we’re sadly starting to see.
Another important part of the hunt that also ties to GPS is to know your regulations. Not only do we read the regulations cover to cover every year, we also carry a copy with us all hunting season. We don’t carry it in the backpack, but it’s certainly in the truck. On any given day one can hunt multiple districts that all have different harvest requirements. In many locations a highway, county road, creek, river, or county line can be a district boundary, and the harvest specifications can be different just a stone throw away.
Here’s another way GPS will help keep you out of trouble: There are a number of chips from different providers that can display hunting districts for deer and elk or even antelope, as well as landownership. I have not yet seen a chip that includes a detail for the harvest specifics for any certain district, but that may be just a matter of time.
Long story short, the use of GPS has changed the hunting game in many ways. Who knows what changes the future will bring? Nonetheless, we pack and use the entire bag of Dad’s maps every time we go on a hunting trip, especially for planning purposes — GPS or not.
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