HuntingBC Champ
I read a story about a trapper who was trapping on someone else's trap line and a co plane came in to check him out he took off into the bush and got turned around and showed up on the highway many hundred miles away a few months later. He said he was never lost just took a wrong turn.
torque-snorter
good ol' albert it almost sounds like.Originally Posted by rides bike to work
but it was mounties coming to talk to him.
HuntingBC Champ
I can't speak for other gadgets but my Garmin 60cxs GPS always locks on the satellites no matter how thick the canopy is. I don't go into the bush without it but yet realize that it can fail, so I always carry a map and compass as well.
My 2 brothers and I were lost one time. That was over 30 years ago when I was only 17. My brothers were not much older. We crossed a river with our dirt bikes and traveled up an old logging road into a large remote tract of crown land until the road ended. From there we navigated by map and compass through the bush checking out various beaver ponds while scouting for the upcoming moose season. After traveling for a couple of hours we came across a new logging road which came in from the other side. It wasn't on our map and we had no idea it was there.
There were moose tracks all over the road and the travel was much easier, so we decided to just follow the road for a while. Since the road didn't go in a straight direction, after a while we ended up losing our position on the map. By this time it was starting to get late in the day so we wanted to head back to where we left our bikes. The problem was that since we no longer knew our exact location, we couldn't calculate the proper bearing to follow, so all we could do is go in the direction we thought it was. Remember this was before the GPS was invented.
We just kept trudging along in that direction through the bush, not recognizing a single landmark. It started to get dark, so we had no choice but to spend the night and it was a cold one. When we left home we thought it was just going to be a day trip, so we never had any kind of camp with us. We gathered firewood and built a fire which we slept beside, but we really didn't sleep. It was mid October and very cold so the side facing the fire was warm while the other side was freezing.
Up to this point, the whole being lost part of the experience was kind of scarey. When you don't know where you are and you're in a vast wilderness area, you start thinking about worse case scenarios, like maybe you're not anywhere that you think and you are and are heading way off from where you think you're heading. You're also feeling pretty uncomfortable because you're out of food and water. Even at our ages, we had lots of outdoor experience so were able to keep our cool and not panic.
The next morning we continued on in the direction we thought we should go. After a while we ran across a high ridge so climbed it to have a look around. We viewed the lay of the land and compared it to our map. We decided that we must be on a certain ridge shown on the map. Looking across the valley, there were features that looked like a river bed, hopefully the one we had crossed the day before on our way in. It seemed at that point that we had hope. We triangulated bearings from our ridge to two other ridges on the map and were able to pinpoint what we thought was our exact location. Once we did that, we set a bearing. We followed that bearing and were able to make it to our bikes. What a relief!
After that experience, it took me a long time to become comfortable being in new territory when it was starting to get dark. What the whole experience has taught me is to always keep track of where you are on the map, no matter what. Being lazy can have very bad consequences.
Bushwhacker
Sure, occasionally it can be many miles before you hit anything, but more often than not its a shorter distance before running into something..I'm saying if your absolutely stumped, and going in one direction is better than doing circles, usually..and if you hit a logging road, I find going down is almost always the best idea, and heading into the fork (always into the main road from where the two roads converge) will 99% of the time get you back to civilization of some sort, in my area anyway..just my observations..
But if people know generally where you are, and when you were supposed to be back, Ya staying put can be the best idea for sure..
Member
Been turned around chasing deer on an 800 acre farm with a river on one end and main road on the other. I panicked when I realized I had no clue where I was. My old Garmin 12xl couldn't pickup a signal. Started running and luckily found a dead fall I recognized on the way in. Shitty feeling for sure and I've never forgotten how I reacted and have always told myself to never do that again.
I now carry my phone with an offline gps app, my Garmin Oregon 450, my bushnell trackback gps, my inreach sat communicator and a compass and search and rescue map. Call it overkill, I call it redundancy for a guy who hunts alone 99% of the time and who has a wife he likes and kids to raise. I also flag a lot as I hike. The first three units mentioned all get a way point set prior to leaving the truck/quad unless I hop out and chase something, in which case the Oregon is on already in a belt holster.
Mike
Blacktail Nut
Bushwhacker
^^^hey all good ideas there Mike, not overkill at all...getting lost sucks..
Old man on a hill
I have been "directionally challenged" a couple of times but always had a method to get myself sorted out.
My worst event though was a little different. I had hiked into a spot that I had been to dozens of times and I knew exactly where I was. The fog rolled in and I couldn't see 10' in front of me. As soon as I started back out in any direction I was disoriented. No sun, no path, no nothing! When you can only see 4 or 5 trees at a time they all start to look the same. I did have a compass and a GPS with me and it's the only real time that I actually needed to put my faith in them. Like I say, I had been there many times before and many since but the fog made it an entirely different place.
If an animal is going to die so that I might live, the least I can do is perform the unsavoury deed myself.
He/She/They/Them
I got lost in the Chehalis once. It took me three hours to find my way out. A buddy took me there once and i mapped the path but my phone died.
So i wandered around for hours looking for a way out.
A button compass helpe me figure where I need to go but the area was nasty that it wasn't possible to always keep your bearing.
I always carry a little button compass now and make sure you always take it off any gadgets that may influence the needle.
1. Human over population
2. Government burden and overreach
Swollen Member
We and a bud walked 60 yards off the road to gut out and retrieve his Bear he shot. By the time we were finished it was pitch black. Couldn't see anything. Trusted my barrings and got us back to the road to get the quads. There certainly was few ohoh what have we done moments there.
Senior Member
Actually easier then one might think when a number of factors come into play. Barring stupidity, even being well prepared and GPS will not save you in a perfect storm. In a forest with a thick canopy sometimes even the most sophisticated of GPSs cannot obtain a signal, add fog to the equation or blinding snow and your hooped.
Once out out sheep hunting I had to take go way around a mountain to return to camp because it had rained so hard it made the way we came absolutely impassable due to slippery terrain, took 2 hours longer then anticipated, and although not lost didn't end up back at camp until well after dark.
I live in the North Yukon and was just out yesturday hunting on a mountain, the fog came in out of nowhere and when it lifted the light was so flat you couldn't see any contour in the snow, couldn't distinguish between flat ground and a 15 ft rolling drop off. The fog developed so fast that we didn't even have a chance to react or to reposition, it was perfectly clear before hand.
IMO nothing replaces a compass and some common sense.
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