Hunt Planning 201 – Dare to Prepare: Maps

What now? You received notice that you won your hard-fought big game tag or you know you will get your over-the-counter (OTC) permit. Nothing left to do but count down the days until the hunt, yeah? Well, this is sure an option, and it really depends on what you hope to get out of your hunt. For the purposes of this discussion, I’m going to assume you have goals. Those goals could involve finding an old mature trophy buck and attempting to outwit him or they may include peace and solitude, not an easy feat with your OTC tag by the way!

The premise of this discussion is you would like to find an older, mature, possibly even trophy animal that has matched wits with many hunters before you and come out on top, every time. Hunt planning 101 is researching what tag unit you are hoping for. The 102-level discussion is all about post-tag, pre-hunt preparation, and we will focus on preparing the logistics of the hunt itself.

I start by understanding the quota, or how many hunters are likely going to be in the field in your area. If it is OTC, then assume it will be a lot. If it is a special or controlled hunt, the state will publish those numbers for you to peruse. More hunters equals more pressure equals more pitfalls and uncertainty in the field. My first order of business is to figure out where the other hunters won’t be.

The other hunters will be on roads or near roads. They will often also be headed for the sexiest country, such as big timber, big mountains, and known productive areas. This is what you need to avoid. Assuming you don’t have access to horses, mules, or llamas, you only have you to count on. Many hunters use Google Earth to plan their hunt, and that is one heck of a resource; however, to move to the planning 201 course, you need to obtain a free account on ESRI’s www.arcgis.com site. You can also go old-school with simple 1:100,000 and 1:24,000 USGS maps, but I’ll tell you why I like ESRI so much.

Whether you use ArcGIS or maps, your very first step is to isolate areas that have no roads. On a map, take a colored pencil and draw a line some distance from the nearest road and act like you are doing that whole motorcycle-thing from TRON (dating myself, I know). Trace out your line so it never crosses a road, and it will eventually circle back to your starting point, creating a closed loop some like to call a polygon. That polygon potentially represents what I call a “micro-wilderness”, and within that area there are no roads! Duh.

The other hunters will be on roads or near roads.

You can do the same thing in ArcGIS, creating a digital polygon. The beauty of ArcGIS is you can alternate back and forth between the USGS map and a Bing/Google satellite image to make sure some goofy hunter hasn’t built a 4-wheeler road where the map shows none exist. The satellite image doesn’t lie. I’m not going into an ArcGIS tutorial here, but the steps so far are: 1) get your free account, 2) select a satellite-image base map, 3) search for and add the USGS topo layer to your custom map, and 4) start making polygons. That is really it.

Your next step will be to look at the aerial imagery to see where the best trees, brush, and forage might be. If you want, you can circle those with different colored polygons as well. You can also start putting water sources on the map, particularly if you are hunting in more arid regions of the world. You can put property boundaries, unit boundaries, trails, or whatever feature you deem important enough to draw on your ArcGIS map. Don’t forget to save it frequently, and pick a name that makes sense to you.

Often I will also open Google Earth for the same locations, to get a better 3-D sense of what is going on and to have a different photograph. The point here is to figure out first where it is difficult for people without computers to imagine a hunt, and then from that set of locations to find appropriate cover, food, and water that will make it home, sweet home for your quarry. Don’t forget that most folks hunt increasingly from very near the roads. If you are willing to take a half-mile hike, often you can find that deer, antelope, or elk just over the next ridge where others lacking the imagination or work ethic will not venture.

You will have to ground-truth your research. After you’ve developed your hunting area micro-wildernesses, go out and take a look at a handful of them way before season starts. Try to catch representatives of the majority of vegetation types so you can go back to your computer with that info in hand to refine your prospects. Then develop your top five or ten micro-wilderness hunts and go forth and conquer.

I can honestly say that I spend at least as much time on maps, Google Earth, and ArcGIS as I do in the field. This is because I have a great sense of adventure when I am looking at maps and images. It is my chance to outwit the other hunters and find some little diamond-in-the-rough of a hunting spot, and I have a blast doing it. This change in technique over the past eight or so years has brought my family two nice Boone and Crockett trophies in an 89-inch net toad pronghorn and a 238 2/8-inch gross mule deer monster. It has also kept our freezer full and our hunting crew in smiles and back-slaps.

I hope to develop a video series to tutor you on the finer points of this technique. I’ve been doing it for at least eight, or maybe even a few more years. I have fun doing it, so it isn’t drudgery for me. Reach out to me for tips and I’ll help as I can, until I get the video series up and running.