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Getting Lost. I sure feared this when I first started hunting. It can be a terrifying thing even to an older person. Lots of stories in magazines and books, and it can be a situation where someone dies too. Especially if hunting or hiking a true, large wilderness area. ~~~~ one really memorable getting lost incident for me as a young teenager involved hunting creek bottoms that had no landmarks in sight. At first, I only knew to stay within areas that I totally recognized anyway, staying close to a slough. I somehow got turned around and felt true panic for a while till it got straightened out. It was a real revelation to hunt with a buddy one day who knew how to navigate out of an area when lost, just by knowing, say, the main road ran north-south and we were west of it. A light really came on and oddly my dad, who was real good about most things never taught me this. Anyone else have stories?
Question by Elmer Fudd. Uploaded on October 12, 2009
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Answers (10)
Only that when i was little, my brother ditched me while taking a walk through the woods. He came back for me later, tho
My Dad never taught me that either. He taught me a lot about hunting, but never showed me how to navigate the woods. I learned to use landmarks, but had a rude awakening one day when I realized a logging project had taken down some of the really tall trees that I had used as landmarks in the past. Previous to this experience I never had a compass with me or knew how to use one.
That day my uncle told me: "As long as water flows downhill, you'll never be lost in these woods. Just follow a stream and eventually you'll either come to a road or the lake." We lived about a mile from Lake Champlain, so his point held true...all the stream in our hunting area cross the road I live on and dump into the lake. As I got older, I figured out how to navigate the woods pretty well using nothing more than a map and compass.
never have been lost...have been "turned around" but never anything that raised my bloodpressure any.Before I was old enough to carry a gun I was carrying a compass.These days I carry a GPS but still verify every now and then that its running true with my good old compass.
My Dad let me learn alot of stuff the hard way. I was 13, when I was a drive on a deer drive, ended up lost as hell. Had to fire my gun a couple of times to signal where I was at. Pretty funny now, but I was terrified after wandering aimlessly for over an hour.
I've been confused but never lost (yet). In the part of the country where I hunt, you're never disastrously far from some sort of road. In the first hunting grounds where I soloed as a kid, my dad told me that if I got turned around, "Just go east and you'll hit the railroad." He was right, and I could always find my way home from there.
I got a phone call at work one night my buddies (one of which knows these woods very well) out coon hunting got turned around in a patch of woods near my house. This patch of woods runs along a creek about 4 miles with a highway to the south,gravel to the north and a small town at either end only 6 miles apart east to west. I was stumped as to how they got lost but some of it is pretty thick and easy to get turned around in. Even so we all grew up in the area and hunted in it before. I got off work went home to get my spotlight to go find them and i could hear their hounds not to far behind my house. With a rainstorm coming in and the wind picking up like any good friend i waited a little bit(till it started raining)pointed my spotlight straight in the air and called their cell told them to come to the light. Turns out they weren't two football feilds away in an open hayfeild smack behind my house. The reason they got lost, dark wet windy got turned around so they looked at a compas and the compas was junk told them every direction but the right one. So to this day i still get to give them crap when they try and tell me which way we should be heading.
Speaking of compasses, I actually had one reverse polarity on me last spring. I use a topo map and a compass to get a good bearing when I hear a turkey gobble, and when I tried to line this one up, things were obviously wrong---I mean I could see the sun coming up and the compass was telling me that was west. I know the area I'm hunting real well, so I continued to use that compass (backwards) for three days and it resumed normal polarity. Maybe a Klingon mothership flew by too close, but now I can entertain real doubts when I'm not sure about the compass. It was a Silva compass, by the way.
I am always suspicious the compass needle is stuck. There is a certain way I like it to swing, then sort of swing back a bit, then I know it is "reading" it right.
Elmer, that was my first thought too, but that sucker's red half with the arrow on the end was pointed 180 opposite and swinging free, then, like I said, corrected itself days later. Either that or we had some sort of cosmic shift that was causing the sun to rise in the west for three days.
>that sucker's red half with the arrow
>on the end was pointed 180 opposite
doo-dee-doo-dah, doo-dee-doo-dah !!!
[music from the Twilight Zone]
I don't know enough about it to explain that. Some days my compass seems to get wierd too.
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never have been lost...have been "turned around" but never anything that raised my bloodpressure any.Before I was old enough to carry a gun I was carrying a compass.These days I carry a GPS but still verify every now and then that its running true with my good old compass.
Only that when i was little, my brother ditched me while taking a walk through the woods. He came back for me later, tho
My Dad never taught me that either. He taught me a lot about hunting, but never showed me how to navigate the woods. I learned to use landmarks, but had a rude awakening one day when I realized a logging project had taken down some of the really tall trees that I had used as landmarks in the past. Previous to this experience I never had a compass with me or knew how to use one.
That day my uncle told me: "As long as water flows downhill, you'll never be lost in these woods. Just follow a stream and eventually you'll either come to a road or the lake." We lived about a mile from Lake Champlain, so his point held true...all the stream in our hunting area cross the road I live on and dump into the lake. As I got older, I figured out how to navigate the woods pretty well using nothing more than a map and compass.
My Dad let me learn alot of stuff the hard way. I was 13, when I was a drive on a deer drive, ended up lost as hell. Had to fire my gun a couple of times to signal where I was at. Pretty funny now, but I was terrified after wandering aimlessly for over an hour.
I've been confused but never lost (yet). In the part of the country where I hunt, you're never disastrously far from some sort of road. In the first hunting grounds where I soloed as a kid, my dad told me that if I got turned around, "Just go east and you'll hit the railroad." He was right, and I could always find my way home from there.
I got a phone call at work one night my buddies (one of which knows these woods very well) out coon hunting got turned around in a patch of woods near my house. This patch of woods runs along a creek about 4 miles with a highway to the south,gravel to the north and a small town at either end only 6 miles apart east to west. I was stumped as to how they got lost but some of it is pretty thick and easy to get turned around in. Even so we all grew up in the area and hunted in it before. I got off work went home to get my spotlight to go find them and i could hear their hounds not to far behind my house. With a rainstorm coming in and the wind picking up like any good friend i waited a little bit(till it started raining)pointed my spotlight straight in the air and called their cell told them to come to the light. Turns out they weren't two football feilds away in an open hayfeild smack behind my house. The reason they got lost, dark wet windy got turned around so they looked at a compas and the compas was junk told them every direction but the right one. So to this day i still get to give them crap when they try and tell me which way we should be heading.
Speaking of compasses, I actually had one reverse polarity on me last spring. I use a topo map and a compass to get a good bearing when I hear a turkey gobble, and when I tried to line this one up, things were obviously wrong---I mean I could see the sun coming up and the compass was telling me that was west. I know the area I'm hunting real well, so I continued to use that compass (backwards) for three days and it resumed normal polarity. Maybe a Klingon mothership flew by too close, but now I can entertain real doubts when I'm not sure about the compass. It was a Silva compass, by the way.
I am always suspicious the compass needle is stuck. There is a certain way I like it to swing, then sort of swing back a bit, then I know it is "reading" it right.
>that sucker's red half with the arrow
>on the end was pointed 180 opposite
doo-dee-doo-dah, doo-dee-doo-dah !!!
[music from the Twilight Zone]
I don't know enough about it to explain that. Some days my compass seems to get wierd too.
Elmer, that was my first thought too, but that sucker's red half with the arrow on the end was pointed 180 opposite and swinging free, then, like I said, corrected itself days later. Either that or we had some sort of cosmic shift that was causing the sun to rise in the west for three days.
Post an Answer