Arizona Hunting Club & Outdoor Adventure Group

Learning How to Scout with a
Global Positioning System (GPS) Unit

No one should venture very far into the woods without a Global Positioning System (GPS) handheld unit. They cost under a $100 and make it almost impossible to get lost in the woods or remember where you parked the ATV or a downed big game animal. Just make sure you bring plenty of spare batteries.

There are several ways that I use a GPS. First, when camping, I always mark the spot where we are camped so that regardless of how far we hike or drive an ATV, I always know how far from camp we are. Same thing applies when I park the quad before exploring a hot game trail. Then as I wander around in the forest, I also mark a ton of different things that I discover such as creek bed puddles, game trails with rubs/scrapes or fresh bedding areas.

Marking these various locations is known as marking or setting a waypoint. Waypoints are stored in a database on the GPS unit. I use a special system to name my waypoints, which takes a little extra time, but pays off big time when you are in the woods trying to connect the dots.

Waypoints can be stored in many different formats. My favorites is UTM format, because that is how most forest quadrangle maps are marked. I can look at my GPS and then at the map and know exactly where I am located. The second format I like to use is degree and minutes. Most maps are gridded using one of both of these types of bearings.

I like to plan my scouting trips ahead of time and use several different tools to paint a picture of the areas I want to explore.

I start with paper quadrangle maps because they are easy to draw on. I draw blue circles around tanks, draw red lines with arrows through funnels, draws and saddles and draw green squares on benches, staging areas, bedding areas and feeding areas. I also use black crosshatch to scratch out all areas that are located within 1/4 mile of the road or where people like to camp on a regular basis.

After marking up the paper map, I then pull up the same quadrangle map on my topographic mapping software. I use the software to find the exact coordinates of the places I want to explore. Sometimes, I will even create a route, which takes me to the spots I want in a specific sequence. However, I usually end up walking a different path once I get into the woods because you can actually see routes that animals take, and then adjust your scouting pattern to cover everything that you had initially started out to discover.

Satellite aerial photos are great for locating funnels. Funnels are a wooded line of cover along fence lines, creek bed drainages or the edge of a forest that animals like to use to hide their movements when they travel from core bedding areas to food and water. I use the satellite photos to find these areas, then lookup their coordinates on the topo software, then program the coordinates or waypoints into my GPS.

Once I have marked up an area and think I know where I will be hunting and what I will be looking for I use some new Internet tools called 3D terrain mapping programs. I literally hike thousands and thousands of miles using these programs.

They basically allow you to fly over an area, zoom in, spin the map 360 degrees to look at things from different angles and allow you to tilt the map up or down to show elevation. 3D maps are great tools for guessing what routes animals will take from one place to the next.

This may sound like a lot of work, but it is actually a lot of fun. Once you are in the woods, it gives you great perspective because you don't have to guess what is over the next hill, you know. And, after creating all the waypoints on software computer program, you can download them to the GPS unit, which is a heck of a lot faster than manually entering them into the unit.

My favorite things to scout are stock tanks. Stocks tanks in Arizona are the traffic exchanges for all animal highways in the forest. There is easier to do to find animals than walking in a zig-zag circle around a stock tank, using your GPS to stay within a quarter of a mile.

As you walk, you will usually find game trails leading to the bedding areas and pastures that you should already have entered into your GPS. If so, you keep glancing at the GPS while walking around the tank and look for areas between the draws, drainages and saddles that will make good chokepoints where you can ambush animals on their way to get a drink.

With a GPS unit, you will always know where the best benches are located on the tallest hills nearby that animals like to use for bedding areas. You'll also know where the majority of the secluded feeding areas will be.

One secret to finding the best green grass is to monitor the fire reports in the off season. Burn areas are hot areas for green grass 1-5 years after a burn. Small burns are better than big ones because they create protected micro pastures that get lots of sun, but remain hidden from predators. Always GPS 5-10 acre meadows in the woods that are full of green grass and flowering plants.

To keep track of the millions of waypoints in my GPS, I assign codes that look like this:

• 22n-tnk001
• 6as-trl001
• 5b-sad001

The first segment is the name of the hunting unit. The waypoints above reference Hunt Unit 22 North, Hunt Unit 6A South and Hunt Unit 5B. The second portion describes what kind of waypoint it is and the number it is on my list. Here is a list the typical waypoints that I use when I hunt:

Camping and Parking Waypoints

• cmp = camp
• prk = parking spot

Water Waypoints

• crk = creek
• riv = river
• rx = river crossing
• spr = spring
• lak = lake
• pud = puddle

Fenceline Waypoints

• gat = gate
• fen = fence
• edg = breakline edge of forest
• fun = funnel
• chk = chokepoints for ambushing animals

Feeding Area Waypoints

• pst = pasture
• grn = green grass or green forage
• brn = burn area
• ic = inside corner
• fin = finger of grass that juts into the woods
• oak = oak trees
• asp = aspen trees
• frt = fruit trees
• ber = berries

Ridgeline Waypoints

• rdg = ridge
• pnt = point
• ben = bench
• sad = saddle

Game Trail Waypoints

• trl = trail
• dt = deer trail
• et = elk trail
• tt = turkey trail
• rub = rub/scrape
• hub = game trail hub
• stg = staging area
• grz = grazing area

Bedding Area Waypoints

• eb = elk bedding area
• db = deer bedding area
• tr = turkey roost