Hunting Starts with Google Maps

January 30, 2009 by admin

Our Outdoors
Nick Simonson

There is so many uses for Google Maps as well as Google Earth for hunting and fishing

One winter night, as a young boy, I sat on the couch with my dad watching college hockey. I must have been about seven- or eight-years-old at the time. During the highlights of the first intermission, my dad turned and said to me “would you like to draw a map with me?”

A sample screen print from Google Maps shows how hunters can identify promising areas, and public land. In hindsight, it seems like an odd question, but at the time it sounded like a lot of fun. Dad drew the outline of the land mass on a blank sheet of white paper and I randomly placed some dots across the make-believe continent. We named each town and connected the dots with railroads, drew in the upside-down “Vs” for mountains and imagined what life was like in our imaginary world.

Strangely enough, when we were done, the borders of the land we created bore a striking resemblance to the old “blockhead” UND Fighting Sioux logo. From that time on, I have always enjoyed maps; and now, as the fall hunting seasons get into high gear, I’ve found another enjoyable map-making process that no outdoorsman should be without.

With the power of the internet, hunters can see incredibly accurate satellite views of their favorite hunting areas and new places they hope to explore. With recent advancements by the internet supersite Google (www.google.com), outdoors enthusiasts can customize satellite maps with lines, graphics and place markers to provide greater detail and notes on the landscape.

To get started, direct your web browser to the Google Maps homepage (www.maps.google.com). The first step is to register a free Google account by entering your email address and password. For security-minded folks this might be a bother, but it is a small price to pay once you get a grasp on all the customizable options the program has to offer. A click here, a term of agreement there, and your map making days have begun.

Once logged in, you will be able to zoom in and out on a satellite imagery map that depicts the terrain and makeup of the landscape. From there, you can identify roads, ridges, creeks, shelterbelts and many other natural and man-made landmarks. (Look just east of Valley City, ND for an a-maze-ing landscape feature.) Identifying your house or hunting land is just the start – using the tools under the “My Maps” section allows you to identify productive places, or mark out areas you would like to explore.

In conjunction with a PLOTS guide or a county plat book, the shape tool allows you to add some depth to the standard platting of quarters and sections. If an area is in PLOTS, is a WMA or is a place where you have permission to hunt, you can outline it using the shape tool and color-code it. By adjusting the transparency of the shape overlay, you can see the satellite rendering of the area under your color coding.

What minutia the plat book misses at the end of fire trails and gravel roads, the powerful satellite imagery of Google Maps picks up. Take logging trails and clear cuts in Minnesota’s state and national forests for example. Most Google Maps of the U.S. have clear photo depictions of the terrain down to 200 feet, showing every tree-claim and log landing that was standing at the time the photograph was taken, which in most cases was 2006. With the line tool, you can highlight trails that might lead to an old swamp buck or some ruffed grouse back in these lightly-tread woods, and provide yourself a map to reach outdoor nirvana and find your way back home.

By dropping a place marker at points of interest, or on areas where you’ve had successful hunts in the past, you can make notes as to what to expect in the future. There’s even an option to add photos of terrain, scenic views or landmarks. These options are icing on the cake for another sweet advancement in internet mapping technology.

The best part is, once you have established an account and added your highlights to the satellite rendering, you can keep your maps private, or share them with friends. In addition, they remain stored on the web for later editing and notation whenever you want, making Google Maps an even greater tool for supplementing your hunting journal.

With a color printer, you can enhance the detail of the atlases and plat books buried in the back of your pickup with some incredible satellite imagery that focuses on the places and features that are important to you and your successful hunting…in our outdoors.