Muley Hunter

It looks like I need to explain a bit more.

I scout a lot. Now that i'm retired I scout at least 200 days a year, and then just hike known areas another 100 days. I love being in the mountains.

When I go to a new area I like to find a lot of new areas, and different ways into them. They're mostly wildlife areas, and it's rare i'll ever see anybody else. I'll go in and out the same way so i'll know how it looks in both directions. I use the tape at first to keep from getting lost. In time I can tie them together , and make a loop, but I need to know my way back on any of the routes to recognize i'm on a route that I know. It always look different coming back than it does going in. If I don't take enough trips back the way I went in. I lose track of where I am.

At some point I can tie the whole area together, and I know where I am, and how to get back no matter where I am. I only use the tape during this process of learning the area. I don't hang tape during the hunting seasons. By then I don't need it.

Right or wrong. That's how I do it, and it's never failed me. I don't want to depend on an electronic device to keep me safe. They can fail. Getting my boots dirty, and learning the area can't fail on me.

alleyyooper

In Michigan if you used plastic flagging to mark a trail you would have close to a thousand hunters show up at your deer blind a day.

In the UPPER I learned to carry two compasses and when y0ou didn't belive the readding you seen walk 10 feet and take another readding. Iron ore can raise cane with a compass.
today I carry a GPS by Garmin. Has gotten me off Lake Huron in a solid fog once and out of the deep woods during a blizzard several times.

Al

Muley Hunter

Which is why I wouldn't flag during hunting season, or even near it. I'm flagging now. I won't be in a few weeks. Most hunters don't like hunting the timber. It's all I do. I don't see other hunters very often.

Been doing this for 60 years with no problems.


The majority don't want to deal with this. I love it, but it's easy to get lost.

ronlaughlin

Suit yourself. Just so you know, and understand, and with no reflection on you; using my gps i could walk into that spot for the first time, get my boots muddy, and know the elevation, the time of sunrise, sunset, whether the land was deeded land, or government owned. The gps would tell me where the trails were, the cliffs, the springs, and creeks. It wouldn't take so very long to find the wallows, benches, and hidey holes. When i left there there would be no plastic tape tied to them tree.

Muley Hunter

Doing it the easy way has never been my style, or the style that my dad taught me.

To me it's part of hunting.

I was born 150 years too late. I try and hang on to old way as much as I can. I'm amazed that i'm letting myself shoot an inline, but that's due to horrible eyesight, and my refusal to put a scope on a Hawken.

Omega45

Work smarter, not harder. Some will just never understand.

Muley Hunter

Understanding goes both ways. Why not understand the way I do it?

It keeps me connected with my dad in my hunts.

1874sharpsshooter

you probably spent more on flagging tape than a GPS then. And even if you hauled it out of the woods a fistfull at a time, sooner or later it ended up in the landfill. Hopefully in another 60 years it will decompose.

bronko22000

We understand Muley. And its not that using a GPS or map and compass for that matter is the easy way. Its just smarter. Look at it this way. Instead of carrying a roll of tape with you and tying it on a branch every so often, you just get out of your vehicle, set the location of it (a way point) and go - any direction any distance. And when you want to come back you just bring up the way point and head to your truck. You don't have to stare at the GPS all the time. Just glance at it every so often to be sure you're going in the right direction. Of course if you're technically challenged then you have aproblem.
But I'm sure there are a lot of hunters like me who pull down those strips of flagging on public land every time I see them. So I'd hate to see you get lost if you're in my neck of the woods. As far as I'm concerned its a form of littering. And I would bet your daddy would have loved to have a GPS if given a chance to see what they were capable of.

1874sharpsshooter

D'ont like high tech, Don't like red neck.
how's that song go-- "stuck in the middle again"