Thirty dollars is lunch money.
I have to laugh a little when people say they will be hunting out West. I have been up and down the West from Mexico to Northern Alberta. The terrain varies from open dessert sky to big timber, and heavy oak canopy.
I was exposed to the original Yellow eTrex in Utah, Idaho, and Southern Oregon. I was impressed with it because the High Sensitive units where a few years down the road. There is a big difference in canopy in the canyon lands of Eastern Utah, the grass and pine vegetation of Eastern Montana, the Redwoods along the Smith River, in California, and the thick vegetation along the Pistol River in Southwestern Oregon once you get away from the beach.
My first gps was a Garmin eTrex Legend which had a basemap and 8MB of storage. Additional mapping software came later. The basemap over no basemap is a big asset. I have a fishfinder-GPS unit on my boat. It does not have a basemap. I also have a handheld mapping gps unit with Topo software loaded with me. These are manmade reservoirs’ and the adjacent topography continues on into the reservoirs and there is other POI (point of interest) information in the software that is of interest. I would not have known that there was an old bridge 100-foot below the surface if I did not have the Topo software.
I created a geocache that was to challenging for most people. It required a combination of mapping skills, reading skills, and gps skills. I used two gps units to obtain the LAT/LONG for the location. Both of them were pre-high sensitivity units, a Garmin Legend, and a Garmin 76C. Both units were loaded with Topo USA software which covered the area. Before publishing the location I field checked it by having a 12-yearold granddaughter find it. It was tough but she found it. Obtaining a satellite lock on the entire route was tricky. With the older receiver the best method was set still in an old road cut and let the gps get a lock.
This could have been a hunting problem, there was deer and bear sign in the area.
The cache was too tough so I pulled it. I have since return to the site with my gps units with high-sensitive receivers. No problem for the high-sensitivity unit.
A friend started going out geocaching with me. He had a Garmin Marine gps that he used on his sailboat in the Sea of Cortez. He was using a Garmin 72 which like the original yellow eTrex has no map. He is very good with it and he had found his way back to port with it. He quickly recognized the value of a mapping unit out in the woods and on the water. We were working a multi step cache were found clues in route to the cache. We both entered them in our units. His unit showed it was a mile away and the pointer point towards the cache. My unit showed it was a mile away, across the lake, near a stream flowing into the lake. It also showed a paved road on one side of the stream and a dirt road on the other. The cache was rather easy to find because it was in a triangle between the stream, the dirt road, and the lake. We found a number of caches that day and he did okay because he had many hours of experience using his unit out on the water.
Before breakfast the next morning he called me with a bunch of questions about mapping gps units, and where to buy. In a week his new unit was delivered and he has gotten a lot of use out of it. One morning a neighbor seen it hanging from his neck and later asked me if it was a heart monitor. The key with any gps is getting out and use it.
There was an article a couple years ago in Outdoor Life or Field and Stream about an elk hunter getting lost in Idaho. He survived but he had some gps issues. I believe some of those issues were caused from lack of experience. He was going to resolve that issue. I believe he had an original eTrex, and had a hard time getting a good satellite lock. A high sensitive, mapping gps might have made a difference. I applaud him for publishing his story. It may save a life.
The day I distrusted my gps I was wrong. I do not think gps units are always right, and maps do contain errors. I was out hunting a few hours from my jump off point. I was looking for deer, deer sign, and other critters. I pulled the gps out of the side pocket on my daypack and checked it. The mapping software showed an old logging road a half mile to the East. For some reason I could not get in into my mind that was correct. Clearly there had to be something going on in the heavens that were messing up the gps. I went to the POI Icon and checked the nearest ones. The gps appeared to be correct. A little light bulb went on, and I knew the gps was correct.
Last year I killed my buck early on our first day. For the next couple weeks I did what was needed to support my hunting partners. Any time spent in the woods for me is a bonus day. Early one morning we headed for a location known to me but not my hunting partners. On the way up the mountain I stopped and had my hunting partners create a waypoint on their gps units. I planned on returning to this location and parking the pickup there. Just before daylight we parked higher on the mountain and we reviewed a map before they started their hunt. We have done the same thing for fifty years without a problem, and without a gps. The difference is the comfort level of knowing your location in relationship to your thermos, and the bag of cookies in the pickup.
The price is not bad, but I recommend that you save your money and go for a little more. You can buy a refurbished Garmin Mapping gps with a one year factory warranty for a little more money. If it fails in a year they will repair it or replace it.
http://www.tigergps.com/refurbventurehc.html
