marking trails long term without making it noticable to other people.

[Hunter Fishman]

I thought this would be a perfect place to discuss this.
I have been hiking at least once a week for almost a year & a half now.
If I miss a day believe me, I make up for it eventualy.
Scouting, shed hunting, learning the turrain, just being out in gods country.

I only missed 2 days of hiking out of this whole year but went a few times other weeks.
we dont get much snow & when we do I still go out where I still have access.
You guessed it! no girlfriend or wife. I dont have the patience.


I want to share & get some opinions on ways to mark the places, trails & paths I have been so I can tell if I have been there & help myself remember that spot & whats in that area.

Now,
 ((OTHER THAN)) a GPS, map, marking tape or any new age technoledgy, what are ways to mark trails in all sorts of areas like bush mazes,tree cover,open country or any area you could possibly go that other people wont notice & if they do, they wont think it was man made or understand what it means or how to follow it?

I was thinking of making my own map legend or marking guide with symbols that only I will understand
to carve in trees, stack rocks in certain configurations, break limbs on bushes high,low,or on a certain side of a bush to have different meaning.

Do you have any other suggestions or ideas of how to mark these places,trails & areas without them being detected by other people?

I saw a show a while back about high country treasure hunters in Colorado that discover markings on the aspens they fallow that tells a story of the area or marks somthing near to that area.

I thought this was very interesting & want to do the same thing in my area. The hunting pressure in my area is very high but nobody currently knows the land like I do. I dont want to educate hunters in my zone of my knoledge.

With an over grown blanketed forest like where I hunt, it is a maze of realy dense scrub oak, manzanita & about a billion other plants, dead falls cliffs & trenches, that makes it very difficult to navigate & find your way through.

I dont want to alert other hunters of my heavy presents in certain areas.
Over all I have a 7x15 mile area that I go to regularly & hike in from different directions so I have allot af land to cover & areas to mark. It ranges from 4,000 ft in elevation down to around 1,500- 2,000 ft. above sea level. Just when I think I have been everywhere on this mt. I find new areas that I have walked past hundreds of times.

On google earth, I have this area so taged up with place markers that I cant even see 30% of the land when I zoom in to view it.
This is another reason why I need a way to physicaly mark trails, paths & specific locations to have as a reminder of the info of that specific area.
The more high tech stuff I use in the field, the less I enjoy my hunt. I am a very simple traditional person
& dont like complicating things or becoming dependant on technoledgy.

[Yankee1]

Hi
  People have been marking trails for a long time using rocks.
Sometimes it three rocks in a line, other times its one rock on top of another rock. There are many ways to configure them.  You could make your own system that only you would understand. There is a system used called Paul notes that is used by the military such as the special forces. They write down the direction and speed and how many steps they take to get somewhere in a notebook. Its an involved method but it works for special purposes. You can also blaze a trail in such a manner that only you can read it.
                                          Yankee1

[Hunter Fishman]

I have a few ideas but nothing that will work in most cases.

every 10 ft-30 yards I need a way to visably mark somthing trail side Thats not going to be knocked over or moved by any wildlife that uses these trails.

I was thinking of slash marks in a non obviouse manor on trees or branches in such a way that it wouldnt even be noticable.
I was very surprised this year to find out how unaware most hunters are to the areas they hunt & the capabilities of the animal they hunt.
All year I spent hunting deer,following them, scouting, studying patterns, But it was when the season opened That I began to hunt people, following there movements, noting where they go & studying their patterns. It tought me more than I imagined!
 I found out that people commonly follow each others foot steps on public land & stay on roads & bike/hiking trails.

So if I mark an obvious trail, It will be followed by others.

[squirrellluck]

If its as thick as you say just tie a knot in a small sapling ever so often. Do it gently and it will continue to grow. Very few will notice.

[Hunter Fishman]

I am having a heck of a time trying to figure out a system that will work for me. Its thick but everything is mostly what I think to be scrub oak. It has somewhat round pokey edged leaves but grows in big bushes.
I couldnt tie a knot on anything without stripping the branch first which would be visable to others.
I'll keep it in mind, Theres a few spots where I could use this.
I will post a few pics in a couple days of just how thick it is & what kind of bushes I have to fight with every week.
Just imagine how thick the woods would be if there were no inhabitance of people & very very very few animals. without anything there to maintain a path, the plants grow together within each others branches weaving a barrier choking out the forest.We havent had a wild fire in......WAY TOO  LONG!
 
have you ever been out in the woods & knew you were running out of light fast & you had to get out of there imediatly! so you dont know your way out but you know the direction you need to go so you start crashing thu the bushes, branches wipping you in the face, your pockets & shoes fill up with twigs,sticks,leaves & bugs, you keep having to turn around & back track then find another way thru...
Thats an understatment of how bad it is! seriously, & macheti or even a chainsaw would be usless here.
only hand pruners work.
I have learned to cope with it. If the deer like it, then I like it.

[kyhareraiser]

ere's one i do  and it not only makes my trail visible by me in the daylight ,it will work in the dark too.  here goes,,,every area ,most of the time has dead logs (4 to 5" round) or other sticks as well.i take my time and make a line to my stand using the dead logs .i mix the sizes up but most of the time i start and end with the 4 to 5 " and several inbetween.i do this as i'm scouting or shed hunting and by next season leaves have fallen arround them making them look natural and the good sized ones won't rot away in one season. on dry mornings or on snowcapped mornigs the trail sticks out to you like a sore thumb even b4 daylight,, but to everyone else ,just looks like mother -nature's just taking toll on the trees. hope this helps

[Hunter Fishman]

I will post a few pics in a couple days of just how thick it is & what kind of bushes I have to fight with every week.
Just imagine how thick the woods would be if there were no inhabitance of people & very very very few animals. without anything there to maintain a path, the plants grow together within each others branches weaving a barrier choking out the forest.We havent had a wild fire in......WAY TOO FRICKIN LONG!

heres the pics
These first 3 pics were taken on a deer trail from the same spot. front, left & right, kneeling down in order to show how dense the timber shrubs grow together & inner twine. There about 10 ft high shrubs so theres no seeing over it.
Theres no way for a person to get through quietly or without hand pruners. I dont know how deer do it.
being 3 & 1/2 ft tall helps them I'm sure.





Its blanketed like this all over A good 90% of huntable public land.
 

this is one main hill side I want to mark trails on & is thick with scrub oak, buck brush, tall pine & a TON of big live oak.


NOW YALL SEE WHAT IM UP AGAINST?

Have any of you seen forest this thick?
now that you have seen pics I'm realy interested in what some of you have to say about it.

[Old Fart]

That's some pretty countryside there.
I understand now why you're making trails.
Wish I lived somewhere like that.

[Hunter Fishman]

Thats southern California forest for ya!
I had to repost the first 3 pics, they got deleted. those are the most defining pics.
So, whats your thoughts now that you see what conditions I hunt in?
I have the advantage of creating trails for deer to more easily use but they still travel through the thick stuff out of habbit or instinct. The thicket is where I find the most dead deer because they get cornered so easily or get tangled up & get stuck.

[Old Fart]

I live in central Okla. in a part of the state they call the cross timbers.
There's places so thick I don't know how the snakes make it through.
But you'll see deer stepping out of it.
They tend to like places with lots of cover, like in your pictures.

[Graybeard]

Back when I hunted more I chose such thick areas as my primary hunting spots. It was my experience that even on public land most hunters will not enter into such thickets. Deer love them and have no trouble moving thru them. The dead deer you find there are likely animals wounded and lost by hunters who would not or could not follow them into the thicket.

What I did in those now long ago days was to do nothing or as little as I could for the first 50' or so off any road or major trail that hunters would definitely be using. In my case that was most often old logging roads. I'd put something like a bright eye tack in a tree near where I wanted to enter but not right at it so that in the morning darkness I could see the tack with my flashlight and know I was near so as to look for whatever particular bush, rock or whatever I knew was where my path began. I'd then slip thru that 50' or so of thicket with no trail marked and at the end of it totally invisible to anyone on the logging road I'd begin to clear my trail.

I used brush loppers in the same way you do hand pruners to clear my trails. I cleared them nice and wide so I could move thru even in darkness without worrying about a limb or stick in the eye. Deer will use such trails over trails they have made once they find them. I used that to my advantage as well. In those days I mostly hunted from treestands and I'd run trails out in front of a nice tree for me to climb way back out in the thick stuff that other hunters didn't travel. From my treestand perch I was able to see several such trails around me and the other hunters would run the deer into the thick places as they move around the more open ground. The deer came right to me along my trails and I'd be able to see them from my carefully selected treestand location.

So long as I didn't clear or mark anything within 50' or so of easy walking I found it rare any other hunter would find my cleared and marked trails.

[Hunter Fishman]

That's some pretty countryside there.
Wish I lived somewhere like that.

no you dont... If the woods held a larger deer population then maybe but the timber being so thick & over grown with old vegitation, Its lacks nutrition & it prevents the deer from sustaining a larger healthy heard.

The dead deer you find there are likely animals wounded and lost by hunters who would not or could not follow them into the thicket.

I am thinking more along the lines of coyotes or mt. lions. Unless we have a (shoot & leave for dead) poaching problem then preditors is definatly the cause. Most were found well on to the game refuge & far back in the brush usualy at a dead end where the brush chokes out ,just like the places you say hunters dont travel.
The forest is even thicker on the refuge where there is no human activity other than bike trails & a single road right through the middle only used by those who have keys to the gates like forest service & property owners. Thats where I am finding most of the dead deer. I find allot of sheds here too because it doesnt get attention from hunters unless they are locals who know the area well enough or live on the property amongst the refuge.
They hunt the refuge all they want around their property because who's there to stop em? nobody!
I have found 5-7 year old sheds here also, so I know I am the only one who intentionaly shed hunts this area.
A few mt bikers might cross pathes with a shed & stop to pick it up or look for the other side but dont stray far from their bikes. so most surrounding areas is fair game.

[Rex in OTZ]

Compass heading, time and distance.
Arctic Coastal Plain.

[picturerock]

When I read your post it reminded me of the trail to my gold prospecting area in Mariposa county.  Looks very similar to your country, and yes, if you want to travel through this sort of country, better be ready to get down on your hands and knees and crawl awhile.

[Pat/Rick]

I often carried hand clippers/pruning shears with me when I hunt. Up north of you in Wa we run into vine maple and slide alder that gets very thick as well.Even in thick stuff I use binoculars alot get on one knee and look for legs and lighter belly shades. I have never really marked trails though, I typically hunted closed roads and trails/skid roads. Alot of guys just "road hunt" here and won't get very far from the road, I usually didn't start a trail until about 50ft or so  into the brush.  The "log method" sounds like a good one, I have at times used sticks or rocks to mark where I leave a trail or bushwacked through a spot. pick a pattern with your buddies, one of you use two rocks stacked with a third off to the side to show direction of travel, another use three rocks,  or two rocks and a stick. Or if by your self a set of rocks for each trail in a pattern that only you know the meaning. Use natural materials. Have fun and good luck!

[buck460XVR]

Most areas of public land open to hunting/hiking prohibit the cutting or trimming of any trees or vegetation. Just sayin'.

[Doug B.]

If its as thick as you say just tie a knot in a small sapling ever so often. Do it gently and it will continue to grow. Very few will notice.

Good tip!

I like this, and imagine, it's not illegal............I think (?).