The worst I've ever been disoriented in the mountains was in Montana's bitterroot range in November.

I was in a foot and a half of snow and temperatures were quickly dropping below zero and it was

getting late. I was guiding at the time I was a young elk guide. My client and I were a solid 4.5 to 5 miles from camp, and the interesting thing

was I was positive. I knew where I was and I knew where I was going and how to get there.

Trouble is, a series of lights far off in the distance appeared on the wrong side. They were on my left and they should have been on my right.

There was a town way off through the mountains and valleys there that you could see the lights up as darkness fell.

And I was 180 degrees off. We were going the wrong direction on that ridge. Up to that point in my life I'd never had an

electronic to navigate by. My client had one of the early GPS's and that got us back to camp, got us turned around, got me back to where I was recognizing landmarks and so forth and we got to camp just fine.

But if he hadn't had that, we would have spent the night out.

I think we'd have survived, we'd have been okay, we might have had some frostbite or whatnot but that was

a town where I realized that multiple types of navigation tools and navigating savvy knowledge, wisdom can make a difference.

Welcome to the show today folks. I'm Joseph on Benedict and this is

the backcountry hunting podcast and we're going to talk about some of the top

backcountry navigation tools that are available to each of us.

Now let's start from the beginning, right, way back when,

the backcountry hunters and explorers that were opening this country up didn't have even maps right they were drawing the maps they had observation they had experience and they had a

a sense of direction and these are all skills that are still critical to

possess to develop to actively engage in using because otherwise they kind of go

dormant it's an easy crutch to fall back on your GPS device, your smartphone, whatever the case is today,

but you shouldn't do that. You should, I mean those things as long as you understand

the program and you get connection, they work, right? Your inborn sense of direction and your ability to observe and retain, those things, they need exercise, they need exercise, they need to be used and then they develop.

So here's a few tips that can help you with that.

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