I'm pretty much the butt of the jokes when it comes to the UnGuided Outdoors crew. From being 5'6", having too many gadgets, being a geek, being the king of target panic, and having an OnX pin for everything.
Outside of being super useful with random political or economic facts, my obsession with OnX pins and mapping everything I come across seems to benefit us the most.
We started elk hunting some 10+ years ago, and at the time, I was using paper maps from a guy named David called "Hunt Data Maps." I remember coloring in those things like it was a coloring book. As time moved on, I started using a Garmin handheld GPS that had features to use a tracker and mark waypoints. I kept that Garmin with me everywhere we went and hunted.
When I got OnX on my cell phone, after using paper maps and dealing with the slow old Garmin GPS, I thought I was in high cotton. I immediately began setting my tracker every hunt and marked everything from bedding areas to rubs, scrapes, wallows, and trails - you name it, I marked it.
As years passed, my obsession has only grown worse. I'm way more organized than I was in the beginning because, let's be honest, there's nothing worse than having your friend share pins with you that have no labels and are just red X's.
Now I'm labeling everything, adding photos, using symbols, marking access points and areas. If we're hunting an area and ever go back, every single place we've seen or heard an elk gets marked with dates and notes.
Basically, my OnX has turned into a digital journal of everything. Some people may find it overboard while others can relate. What I've learned is that once you zoom out, or maybe step back, you can see patterns.
You may notice elk on the north side of the unit staying close to certain features, while on other sides of the unit they're more likely to be near different features. Or at certain times of the year, those animals are holding to other places, and by checking the dates on your pins, you can eliminate so much of the guesswork.
Hunt Planning
Often before any hunt, we sit around camp arguing with our OnX out, just turning blue in the face trying to get our opinions and ideas across to the rest of the guys.
We normally try to bed the elk or even locate bugling in the dark and drop pins where they came from for the following morning hunt. The biggest thing with hunting elk is time and time management. Two years ago, it took us until the last few days of the hunt to get the herd really nailed down. Now if we go back to that area, due to the amount of knowledge we've retained and mapped, it's way easier with much less wasted time.
Success can be measured by more than just harvesting an animal; sometimes you have to count it as a win by the sheer amount of legwork you won't have to put in the following year. Many elk hunters never get the opportunity to see an elk while hunting, let alone get a shot off at one. So look at your time spent mapping and marking things as an investment for future hunts and their success.
Hunt Scenarios
When it comes to hunt scenarios, we often pin the herd/bull and use land features to make a move on an animal. That entails checking wind and seeing how far we may have to swing up or down to keep from getting winded. Often, the difference between just looking at elk and having the opportunity to get within shooting range is combining your experience of what elk do and how they act with looking at your maps/pins and moving accordingly. On a hunt, especially when things are starting to get intense and we're making a move on an animal, we may look at our maps every 5 minutes or more while stalking in.
I tend to really emphasize using maps while elk hunting, and honestly, that's where we really utilized the OnX platform to begin with. However, as the years progressed, the way we mapped and hunted whitetail began to evolve and really started to mirror how we hunted elk. Now we find ourselves not even stepping into the whitetail woods without going over our maps to see what wind and the deer might be doing.
How We Utilize OnX for Whitetail
One of the easiest ways of finding public land and new properties is just pulling up the state you want to hunt, going to the filters, and turning on public and private lines. I can't imagine trying to hunt any type of public land without having lines to go off of - it's irresponsible to even do so.
We have a big deer camp where all our buddies go hunt, cook out, and camp each night on a large piece of public land. Finally, after years, we have everyone using the same app. So when we get back to camp from hunting or scouting, we can just share pins and thoughts. Much of that mirrors what I was saying earlier about how we elk hunt. Where did the buck come from? Who else saw deer moving? Where did you find scrapes? How was the wind when you saw the deer? What topographical features are close by? There's so much that can be notated, and you can really zone in on public land deer that in times past would have taken 10 times the amount of time and effort.
When looking for new areas of public land, I take an area where I've had good luck in the past and see what those land features, vegetation, or whatever looks like from above. Then I look at new places and try to find something as similar as possible. This helps eliminate a lot of wasted time and gets you to a good starting point, instead of wandering around just hoping you can find something. I may spend hours looking at a new piece of public land on maps and dropping pins long before I ever step foot on it.
Hunting Private Land
If you're not breaking down your private property with the outline feature, you're missing out. We currently lease 2,500 acres, and we have each stand pinned and each area outlined (with the property broken down into sections). We also have silly names for them like "the Kremlin" or "TORTUGA." However, if we're hunting specific deer, it's easy to let everyone know what area you're hunting and what you have going on. It also allows different people to somewhat manage different portions of the property.
We have all the bedding areas laid out, which allows us to know how close we can hunt certain places without blowing everything out.
About the time we think we have the 2,500 acres really mapped and nailed down, OnX comes out with a new feature, and we get to adding it to the map.
We run trackers while walking into our stands. After doing that multiple times, we establish the best way to access that particular place to hunt.
A hunter who utilizes access is a successful hunter - we have an ongoing argument that access is potentially the most important part in killing a mature whitetail.
In the off-season while working on the property, we mark trails, trees that will make good lock-on stands, trees that will make good saddle stands, areas to set up blinds, and even old scrape lines. The more you lay out your property and dedicate time to mapping/marking as much as you can, the more you'll see your success rates increasing. We are killing bigger deer and having more buck/mature buck encounters than ever before. A huge portion of that success can be credited to how much of the property we have now figured out and where/how the deer move and travel.
Another benefit of thorough mapping is the ability to have someone who has never stepped on the property receive a "share all." They can instantly start familiarizing themselves with the property, instead of wandering all over the place spreading scent everywhere.
That keeps everyone happier because the mature deer aren't being spooked by someone wandering into the wrong area.
Recently this year, I shot a buck early season, probably one of the oldest, if not the oldest buck on the property. I hit him a little low, so we gave him some time. Once we started to trail him, we ran trackers the whole time so we weren't walking back over places we had already been. Also, I dropped a pin each time we found blood (it was sparse at times). By doing so, I was able to zoom out and see the general direction the buck was headed. This gave me the ability to cross off areas where we knew he wasn't.
It actually pains me a little to think of the times in years gone by when I've trailed deer or animals without a tracker, only to lose last blood and have to find it again or walk over the same spot multiple times, ultimately wasting time.
There are multiple mapping apps, and a lot of good ones. However, in my opinion, there is no one doing it on the level OnX is.
And hey, you don't have to just use it for hunting. A while back, we were at Disney World with the family, and if you've ever parked there, it's like finding a needle in a haystack to locate your car. I'm sure you can tell where this is going, but I sure did find my car with an OnX pin I had dropped earlier, and no one was making fun when we walked straight to it.
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Kyle is part of the UnGuided Outdoors YouTube Channel. UnGuided is a group of friends that has been hunting and fishing together for years. With blue-collar backgrounds, they couldn't afford to pay guide fees or hunt private land. No matter if it's water or the mountains, in a boat or in a tent, the group is headed there UnGuided.
