It’s that time of year again, when I spend the early morning hours with my coffee, staring at countless satellite images of grasslands and forests.
In a word, it’s thrilling.
So, naturally, I thought it would make a good column.
What I’m doing, more specifically, is gathering information at home which will pay dividends in the field during the upcoming hunting season. On-the-ground intel is, of course, valuable. But unless the destination is close to home, it’s not easy to come by.
This strategy probably began in 2009, when I first took my dog to South Dakota to hunt prairie grouse. With a half-day’s drive just to get there, we couldn’t afford to cruise the backroads endlessly.
Time is precious. We had to hit the ground running.
It worked well.
And I’ve used the same strategies in several states for bird hunts, as well as for deer and waterfowl hunts. Fishing and foraging, too, to a lesser extent.
Paper still reigns
You may remember I’m a pretty low-tech guy.
I love paper maps. Coupled with my handheld GPS (and compass for backup), they are my guiding light when I leave home.
Yes, I realize there are phone-based apps which can accomplish many of the same tasks. However, they have their limitations like recharge-ability, malfunction and whether or not you happened to download the right base map when you still had reception.
So, printed maps are my clearinghouse for information gathered at home and on-site. They bear notes and other markings in pen, pencil and neon highlighter that guide the way on gravel roads. Some bring me back to special places more than a decade after the fact.
In Minnesota, the DNR’s PRIM maps are the best I know. They offered whole-state coverage and showed many public land types in detail.
However, they were hard to get your hands on even before they went out of print.
The closest thing I know currently is the Walk-In Access Hunting Atlas. It has a lot of the same features, but is limited to the parts of the state with “WIA” parcels.
North and South Dakota publish whole-state atlases to show their public land offerings. NoDak’s is called the PLOTS Guide, and SoDak’s is the Public Hunting Atlas. Last I knew, they were both available in print and digital versions.
National Forests and National Grasslands publish MVUMs (motor vehicle use maps), free of charge, which more or less detail every square yard of those land holdings.
MN DNR’s Recreation Compass
It continually surprises me how many people don’t know this is out there. The Recreation Compass is an interactive map with features for hunting, camping, fishing and more.
I use it for accessing lake surveys more than anything, but it is an integral part of my process throughout the year. With both road map or satellite image overlays, it can be extremely useful.
In addition to Wildlife Management Areas and state and national forests, the Recreation Compass shows Aquatic Management Areas, with links to see which are fishing-only, and which allow other uses like hunting.
I happen to know that WMAs will appear there quickly after they are acquired, and before the general public knows where they are. If you need it all within the context of deer, bear or turkey permit areas, you can see that at a glance.
It also includes the locations of Waterfowl Production Areas, which are an oft-overlooked resource for upland bird hunters (bring non-toxic shot).
Lay of the land
Another component in my online scouting is to consult topographic maps.
Sometimes I may determine that a planned route will be undesirable or impossible due to rough topography. On the other hand, sometimes elevation differences enhance what vegetation types already offer, and a “possible” destination becomes a “must-see.”
This becomes more important during deer season, when a well-defined ridge or creek bottom interrupts what looks like a featureless forest.
The MnTOPO interactive map on the DNR’s website is a little slow, but helpful in connecting the dots. I credit it for helping me take one deer in a state park hunt three years ago.
Satellite photos
Online maps (courtesy of the big search engine that rhymes with “frugal”) are invaluable when planning to go somewhere new. They comprise the bulk of my at-home scouting.
Not only do they help determine the best way to go between points A and B, their satellite imagery offers a stunning degree of detail.
Again, bird hunting is when I primarily use that detail. A finely textured forest usually shows where clearcutting occurred in recent history, which is where ruffed grouse are likely to be found during the heart of grouse season.
The locations of tiny beaver ponds in the woods are useful, in that they are usually surrounded by the kind of food and cover that draws ruffs in like a magnet.
When pursuing pheasants or prairie grouse, imagery is enormously helpful in ruling parcels in or out of my itinerary. Low-lying grasses like reed canary grass aren’t as desirable as prairie plantings.
Sometimes it helps to see what is all grass, and what has brush mixed in. I might rule out whole townships because they are composed more of hay fields than crop fields (Hot tip: pheasants and prairie grouse like a short walk or flight from grass into harvested grain fields).
Differentiating between all these features gets me miles ahead of the game when I turn my dog loose.
During deer season, I use satellite images to find funnels in the terrain, which usually help pinpoint travel routes. And not only do texture and color help show the relative age of deciduous stands, they can show where hardwoods and conifers meet or mingle.
If a satellite image happens to have been taken when leaves were off the hardwoods, it is quickly apparent what kinds of trees grow where.
I return to the computer screen after an outing, to compare what I saw on the ground to what it looks like from the air. This has made me really good at interpreting what satellites capture miles above the earth, if I say so myself.
But it takes a lot of practice.
Roy Heilman is a writer, musician, and ethnic Minnesotan. His adventures take him all over the map, but he’s always home at neveragoosechase.com.