GPS Marking System

[Silver Bullet]

I just returned from a successful December bull hunt in 22N where we filled two tags with a 4x5 and a 5x5. We use all the right tools, including Swarovski binoculars, rangefinders, GPS, etc... The problem that sometimes occurs is when an animal is taken on the other side of a canyon, the view of the surrounding terrain always changes after the hour long hike to get to where you "thought" the animal went down. This is especially true in the evening hunt. This results in lost time searching, and the potential of loosing the animal all together.

My question is if there's an instrument on the market that can be used to mark the exact spot of the kill, and would guide you there via GPS? Basically, you shoot, see where the animal dropped, then "mark" the location of the animal in the instrument and allow it to guide you to the downed animal.

[Elkaddict]

I use my Garmin 60x to locate and mark drops across canyons, ridges, etc. You have to have the topo maps loaded and be able to understand the topo map (some people seem to have a hard time with topo's)Of course in thick stuff you can get close with the gps mark but still need to look around abit.

[Coach]

I don't think that technology exists. I've always thought it should be possible using a combination of optics, range-finder & GPS. The GPS knows where you are, and what direction you are looking - figure in the distance to the ranged point and you should be able to calculate the coordinates of that spot pretty closely.

 

 

Seems like it would be an invluable military tool as well.

[Arizona Griz]

You could rangefind the distance to the downed animal and create a waypoint using that distance. The difficult part will be determining the correct angle, bearing, or line of sight from where you stand to create that waypoint. You would definitely need a topo map in the GPS and would want to zoom the screen to just cover the two points (waypoint of the downed animal and where you are standing) to be as accurate as possible.

[Elkaddict]

You could rangefind the distance to the downed animal and create a waypoint using that distance. The difficult part will be determining the correct angle, bearing, or line of sight from where you stand to create that waypoint. You would definitely need a topo map in the GPS and would want to zoom the screen to just cover the two points (waypoint of the downed animal and where you are standing) to be as accurate as possible.

Yep.

[Lucafu1]

if you know how to use a compass its not hard, just takes time. know where you are at, shoot an azimuth, range it, walk the line, turn around and shoot a back azimuth to where you started and at the range you first took. you should be standing on top of him. this becomes more difficult/time consuming to do in brush or rough terrain so i just walk around till i find it.

[Coach]

Am I the only one who had to google azimuth?

[AZbowhntr]

This is an interesting question. There are patents on this technology. I was just talking to someone that thought of this and went to some of the big companies trying to market it with no luck. Anyway they were trying to get the patents and find out that one of the companies that they had just tried to market to had filed for a patent on the same technology after he had talked to them. Pretty low if you ask me.

[cbryant11]

my rhino gps has a feature called sight and goyou point the gps at the target and input the distance and it will take you right there. its freakin sweet

[Str8Shot]

my rhino gps has a feature called sight and goyou point the gps at the target and input the distance and it will take you right there. its freakin sweet

Yes, the Sight-n-go on the Garmin Rino 530HCX and I believe the new models allow you to line up looking across the face at eye level and lining up between the sighting marks on each side of the toggle... You then use the compass and can way point the approximate distance to navigate to the spot.

 

http://static.garmincdn.com/pumac/Rino520HCx_OwnersManual.pdf

 

Look under basic operations then using sight and go.

[Ron G.]

The method Elkaddict suggested is pretty darn accurate if you know how to read topos and have topos loaded on your gps. He gave me a waypoint to a shed he glassed up across a canyon and marked it with that method and darn near put me right on top of it when my son and I went over to look for it. He was about a mile away when he glassed it.

 

One thing I remember reading about on my Garmin 60CSX was projecting a waypoint.

The directions for how to do this is found on page 14 of the manual:

Garmin 60CSX Manual

 

Basically very similar to what others said above.

 

Ron

[AZLance]

The technology is there, there are binos that all you do is push a button and the gps coords pop up in the field of view. You can shoot coords out to 10 miles away, and it is usually accurate to a few yards.