Land Nav Practice: How Often?

How often do you practice land nav skills? Do you think it's a skill that needs to be practiced?

Since I can see a lot of different responses to this, I will explain; Not "I use my land nav skills every time I read a road sign or look at the sun" or "I have been hiking 5 times so I don't need to practice anymore".

I mean actually going out with a map, a compass, and some means of counting steps or distance travelled (gps, step counter, ranger beads, in your head) and doing some orienteering and terrain following.

I try to do it a few times a year, and last time I felt like I could use a bit more practice.

If anyone answers, you could add what maps you prefer (I like USGS maps, but I have to preplan and order them well in advance).

I may join a local geocaching club. Force myself to use the skills a bit more.

 

Understandable, if you are where you are going to be.

Even if someone where going out scavenging, a road map would probably be all you would need, if they are old enough to not depend 100% on a smartphone.

 

I have always had a love of maps and have hundreds of them. I especially like the USGS topographical maps and have a set that covers every place within about a hundred miles of where I live. Give me a map and an engineers compass and I can find my way anywhere.

I have a sort of homing sense in the woods and can always just turn and walk back to where I started. I used to take my nephew out in the woods at night and get him lost then hand him the compass and tell him to take us home. When I got tired I would just take back the compass put it in my pocket and walk back to the place where we went in.

I think that it is just that I notice the little things and because I like the dark I can see things that someone walking around with a flashlight never is aware of. Unless you are someplace WAY off the beaten path there is always a direction where the lights from someplace, often over the horizon, will make the sky a little lighter in that direction. If you have an idea where any consistent direction is you can always have a general idea where to go. It doesn't have to be a compass. You can do the same thing with a consistent wind direction or a lot of other things and I think that I do this sort of thing on a sort of instinctive level.

 

What with my skeleton having gone south, hiking is no option ... short of heaven only knows how many surgeries -- and they would no doubt kill me. Part of a bug-out bag for me is a spare cane.

I scout roads, to include Forestry Service roads. I'm constantly looking for alternate routes.

 

I need to practice. Due to some unauthorized traveling on my property I am now having to find my property lines and start protecting them. It's harder than it seems when all of the markers are 40 years old

 

Smartphones aren't all that good even now. Every time we have something delivered here we get a call from the delivery truck because they can't find us. The gps on the phones can't seem to tell the difference between a four lane highway and a dirt road and send them down into the woods because on a map that is the shortest route. Most delivery drivers give up before they have gone 10 miles on a dirt road. The stupid thing is that we live on the other end of that road but are only a half mile from where it meets that same highway that they were diverted off of. The road is sort of a short cut across but it isn't for speed or ease of use.

 

I've been programming since the early 1970s. Tested programs for almost two decades.

They have become more efficient, thus more efficient at amplifying poor programming.

As more dependence is placed on computers, the screw-ups they cause get worse.

If the tech.s won't fix them when they fry / re-program them when the code is dog-sh##, then computers aren't going to be conquering mankind anytime soon.

Driverless cars are going to keep me off the roads long before any SHTF event.