Do you use a map to mark all the signs you find? And has it made you more succesful?

only if i'm hunting an area for which i am unfamiliar. in the areas i frequent, i will just put it away in memory.

I put a lot in my Rino gps. It has a map and I can pinpoint sign, a specific tree to hang a stand, bedding areas and you name it. It really helps me to put the pieces together. It also makes plotting info on a topo map easier while back in camp.

I personally don't plot every bit of sign or every sighting on a map. I think mostly what you accomplish by doing that is showing where you spend most of your time. After five years, what does it mean that 75% of your deer sightings are in woodlot A. Does it mean that's the best place for deer, or does it mean you spent 75% of your hunting effort in woodlot A? If you spent 80% of your hunting effort in woodlot A, it actually means woodlot A sucks.

Let me tell ya fella's.........i just got into this map thing and i wasnt impressed at all with it. I thought if i got an arial photo, and a topo map i would be in some good shape. I just wanted to see the spots that i may have missed because i have alot of property to hunt, and see where maybe some bucks could go and things like that. Well i went to the web-site printed off a topo map and pasted the parts together of what i wanted, i got a topo map of my area and highlighted funnels and things like that. But the arial photo would not let me zoom in far enough, and they took the photos in spring, i wanted photos of it in the winter time where i could see more. However i already know all the hot spots, funnels, staging areas, bedding areas, feeding areas, i even know where the bucks like to rub and put up there sighn posts, but for the life of me when i kill a deer every year it has corn in its belly and i cant find corn anywhere i can hunt and where i cant hunt, so they must be doing some traveling is all i can figure. But the maps can help you if you havent hunted in a area for long, mine did open my eyes on one particular spot that i am going to check out this weekend that i always overlooked, because of no sighn but the map shows a perfect funnel so we will see.

well the ones i have used were free so i didnt mind but they can be help full even when guessing where a hit deer might have traveled