GPS and Outdoor Sports

Prior to GPS Figuring out where he is and where he is heading is probably one of man's oldest pastimes. Of course if he is man traveling with a woman he will not have that problem as he will have already stopped and asked.

Seriously, navigation and positioning are crucial to so many activities and yet the process has always been quite cumbersome and time consuming.

In outdoor sports we can use GPS’s to tell us where we are, where we are headed, how fast we are traveling and how long it will take to get there. All without having to consult a map, road signs or stop and ask!

While doing game scouting prior to the open season we can enter “waypoints” in the hand held computer, give them names and go back to these points (including the car location) anytime in the future. Not only will it keep us from ever being lost we can input locations for potential stands, rubs, scrapes, water and food sources, licks, bedding areas, trail intersections and etc.

Using a GPSreceiver, fishermen, pleasure boaters, SCUBA and skin divers can record, hot fishing holes, deep water, sunken objects, reefs and other things which can not be seen or permanently marked on the water’s surface. The coordinates of a site from a map can be entered in the receiver and will show up as a waypoint and can be tracked from wherever they are.

GPS units are not always easy to use; in fact I rate my Lowrance handheld GPSReceiver complexity as just a little easier to use than my VCR clock setting process. However I have been successful in recording many waypoints for my boating hazard, fishing locations in the Gulf and a few hunting site locations.

If for no other reason, you should own a GPSReceiver handheld and carry it with you for the same minimal reason to own a cell phone. With the hand held GPS receiver you are never lost as long as the batteries stay up.

I would strongly advise a new Global Positioning System receiver owner to spend the time required to become profficient and familiar with your unit before you need it.

Every technology discovered to help make navigation easier over thousands of years came about in incremental improvements but one day the U.S. Military needed a super precise form of positioning anywhere in the world. Fortunately by this time, electronic and space technology had matured to the point it was possible at a price. and of course with the help of the taxpayer it had the price. The result after spending twelve billion dollars to place twenty four radio transmitting satellites into geosynchronous orbit became the basis of the Global Positioning System. Global Positioning System has already changed hunting, fishing, hiking, trucking, boating, construction, farming, and etc., navigation and position locating forever.

The Global Positioning System makes it possible to assign an accurate address to every point on earth that anyone with a hand held unit can get to. The one limiting factor is obstructions; GPS does not work well inside a structure or if clear sight to three satellites is blocked by say, the high sheer walls of a valley.