5 Navigation Techniques Every Woodsman Should Know

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Tags: Dave Canterbury,Survival,Bushcraft,Archery,Pathfinder,Navigation,Land Navigation,Compass,Pathfinder Store,The Pathfinder School,Map Reading

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morning guys dead carry the Pathfinder school you know one thing that the woodsman of the past going back all the way to Daniel Boone Simon Kenton up to Nemec and Horace Kephart one thing that they all had in common was they were very good navigators being a good navigator is an essential tool for any Explorer tramper trekker woodsman of today and we have very complicated devices that we can use today to help us in our navigational needs we have very expensive compasses and complicated type compasses that have movable bezel rings on them base plates that can be put on a map to get bearings off of a map and plan our routes and things of that nature we have GPSS there are electronic devices that will give us exact directions and distances between weight points and all those types of things in the earlier days the days of Horace Kephart the days of NASA make the days of Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton they weren't so lucky so they had to figure out ways to navigate with compasses that really only gave you a general direction north-south east-west or combinations of those four but they used techniques that we teach in the Pathfinder school to navigate so that they could use them in conjunction with a compass that gave them a general direction so that they wouldn't get lost and those techniques are what I want to talk about today and there's five techniques that you can use to navigate through the woods if you have a compass and sometimes if you don't have a compass like we talked about terrain association in one of our videos you can use these techniques along with terrain Association to give you a very good navigable route even if you only know the general direction maybe you don't have a compass but you still have the Sun the Moon the Stars the trees things to primitively navigate and those five items are handrails backstops aiming off baselines and blazing we're going to talk about those five techniques of navigation today because they've been used throughout time and again some of the things that have been forgotten that I think we should revisit to help us in our navigational tech in the present day of trekking and scouring okay so again real quick just to go over those five methods of navigation handrails backstops baselines aiming off and blazing these are very simple techniques that I'm going to explain to you today and give you a very good understanding of what they mean some of them can be used in combination with each other and some of them are actually interchangeable depending on your position in reference to the handrail or the backstop where the baseline we'll talk about that in just a minute we're going to look at a map we're going to talk about those things on a map and then we're going to go onto the field and look at those things in the field so you get a better understanding of what I'm talking about okay so using this map of an area around the pathfinder school let's discuss these five traveling techniques for navigation and first we'll talk about handrails handrails are prominent features that I can use to keep me from straying off course and get anywhere I'm going and there are several things on this map we could use for handrails let's first talk about this pipeline as a handrail let's say that we are traveling from the base of this Creek down here there's a large beaver pond here and we want to travel up to this wetland area what's very simple if we follow this pipe line all the way up we don't have to get out onto the pipe line but if we follow this pipe line all the way up when we cross it and hug it on this side we're going to get what we're going that is a handrail in retrospect we can use a handrail the other direction if we're traveling from this Township Road across this trail that trail becomes a handrail for us if we don't want to stay on the trail we want to explore out in here as long as we keep that trail in sight that becomes a handrail for us we can also use Ridge lines and things like that for handrails you can see that there's a large open area here where this creek runs through and the creek makes a very very good end rail and on both sides of that are high ridges so as long as we stay in the downhill portion along this Creek we can use this Creek for a handrail even if this pipeline

and wasn't here to get to this wetland area those are how you use handrails back stops back stops are used very similar to handrails except they are used as points up telling you you've gone too far so in this case let's use the pipeline as an example again and say that we're traveling this Creek is going to be our handrail we're trying to get to this wetland area we follow this creek up if we get to this trail that crosses that pipeline we know we've gone too far that becomes a backstop for us okay we miss somehow we've laterally drifted this direction or this direction and we've missed our target but we hit this trail and that becomes our backstop now we need to turn around and go back baselines baselines are used from camp in linear directions to help you combat lateral drift or compensate for lateral drift and find your way back so let's say that our baseline in this case let's say we have a camp on this hilltop and we're going to use this old township road and there's not much left uh but you'll see when we get out there we're going to use this old Township road as our baseline now if I know that my lateral drift takes me left that I'm not going to baseline south because if I drift left I could still come back and overshoot and not know exactly what direction to go back to my camp and that's the purpose of a baseline I want to know what direction I have to turn when I hit this which becomes my backstop at that point I want to know when I hit this baseline coming back from my exploration which way to turn to get to my camp so if I know that my lateral drift is always going to be left I'm going to turn north on this road I'm going to walk up this road aways maybe to this trail and use it for a chair or a handrail maybe not say I walk up into here and I start to explore now I walk through here laterally lateral drift is going to take me left I'm always going to be going left I'm not going to go right maybe I use this trail right here for a handrail to tell me OK or a back stop again to tell me ok I'm going too far I don't want to go in there turn back here and when I go back to my amp I know that when I hit this baseline I can only turn one way south and that's going to lead me back to camp and that is the purpose of a baseline is to tell me what direction I need to go coming back to camp it's used very similarly to aiming off which we're going to talk about next okay guys this large clear-cut pipeline out here gives us a very good example of three of the things that we talked about we talked about handrails and if we were traveling in a north-south direction here we could use this pipeline as a chair rail if your mirror as a handrail if you remember right on a map it runs almost the entire length back here so we can bounce back and forth side to side and as long as we keep this handrail in our in our sights we're not going to get lost because we know that we can follow it right back to where we came from or take it right there we want to go if we're looking for that wetland area at the same time if we're traveling in a more east/west type direction through here we can use this for a back stop as of I went too far especially if I'm coming in from the back side of the wetland area if I'm coming in from the back side over on the other side that we'll go to in a minute from the hilltops over there if I'm coming in that direction I hit that pipeline

I know I've passed that area so that's my that's basically my backstop okay so let's discuss aiming off for a moment aiming off can be used with a compass I can take a bearing on purpose that is left or right of my object knowing that when I hit a target area I'm going to turn to the left to the right so let's say that I'm traveling from here and I want to get to this wetland area to set up a camp along this creek bed so as I travel from this old Township Road what I'm going to do is I'm going to aim off on purpose so I'm going to travel in the north in a northerly direction here northeast direction and my aim off point is this trail this trail junction with the pipeline because I know when I hit that point I can only turn one way in that south to get to this wetland area and follow this creek bed down so what I'm going to do is I'm going to start here I'm going to look at my map and say okay I know northeast of me there's a trail junction so now as I travel maybe I come through here going northeast traveling Charlie traffic look there's my handrail I take my handrail down to this Junction right here where the pipeline meets that trail okay that's my aim off position now I know I have to go south and I'm going to get to this wetland area that is a combination of using a hand rail with an evening off technique if I were using a map and compass with a moveable bezel ring and all that fancy stuff I would just take a bearing on this map with my compass from this location to this location and that would be called aiming off instead of going from here to here and taking a chance on lateral drift making me miss it I'm going to aim off on purpose as something that's very obvious like a trail junction where there's two basic handrails or base lines or back stops that come together and I'm going to go there and then turn south to get to where I want to go that's the use of aiming off now if I were going to use that for an Amy off situation we would have to go up and look at a junction up here where a trail comes out of the woods it comes on to this pipeline that is above that wetland area that we discussed then if we were aiming off and going to that we would know as soon as we hit that junction we have to head south and we'll know by looking our map that the wetland area should be on our right so that gives us a way that we can use that for a baseline we can use a four I'm sorry for a backstop or for a handrail if we were going to use this for a baseline and we were camping out here somewhere

or close to it in the woods over here in the creek area then what I want to do is I want to directly go north or south on purpose before I go east west that way I know that depending on my lateral drift is going to dictate whether I go north or south to mark that point then I'm probably going to blaze a tree right there start my exploration and as I laterally drift to the left because I'm left-handed when I turn around to come back I'm going to know that when I hit that I'm going to have to turn back to the left going the other direction to get back to my campsite when I see that blaze I'll know I'm close that's ways that you can combine these tools to your advantage when you're trying navigate naturally not necessarily using a map of compass them you know we have the bright Sun I here today it's very easy to say okay we know the Sun rises in East it sets in the West we know that it travels in a southern arc so we are basically our own shadow stick we know that when we're standing up our shadow is going to face a certain direction it's going to be a northerly direction when we're standing up because the Sun is traveling in a southern arc so we need to understand those things and we don't need a bunch of Sun compasses and all of that business because we're our own shadow stick we can look at the Sun and know about what time of day it is whether it's in the zenith or not and know whether we're facing more south or more east or more west when we're looking at the Sun or more north northeastern Northwest more facing away from the Sun it's all very rudimentary stuff that we just have to think about and use our common sense and then of course we can look at the trees because the majority that foliage is going to grow in a southeasterly direction because it's trying to catch the photosynthesis that morning Sun coming up so if we look at several trees the majority the foliage will be facing a southeast direction in the northern hemisphere so we can use all of those natural things to help us navigate along with these five techniques and we're going to go up and look at another area on the other side over here from the hilltop we'll talk about these techniques again but I think if you understand these and you understand rudimentary finding of direction you will go a long way to not getting lost and not worry so much about that exact bearing on a compass or that GPS that might lose a signal because you're in heavy foliage or heavy tree cover or there's heavy cloud cover and you lost your signal and now you don't know where you're at if you can terrain associate use these five techniques and understand general direction finding and primitive methods you're going to be a lot better off so let's go over here to the other side guys okay guys so this is the trail right here that was our map here and we know that it runs across here in an east-west direction from the old township road all the way to the pipeline so again this becomes what it becomes a hand rail for us now if we were traveling from this other direction it could become a backstop for us if we were traveling from there it could become a base line so it could be any of those three depending on our direction of travel but if you're using this trail has a name off point if we had gone to the water over here in the wetland area we can aim off on purpose right to that handrail knowing that if we followed a handrail down to the township road there's only one direction we can turn when we get to that road to get to our camp and that's back to the south and we could blaze right there if we wanted to just to make sure or just signal for somebody else let them know we could put a blaze on the left-hand side of the trail indicating that you turn left right there and that blaze in my mind would be orange tape around the near sapling to that corner okay guys so now we are at the township road and you can see there's not much road here and you're going to get that on maps that you have it says it's a township road but it's no longer used no longer maintained there may be signs I want to say no vehicles beyond this point all those things are present here but we can still use this as a prominent feature on our map for everything from a handrail to a backstop to a baseline depending on our direction of travel and whether we're going to or from we can also use trail intersections off of this as a mauve points so I hope I've explained some of this to you fairly well I'll try to get this series completed as soon as I can I've got some more things I want to go over in this navigational series with you guys that goes deeper into land now than just a map and compass and I think it's important for us to understand the old-time techniques so that we're more comfortable and more suffer lying in the woods I'm Dave Canterbury from the Pathfinder school appreciate you joining me out here today I thank you for anything you do for me for my school for my family for my business my friends affiliates and sponsors and I'll be back another video as soon as I can thanks guys

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