dan pickar here
today i'm going to show you how to use onX hunt's aerial imagery layer
so when i'm looking at this aerial imagery
i want to be able to determine what a north face is what a south face is
and you can pretty much do that if you spend enough time out here and then you come back
to the computer and take a look so first let's look right here so i know by looking at this
aerial imagery that this line is a ridge line i don't need my topple lines to be able to tell that
but i know that this line is a knife ridge basically because you have the north side
here is fully timbered uh north slopes they don't get that sun beating down on them so you have more
vegetation more brush probably it's in this part of the country in wyoming you have more timber
growth you know a south face here because there's just way less trees you can see that dramatic line
you have that sun that just beats that slope from the south and it's just too arid it's too
dry to have all that vegetation and the trees that a north face will just click our
topo layer here and there's your your topa lines of the same ridge so you can kind of get an idea
how steep it is obviously your elevation and your topo lines here the bold lines are
200 foot increments so that makes it easy
what will really help you is a hybrid map so
the same ridge by looking at this harsh natural feature here it looks like rock and
by analyzing the topo that's a little peak right there
so you have a peak and then you have lines
sliding back down to the north face
and you're going down from 8800 to 8600 so this is
just a 200 foot decline down into your next draw down here
so this tells me that this is a very small drainage
probably easy to scale one side or another in not much time and and i can probably
come to a conclusion that there's a bunch of deadfall in here i see a bunch of dead trees and
so there's probably some underbrush too and this is probably pretty difficult to navigate through
um say if i'm looking through my hunting area
you know aerial imagery is is very important when it comes to
modern day scouting and modern day hunting
so when we come to the hunting aspect of this
i use this a fair amount
you you can have your your uh app open on your phone
and you can look at your aerial imagery where you're at
and you can be spotting an animal
and you can basically cross-reference to what you're looking at to on your map
on your phone or and
be able to pinpoint exactly where that buck bedded
exactly where that bull's working into
and it'll help you
with basically locating that buck again or that bull again when you're going on a stalk
so let's say i'm here i'm going to add a waypoint here this is my glassing location
so we're going to go down to our waypoint type
and let's find glassing area okay so let's save this
so let's say you're glassing on this ridge
and across the other side in your spotting scope
you have a deer over here
and you're looking over at this thing and maybe it's at the top of the ridge
it's right at a tree line and so you can look through your spotter and see we have a tree line here
and it's at the top of the ridge
and you can type there you go you can hit your hybrid layer
and so it'll show you via the topo lines that this is a ridge top
this is actually a peak and so you cross reference that and you're like okay
that buck or bull is bedded right underneath that tree
and uh we're gonna put a pin on em
so when i go make my stalk around from the back side
i know exactly where he is so we're gonna do a buck there we go
so that buck's bedded right on top of that peak
so that just gives me a reference point
and then what i can even do is okay how far away is he
so i can measure line of sight okay
he's 600 yards away
that's not too big of a deal
so that'll give you an idea how long it's going to take you to
maybe work up this ridge
and slip around the back side and get on em
and you know with that
real time gps location you can tell exactly when you're coming up
behind them
know exactly how far away you are so if you come to say this meadow
and you know that buck's bedded here or that's where you last saw him
you know from this meadow
to where that buck was
that's 148 yards you're in the zone now
anyway you get the idea of how crucial
and how much of a tool this really is using aerial imagery when you're out hunting
and it really is a game changer