No Map No Problem Part 2

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Dave Canterbury, David Canterbury, The Pathfinder School,Bush Craft ,Survival skills, Historical Lore, Primitive Skills, Archery, Hunting, Trapping, Fishing, Navigation, Knives, Axes, Fire, Water, Shelter, Search and Rescue

Tags: Bushcraft,Survival,David Canterbury,Dave Canterbury,Pathfinder,The Pathfinder School,Archery,Hunting,Fishing,Camping,Primitive Skills,Fire,Water,Shelter,Navigation,First Aid,Search and Rescue,Signaling,Prepper,Preparedness,Self Reliance,Survivability,The 10 C's,Knives,Axes,Saws,Bow Drill,Ferrocerium Rod,Ferro Rod,Tarp,Hammock,Canteen,Cooking,Longhunter,Trapping

Video Transcription

well Gustav can bear the Pathfinder school back out here at the Pathfinder classroom what we're going to do today is we're going to continue with part two on our series no map no problem we're going to talk about making our own map we looked yesterday how to lay things out on the ground using the paul method to be able to determine a direct azimuth back to camp after we went out on a scout but there's a lot more that we can do with this information then just find our way back to camp we can begin to make a map of the area that we're operating in if we don't have one and I'm going to show you a little bit of detail on that today and how to do that and then we're going to continue further in part three making our map let's stay with me we're going to transpose this information that we had on the ground yesterday today we're going to transpose it to paper so you can see what that looks like and then we're going to discuss some of these notes that we took yesterday stay with me okay so now I have a piece of paper and I've taken my route page from yesterday and I've started on one side over here knowing that I traveled off in this direction I started on one side and I put a triangle for my camp I put just a little creek right behind my camp that I camped against and then I marked out my route with the degree readings and how far I went the next thing I did was I put a legend on the bottom of the map that tells me hey what's the scale of my map okay and that's important if I'm going to work in meters with my pace counting then I might as well stay in the metric system if I'm going to make an actual map so I went with one centimeter equals 20 meters so one centimeter on this map equals 20 meters on the ground I have a triangle for my camp and then I have a little stick tree here for pines and we'll talk about that in just a minute okay but it's important to understand the scale of our map now if you decide you're going to do some serious mapping you might want a couple of other tools of sorts to go with what you've got

your compass you may want some type of measuring device like this one great for measuring tracks and sign and taking pictures of it and things like that it's like an evidence ruler but it has inches and has centimeters on it so it makes it really easy to use the metric system or the standard u.s. system of many and then you're gonna want to make sure you've got a good sharp pencil in a decent eraser because you're gonna erase no question about that okay if you remember right from yesterday on our route page there were a couple different notes there was a trail crossing a stream crossing there were some Pines that we saw and then when we came back on our last leg here from our last stop back to our camp on a direct azimuth we saw a stream crossing again about 20 meters to 30 meters away from our camp and that runs right back behind our camp now if we were diligent enough on the first scout to actually mark down where we saw those things in other words if we put trail crossing and nothing else then we're going to have to go back because what we need to find out is where was that trail crossing on the route well we know it was on our 138° leg but we really need to know how far into that leg it was so in this case looking at our ruler 20 40 60 metres into that leg there was a trail crossing we've marked that trail crossing on a map our Creek Crossing again if we were diligent and we marked down where that creek crossing was during that leg or during that March we see that it's five marks on the centimeter marker if each one equals 20 meters then it was a hundred metres through that March that we found that Creek and so on then we have some pines here and we had a long leg here that we saw Pines quite a ways down the leg it looks like from this map and if we were diligent again weren't the pars on both sides of the trail that we were walking or the course that we were walking over we were walking along the edge of a pine grove well the way I've drawn it on this map we were walking on the edge because I don't have Pines on both sides but I have about

20 40 60 70 meters of that route that I saw Pines all of that is very important information we're going to talk about why that's so important right now okay remember that this exercise that we're working with is in fairly small scale our longest leg was 300 meters we're only a slight bit further than 300 meters to the outside over here probably about three hundred and twenty forty sixty maybe 380 meters something like that in large scale I'm going to be working in grid squares of like a thousand meters if I could but we can expand this to a thousand meters easy enough but right now we're talking about a 300 meter square that we're working with from our camp for the most part it's not exactly square but it's about 300 meters to the furthest distance or a little longer like this one over here is about 380 like I said so almost a 400 meter situation here but the square legs are just a little over 300 meters here less than three here less than three here and right at three here so we pretty much have a 300 meter square that were working in fairly small scale but 300 meters is a good distance in Eastern woodlands you're not going to see that far and you still will this for sure you're lucky if you can see 100 meters so now let's talk about the information that we have on this map and what we can do with this to make this map even better or more useful to us now I'm speaking in hypotheticals here a little bit because we haven't went out and checked any of this stuff out okay but remembering that this is only about 300 and some meters from where this Creek is to where this Creek crosses the trail you're looking at right at 300 meters there 15 centimeters would be 300 meters we can ascertain that probably this Creek runs somewhere through here and intersects but we don't know that yet so we have to figure that out we also know that we have a grove of pines over here we also know that we have a trail here but we didn't cross any trails here so this trail probably goes into here somewhere or e2 here somewhere we don't know what's over here we know there's a rock face here that we talked about yesterday that was about 70 meters across or 50 meters across that excuse me I'm sorry uh 2030 meters across right here so it may not go here it may go here but our if we were lucky we would have a game trail that came across this Creek and went into these ponds so that we have a betting area a water area and possibly there's a feeding area out here somewhere ahead of us to the south in the southern direction those are all things that are very important for us to know the fact that we have a large pine grove over here is very important because it gives us a good source of fat wood but while we're out looking those are the resources that we were looking for anyway or gain crossings water crossings sources of wood and materials to make fire those are all the things that we're looking for with our possum mentality now what we need to do is we need to we've got a pretty good stretch right here that we can figure we're not going to miss very easily so if we just take an azimuth with our compass and we lay it on our map right here we can now lay our compass on the map and we can factor bearings in from it and I'm gonna show you how to do that right now okay now we're going to bring our map outside we're gonna erase all the things that we don't need on there we talked about in there we're gonna leave our degree readings on our route from yesterday and a couple of those scribbles that we had made off a route page yesterday and that's it

what we're going to do is we are going to lay our map on something flat with not with no metal I like to stump we're going to put a straight edge on that 80 degree reading and we're going to put 80 degrees at the top of our compass and then we're going to rotate our map until the new North needle is in the doghouse that's going to orientate our map exactly to the terrain that we work with yesterday now we can take other readings off this map and they will be accurate but we cannot move the map from where it's at right now so every time we want to work with this map to take readings off of it for different routes or going places and for mapping and future mapping we've got to orientate this map to the compass every time just like we just did

okay so now that we have that we know that as long as we don't move this we're good so let's move this compass out of the way for a minute let's talk about what we want to do well the first thing we want to know our first thing I'd like to know is we know we've got this Creek here we know we've got this trail here and we know we've got some pines over here we don't know anything about what's in here so what I'm going to do is I'm going to draw a straight line from my camp straight out to the middle of these pines just like this okay what is that distance

well that distance for pace counting should be pretty close to 300 meters will get us almost to this area of the pines about 310 20 meters will get us there that's important for us to understand now we need a reading that's going to give us a direct bearing and it's going to give us a distance which means we can dead reckon ourselves to those pines plus we have kind of a backstop area here because we know when we get to these pines we're okay and we also have a little bit of leeway left and right baseline wise to understand that we've got a good margin for error here left and right for lateral drift because we know this Pines went for 70 meters now we're going to lay our compass on this straight edge just like this and we're going to rotate our bezel ring again until the North needles in the doghouse the reading at the top of our compass which is about 132 is our bearing 132 okay I'm going to write that on that line that's our bearing for 300 meters now we can take our compass off now we know that if we want to go from our camp to this pine grove and explore how deep this pine grove is and things like that and find anything in between remembering we've got a stream here a trail here we'd like to find out where those go in this area but we know that this is a good resource area so we must we'll go there anyway so we're going to travel 300 meters on 132 Green bearing and if we want to come back we need the reverse asmath of 132 so we'll write that down to 312 312 is our reverse okay for coming back now we can't take off on our route taking our waypoint flag with us our waypoint marker taking our compass taking our notebook with our route page and we're going to make a new route page for this leg of our journey okay so when we come back we've got some more information we can put on our map or we could put it on the map as we go when we were walking and we're keeping our pace count all that good stuff at 180 meters we cross stream so if we put our measuring device on here we count 180 15 to 5 that'd be 201 back would be 180 so we know that we had a stream crossing right here okay according to our notes at 220 meters we started to hit Pines on both sides of us so if that's 180 there's 200 220 so right here we started to hit those ponds and they were on both sides we continued to walk and at 280 meters we were still in the pines 240 260 280 we still had Pines on both sides of us so we'll put our little stick pine fingers on here now a couple of things we can ascertain from that right off the bat first of all we know we had pines here here and we had pines here so we can pretty much say that this area right here is going to be all pines and we know that so we can mark that as a pine grove on our map that could be important later but it's important now for fire resources we also know that we had a Creek right here what I would probably do is I would come back on my way back following my reverse azimuth I would put my waypoint marker right here and I would start using this Creek as a handrail and start following this creek up in the direction of travel this way now I could take a direct reading on that or I could just walk that Creek using it for a handrail to look at my map and say okay I know that that Creek from this point to the point at the top of our map that we found earlier should only be 10 is 200 meters 10 times 20 meters 200 meters so it should only be 200 meters from here to here so if I pace count 200 meters off while I'm walking this Creek I should be up in this area somewhere hopefully if I don't recognize anything I can always just use that same handrail and come back but one thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take some bearings while I'm here I'm going to since I'm using this for a handrail I don't have to worry about taking bearings to get to here I'm hoping that just runs up to here but for right now what I'm going to do is I'm going to start taking readings along this creek bed so what I might do is I might put a nap take an admin to a tree that's along the creek bed here 40 or 50 yards away then following the creek bed there might be a tree over here another I'm sorry 40 or 50 meters away here there may be another one 60 or 70 meters away here there might be another one you know 40 or 50 meters away and then when I get up in this area I don't know exactly where I'm at maybe I'm here maybe I'm not but there's a creek there is a tree somewhere right in here and I put a marker and I marked out on my map as well and I know what these distances are and I know what the degree readings were from one to the next to the next to the next now when I get back I can't connect the dots like this and say okay there's the flow of that Creek go right back here pick up my waypoint marker because I use this as a handrail all the way back take my reverse azimuth of 312 and go straight back to my camp understanding that from here to here I already have a distance so I know where I should be going to get to my camp or I may decide to follow this Creek this direction for a little while and see what happens but this allows me to start filling in things in this area of my app that are important to me that gives me a better picture of what I've got because now I understand that I have a handrail in here I understand that I have a big pine grove in here I still don't know where this trail goes yet and if I didn't see it cross this Creek anywhere when I was walking up this Creek then I have to assume it doesn't cross this Creek anywhere here maybe it crosses down and here somewhere I'll have to figure that out later but what I want you to understand from this example is how you can easily start to map your area very very well and understand exactly what resources you have in a given area and again this is a small scale situation we're talking 300 meters basically when we could be talking a thousand but you start small and you work your way up this is great if you're working on your phase one and you have to do a map of your personal space this type mapping works really really well for that even though it's a more advanced technique than phase one all right folks along dave cameron pathfinder school i appreciate you joining me i have for another video today i thank you very thing you do for me for my school for my family i appreciate your views and your support i thank you for anything you do for everyone affiliated with the pathfinder school and self-reliance outfitters we'll be back to another video soon as we can thanks guys you

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wildernessoutfitters

wildernessoutfitters

From the lore of bushcraft to all things related to self-sustainability, the Pathfinder vision is to pass on the knowledge of outdoor self-reliance. Providing basic to advanced self-reliance training and survival gear, our goal is to offer both practical knowledge and survival gear that will stand the test of time. From emergency preparedness to sustainability, the Pathfinder way is to share and educate.

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