• The SH Membership has gone live. Only SH Members have access to post in the classifieds. All members can view the classifieds. Starting in 2020 only SH Members will be admitted to the annual hunting contest. Current members will need to follow these steps to upgrade: 1. Click on your username 2. Click on Account upgrades 3. Choose SH Member and purchase.
  • We've been working hard the past few weeks to come up with some big changes to our vendor policies to meet the changing needs of our community. Please see the new vendor rules here: Vendor Access Area Rules

Hunting apps private boundary accuracy?

Bumping this. There was a parcel in Onx right in the middle of state forest that has never been posted, and the person whose name is on the land has never been seen or heard from. Without onx you couldn't possibly know it was private. So I've always accessed through it to get to some of my best locations. Here the property has been on sale for quite some time and was purchased in January. I saw it was freshly posted a few months ago but just today I went up and scouted the perimeter to know the lay of the land and where I cant access no more.

Well being the private is surrounded by state forest, I looked up the DCNR state forest maps and found this guy has it WAY overposted in every direction. Every app says it's 22 acres. When I got done with the walk around and plotted the area in Onx, I ended up with 43 acres.

So that didnt really grind my gear too much, as you guys have mentioned how off some of these lines can be.

What grinded my gears is he hacked a giant path through the woods, on state forest, so he could get his quad to the spot. Big no no.

So I let DCNR know. They said they'll send someone out to check it out after I gave the Lat and Long.

If I sound salty, I am. I cannot stand vehicles illegally on state forest and game lands forbidden to ATVs.
 
Last edited:
Mike, my experience with OnX on several properties has been very close. I have stood on literally dozens of marked corners and property lines both private and public and Onx for me has been surprisingly quite precise.
 
bigmike23 said:
Bumping this. There was a parcel in Onx right in the middle of state forest that has never been posted, and the person whose name is on the land has never been seen or heard from. Without onx you couldn't possibly know it was private. So I've always accessed through it to get to some of my best locations. Here the property has been on sale for quite some time and was purchased in January. I saw it was freshly posted a few months ago but just today I went up and scouted the perimeter to know the lay of the land and where I cant access no more.

Well being the private is surrounded by state forest, I looked up the DCNR state forest maps and found this guy has it WAY overposted in every direction. Every app says it's 22 acres. When I got done with the walk around and plotted the area in Onx, I ended up with 43 acres.

So that didnt really grind my gear too much, as you guys have mentioned how off some of these lines can be.

What grinded my gears is he hacked a giant path through the woods, on state forest, so he could get his quad to the spot. Big no no.

So I let DCNR know. They said they'll send someone out to check it out after I gave the Lat and Long.

If I sound salty, I am. I cannot stand vehicles illegally on state forest and game lands forbidden to ATVs.
Click to expand...

People are incredulous!
 
Here in Ohio, my On X has always been pretty much spot on. We are table top flat here if that matters?
 
I find that generally, my Onx has been pretty close to the lines when I was at a spot where I knew the line to be well marked and established. I put the discrepancy off to normal GPS wandering. Several times I have confirmed the Onx data with my Garmin 64st at the same location. Most of the time, where I hunt, the borders are pretty well marked or there is at least a significant change in the land to tell me this is the boundary, such as going from woods to a cutover. I try not to hunt too close to any line since I don't want to deal with an animal crossing over.
 
On my 3 acres, Onyx appears to be off by 8-10'. I have surveyed lines so I know exactly where the boundary is. However I would never assume that my App. is absolute in a hunting situation. . Nor would I trust my Garmin GPS that is supposed to pick up 8 Satellites. I have hunted National Forest right up to a known surveyed fence. My GPS was off by 3 or 4'. However I did speak to the GW about it. He said that they know that GPS's and mapping apps can be off. He said that typically he gives people the benefit of the doubt as long as your are not blatantly over the line or there is not some blatant error. Unfortunately not GW's are not like him. As far people post what's not theirs, that happens all the time. Call the governing body and have them check into it.
 
1simplemann said:
On my 3 acres, Onyx appears to be off by 8-10'. I have surveyed lines so I know exactly where the boundary is. However I would never assume that my App. is absolute in a hunting situation. . Nor would I trust my Garmin GPS that is supposed to pick up 8 Satellites. I have hunted National Forest right up to a known surveyed fence. My GPS was off by 3 or 4'. However I did speak to the GW about it. He said that they know that GPS's and mapping apps can be off. He said that typically he gives people the benefit of the doubt as long as your are not blatantly over the line or there is not some blatant error. Unfortunately not GW's are not like him. As far people post what's not theirs, that happens all the time. Call the governing body and have them check into it.
Click to expand...

That’s due to the error variance for GPS systems that’s built in as previously referenced. Even with a sophisticated and expensive Trimble gps locator our utility crews use it’s still off by +/- 2 meters or thereabouts so that 8’ to 10’ variance is in line. To my knowledge only the military has spot on capability.
 
woodsdog2 said:
That’s due to the error variance for GPS systems that’s built in as previously referenced. Even with a sophisticated and expensive Trimble gps locator our utility crews use it’s still off by +/- 2 meters or thereabouts so that 8’ to 10’ variance is in line. To my knowledge only the military has spot on capability.
Click to expand...

Spot on is relative but survey grade units with a known base station and real time corrections have cm accuracy (about 3/8”).

Just pointing that out so when people see a surveyor surveying their property with a gps unit they don’t think they might be off by 6’.

But yes even the best handheld GPS units have precisions of multiple meters and your phone location will bounce around by 30-50’ or more.
 
bigmike23 said:
Bumping this. There was a parcel in Onx right in the middle of state forest that has never been posted, and the person whose name is on the land has never been seen or heard from. Without onx you couldn't possibly know it was private. So I've always accessed through it to get to some of my best locations. Here the property has been on sale for quite some time and was purchased in January. I saw it was freshly posted a few months ago but just today I went up and scouted the perimeter to know the lay of the land and where I cant access no more.

Well being the private is surrounded by state forest, I looked up the DCNR state forest maps and found this guy has it WAY overposted in every direction. Every app says it's 22 acres. When I got done with the walk around and plotted the area in Onx, I ended up with 43 acres.

So that didnt really grind my gear too much, as you guys have mentioned how off some of these lines can be.

What grinded my gears is he hacked a giant path through the woods, on state forest, so he could get his quad to the spot. Big no no.

So I let DCNR know. They said they'll send someone out to check it out after I gave the Lat and Long.

If I sound salty, I am. I cannot stand vehicles illegally on state forest and game lands forbidden to ATVs.
Click to expand...

I get your saltyness, but the fact that you’re referring to a parcel landlocked by public land all but means the private parcel in question has been in place since the public acquisition of their parcel. I point that out because it speaks to the age of the legal description for the private parcel.

The ambiguity that can rear its ugly head in a legal description becomes worse the older the deed is. That ambiguity is difficult enough for a surveyor to rectify, imagine a GIS tech working for the county mapping department trying to do it 25 years ago when a) GIS at the governmental level was at its infancy and b) by default, the mapper was at the infancy of their career.

The GIS folks do the best they can with the information they have. What they do isn’t about being perfect, it’s about giving their clients a geographical representation of the data they manage.

Everyone needs to take a moment, open their county GIS and read the disclaimer you have to acknowledge before preceeding. Well….the folks that don’t look at county GIS and just buy a hunting app that shows property lines they get NO disclaimer.

Bottom line??? I would not be the least bit surprised to find out the new owner of the private parcel had a survey done and it’s results being that the actual boundary is twice the size of the one drawn in a County GIS, purchased by OnX and displayed on your phone.
 
dalton916 said:
I get your saltyness, but the fact that you’re referring to a parcel landlocked by public land all but means the private parcel in question has been in place since the public acquisition of their parcel. I point that out because it speaks to the age of the legal description for the private parcel.

The ambiguity that can rear its ugly head in a legal description becomes worse the older the deed is. That ambiguity is difficult enough for a surveyor to rectify, imagine a GIS tech working for the county mapping department trying to do it 25 years ago when a) GIS at the governmental level was at its infancy and b) by default, the mapper was at the infancy of their career.

The GIS folks do the best they can with the information they have. What they do isn’t about being perfect, it’s about giving their clients a geographical representation of the data they manage.

Everyone needs to take a moment, open their county GIS and read the disclaimer you have to acknowledge before preceeding. Well….the folks that don’t look at county GIS and just buy a hunting app that shows property lines they get NO disclaimer.

Bottom line??? I would not be the least bit surprised to find out the new owner of the private parcel had a survey done and it’s results being that the actual boundary is twice the size of the one drawn in a County GIS, purchased by OnX and displayed on your phone.
Click to expand...

The one thing I will add to @dalton916 post is that since this property is surrounded by State Forest he most likely has a right of way to the property and therefore would have a legal right to clear/maintain that ROW and use it for access with his quad.
 
GCTerpfan said:
The one thing I will add to @dalton916 post is that since this property is surrounded by State Forest he most likely has a right of way to the property and therefore would have a legal right to clear/maintain that ROW and use it for access with his quad.
Click to expand...
I have heard this individual asked for access and was denied by the DCNR.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top