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Hand held GPS users out there

Shakeandbake

Shakeandbake

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 18, 2020
Messages
369
So I got lost pretty good today in one of my public spots and I’m considering a hand held GPS like a garmin. I was using OnX today but it was so off and it was having trouble figuring out what way I was facing probably due to poor cell service. So my question is, how accurate are these hand held GPS unit? is it something that can replace the phone app or are they pretty comparable to OnX or base maps…more concerned about accuracy as to where I stand, some spots I go to can have you turned around pretty quick.
 
Shakeandbake said:
I did not, I’ll have to look into how to do that.
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This. I have a garmin handheld gps. I hardly use it anymore because whenever I’m out in the deep woods I download an offline map for onX and the detail is incredible. I carry my handheld with me just in case but havent used it in years.
 
I have a Garmin 64s and use HuntStand+Gaia GPS on my phone. The gps on the garmin is significantly better than my Galaxy s20. Phone apps can't have better gps precision than the phone itself. I often walk 1/2-1 mile off-trail in pitch black to get to my spots. The Garmin brings me within 30ft every time. The key is to create routes with turn by turn waypoints to avoid ad hoc navigation.

I wish I was a headlight on a north-bound train
 
I downloaded offline maps in OnX and it still has issue keeping up with your location if you don’t have a signal. Did the same thing to me Saturday. I knew I was where 3 borders meet, so I pull out the phone to verify. After a few seconds of spinning it finally settled on a spot and direction. Unfortunately it was pointing the wrong way and I bebopped on over onto private. I realized pretty quick that the trees were way too big and old and turned around. By that point my phone figured it out and spun around the right way. Dang technology.
 
Tr33_n1nj@ said:
I downloaded offline maps in OnX and it still has issue keeping up with your location if you don’t have a signal. Did the same thing to me Saturday. I knew I was where 3 borders meet, so I pull out the phone to verify. After a few seconds of spinning it finally settled on a spot and direction. Unfortunately it was pointing the wrong way and I bebopped on over onto private. I realized pretty quick that the trees were way too big and old and turned around. By that point my phone figured it out and spun around the right way. Dang technology.
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Unless you already have it running it's gonna take 10 or 15 seconds to figure out where it's at. Any gps will be like that. I have found that it works better in offline mode. I don't think service should affect it that way, although I don't know exactly how the phone gps works. Just yesterday I had an issue where I thought it was pointing me in the wrong direction, checked spartan forge and I was correct. Then I switched to offline and onx was fine.

A handheld garmin is definitely more accurate, but it's gonna boil down to whether or not it's worth carrying and messing with one more thing. I sometimes will bring mine if I have a critical location to hit but onx is really pretty darn close and 90% of the time that's all I need. A compass is a great tool for emergency use but doesn't do much for me in terms of following a track with an aerial background where I can see exactly where I'm at.
 
Interesting, I hunt all over (PA, NY, CO, NM) and have used onx downloaded on my phone for years and have never had an issue with it being off. Just curious, does your phone ahve 'battery saving mode' enabled? I always have it on in the woods and have never had issues personally but I have heard of it causing issues with the GPS. I also get a new phone (whatever the latest android galaxy is) about every 18 months since I use my phone as my GPS.
 
I've been carrying a Garmin GPS for 20 years. We use them all the time. When hunting Imin a group we are sometime miles away, but with a GPS and a commercial radio, if someone needs helpdragging, or looking, we can give coordinates and everyone knows they're headed to the right place. I also always carry a compas when in Big woods. Lately, I've just been relying on my wrist top Garmin which I loaded the same detailed maps to from my handheld. It acquires satellites in a matter of seconds...hell I get satellite reception in my house. Once you've used a Garmin, they become 2nd nature and are 100% worth it.
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I've been eyeing up those watches for awhile @Vtbow that thing looks sweet.

I always navigate with my GPS for a couple reasons. I have both a Garmin eTrex 20 and a 64.

1) Mainly ergonomics. I just find the GPS more pleasant to use. My phone I have to unlock, the backlighting messes up my nightvision more, the touchscreen doesn't work when it gets practically any water/sweat on it. Doing anything like marking a waypoint or whatever in the apps is usally a two-handed ordeal requiring me to stop and set my bow on the ground. I can do anything on my gps with one hand.

2) Not wanting to destroy my phone. I am hard on stuff and a GPS is a lot cheaper and easier to replace.

bonus #3, Recently becoming [slightly] conerned with cloud data on these hunt mapping apps being used nefariously. Now that companies are using AI to predict deer movements [thank you Pandora, I mean, Spartan Forge] with the intention of selling that product to hunters, I have no faith in companies not to use my location data for something like that. Imagine having access to the onX database and what you could do with that. OnX could easily sell a premium product or give to insiders a sort of hunting pressure heat map. I'll take off my tinfoil hat and yes Garmin has my GPS data but for whatever reason I trust they could give a crap about mapping hunter density, say versus OnX or HuntStand.

Regarding accuracy, I'm not 100% sure on this but from using OnX for a couple years on my Android phone I am pretty sure it uses cell tower triangulation first and GPS as a backup. I've had some places with sketch signal that OnX gets really screwy. Maybe someone with more knowledge how that works can chime in.

Someone mentioned the difficulty of getting signal in a canopy which can be an issue. For whatever reason it's hard to connect to the satelllites sometimes but once they are connected, it is really, really hard to lose them. Turn on the GPS when you leave the house and let it find the satellites on the way and you are good to go.
 
i've posted this a few other places in the past day or so, but highly reccomend everyone follow @rambotogo's advice and buy a compass. then practice with it and know the heading you need to walk out before you need to know it. my phone is failing, and saturday night after dark it dropped from 40 to 1% battery suddenly. i didn't panic because i had both a battery backup and two compasses on me ( i know.... overkill, but i'm home safe!). when the phone was giving up the ghost, i quickly pulled out my carabiner compass (attached to my keys so i always have it) and compared headings. when i moved my phone, the gps would swing, and "fix" on a new north that varied up to 20 degrees in either direction from true magnetic north. not sure if this was tree cover of gps failing with low battery or jsut the phone being a POS in general (come on pixel 6 launch...) i then put my phone in my pocket to charge with the battery, verified my first compass with my second one, and then walked out on the bearing that i knew would lead me back to the path to my car. i've done this a bunch and knew i had multiple backups but it was still not a comfortable situation, all it takes is one drop of the phone or misstep when climbing to crack it and then you may be stuck in the woods with nothing except waiting for the sun to come up to tell you which direction to walk, and then only if you know which direction your vehicle is.

i suppose i'm joining the safety police, @kyler1945 can i have a trainee badge or something?
 
thedutchtouch said:
i've posted this a few other places in the past day or so, but highly reccomend everyone follow @rambotogo's advice and buy a compass. then practice with it and know the heading you need to walk out before you need to know it. my phone is failing, and saturday night after dark it dropped from 40 to 1% battery suddenly. i didn't panic because i had both a battery backup and two compasses on me ( i know.... overkill, but i'm home safe!). when the phone was giving up the ghost, i quickly pulled out my carabiner compass (attached to my keys so i always have it) and compared headings. when i moved my phone, the gps would swing, and "fix" on a new north that varied up to 20 degrees in either direction from true magnetic north. not sure if this was tree cover of gps failing with low battery or jsut the phone being a POS in general (come on pixel 6 launch...) i then put my phone in my pocket to charge with the battery, verified my first compass with my second one, and then walked out on the bearing that i knew would lead me back to the path to my car. i've done this a bunch and knew i had multiple backups but it was still not a comfortable situation, all it takes is one drop of the phone or misstep when climbing to crack it and then you may be stuck in the woods with nothing except waiting for the sun to come up to tell you which direction to walk, and then only if you know which direction your vehicle is.

i suppose i'm joining the safety police, @kyler1945 can i have a trainee badge or something?
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I agree 100% with this....there's always a Suunto compass in my bag, and I know the "Safety" bearings of whereever I am. This is just a given of being in the wilderness/backcountry for me...

A compass in conjunction with a GPS is an amazing tool. Take the bearing to your pin from the GPS, turn it off. Follow the compass....check back with the GPS to make sure you have continued to travel in the correct direction after travelling a while. It saves on batteries, and is honestly much easier to shoot a bearing to follow in the woods on a compass.
 
I have a Garmin Fenix 5S, but I haven't gotten it down yet for the purposes of hunting. I put it in hike mode while scouting over the weekend, but it wasn't intuitive. With the exercise watches the goal has always been to pace myself while running and it was all exercise focused.

I've never used them for waypoints and to create tracks. So I need to do some additional research on how to use use the dang thing.
 
7mmremmag said:
Interesting, I hunt all over (PA, NY, CO, NM) and have used onx downloaded on my phone for years and have never had an issue with it being off. Just curious, does your phone ahve 'battery saving mode' enabled? I always have it on in the woods and have never had issues personally but I have heard of it causing issues with the GPS. I also get a new phone (whatever the latest android galaxy is) about every 18 months since I use my phone as my GPS.
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In low cell areas I’m having issues of what direction I’m facing and being off trail by up to a 100 ft. I can still see maps but a lot of areas I hunt are big blocks of timber so everything looks the same.
 
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