Need Help with hunting software

I’d like to take an aerial photo of our hunting land, put in GPS coordinates of ours and neighboring properties. Then overlay color coated trails for logging roads, deer trails, rivers, stands, scrapes, rubs, etc but am ignorant of GPS/GIS/mapping software that can help me do this. Any suggestions??

Have you played with Google earth? It’s an amazing tool that is pretty simple to run.

google earth is the way to go…

I am familiar with Google Earth, but have only used the free version to view my house or other points of worldly interest. I wasn’t aware of being able to add trails or points to it. Do you get that with a “pay” version of the software?

I do not have an answer for you Bomber, but wanted to WELCOME you to the Hunting side of IDO!

Here is there comparison.

http://www.google.com/enterprise/earthmaps/pro_features.html

The overlay images could be just what you need for trails etc…Which is included in their free version.

I know some othere members use this software a lot. Wait til they see this and reply.

You can add trails, stands, points of interest etc. to the free version without using “overlay”. You then save that area and can come back to it at any time.

Here are some quick points:

To mark stand locations:

1. Click thumbpin on top left of map toolbar titled “add placemark”

2. Name placemark

3. Select size and color of placemark (style,size)

4. Click “ok” and move placemark to desired spot

To mark deer trails, walking paths etc.

1. Click “add path” from map tool bar – 3rd from left, 3 small circles with lines connecting 2 of them

2. A large box will appear on left side of map. Move cusor until 2 way arrow shows up on the edge of the pop-up box and make it smaller

3. Click and hold mouse and move cursor to mark the path. You can name it and choose style and color as well.

4. When done, click “ok” on the pop-up box and the box markers will disappear leaving you with the desired path. This works well for marking boundaries and clearings not shown on the map as well.

When you are done creating your map go into “file” on the top toolbar and click “save”. Name your map and when coming back to it select it from the drop down search box in the “fly to” tab. You can print and infinitely add and remove marks and trails on your maps. Hope this helps. If you need any other help PM me and I will try to help as best I can

Take a look at Bing Maps 3D also,This one is fun to play with in 3D.

I like Google earth, with my garmin rhino gps, uploading and down loading maps are a snap.

I’ve been reading up on the Garmin uploads to Google Maps. Is there anyway you could take a snapshot of the map with trails and post it so I can see what that looks like?

I can’t figure how make a picture here, but if I get your email I could send it to You. PM me if you like.Doug

Great tips and some I will need to explore, that’s forsure