Originally Posted by 2Dogs
Originally Posted by GomerPyle
Originally Posted by 2Dogs
In hills and mountains I'll study a topo before I set foot on it. Aerials never helped me much.

what, specifically, are you looking for on topos for hill/mountain areas?


Structure, that being points, knobs, hog back ridges , saddles, anything that might be a pinch point. I'll then put boots on the ground , locating food, trails, possible bedding areas. edges and specific pinch points. Edges and pinch points are where you kill em.


One big thing is looking at the adjacent topographical features and how they "flow into" the specific ridge you may be hunting. I like to look for saddles between two major ridge/point junctions that may have a bench below. Especially if the bench has some breaks just below the saddle which is actually a fairly common landform (due to water erosion) and 8f some adjacent ridges have points or hog backs that flow into that saddle break. If I see those things I'll definitely check it out on foot.

Obviously food and vegetative cover are super important, but if I'm hunting a homogeneous landscape the saddle is my first spot to check out.