In 2010, I started to challenge myself to pick a place on public hunting land at least 4 hours away from where I lived. After studying the topo maps and aerial photos, and marking all the spots I thought would be best, I’d go to that spot one time in the summer to scout it and check my waypoints for about four hours. The next time I’d go there would be to do a weekend hunt early in the hunting season to see how well I could put myself on the deer primarily just from picking spots out on a map. The point was to push myself to sharpen my digital scouting skills with minimal boots on the ground scouting. I eventually titled this hunt, “The Map Reading Challenge.”
In 2015, I started taking fans out with me. I’d take applicants sometime between January and March and pick a few guys. I’d then send them maps of public land in any given state. We’d meet there one time in the summer for a day of scouting and then go back early in the season to see if we could score on a deer.
Follow past seasons of the Map Reading Challenge below. Click on the little icon at the top corner of the video to see all the past videos in the series and pick which one you would like to watch next.
This next group of videos contains the 2016 Map Reading Challenge videos. I took out a group in Maryland and another in New York. I also did several Map Reading Challenge hunts in Pennsylvania and one in Iowa. For the Iowa hunt, I did a blind Map Reading Challenge where I studied the maps and then simply drove to Iowa for the very first time in my life to hunt it. There was no physical pre-scouting involved at all. As you will see in that video, I passed on a great buck the very first day and never had a shot at another buck of equal size. I did see other good bucks, and some that were even bigger, but I didn’t have a shot opportunity at them. As a result, I would say there were MANY valuable learning lessons in that hunt, and I made sure to share many of those lessons in some of the videos I produced in relation to that hunt. I hope you will both watch and enjoy these videos. Thank you and God bless you.
A Way to Support My Video Production
For many years I have produced videos and educated people for free in archery and hunting. I eventually began to have people ask me if they could make a contribution to support my efforts. This is something that is very helpful to me, so I created the PayPal button below. It allows you to pick a contribution amount either $5, $10, $20, $50, or $100. Simply click on the right side of the amount and scroll to the option that works best for you. (On some devices you can’t see the amount even after clicking on the right side of the box. You need to actually scroll over the box once it is open, which is when you will see the other amounts light up.) Thank you to all of you who decide to support my efforts. I truly need your support and am very grateful for those who help! God bless you all!