Historic trails and mapping software.

[Ryan Avery]

I have been doing a lot of e-scouting lately and noticed that only Basemap and Gaia have historic trails. ONX, Gohunt, and Spartain Forge do not have these trails. I didn't think this was a big deal until I looked at how many historic trails I use.

 

[ShootOkHuntWorse]

Trails.idaho.gov might be a good start depending on what layers they have taken away since I worked for the state. Another option is calling the ForestSkin office in Missoula. The guy that used to work down in the basement on maps was extremely helpful a few years ago.

 

[Caseknife]

I'm kind of old school, e-scout and navigate but also purchase USGS paper maps for any new country that I am going to hunt.

 

[Pony Soldier]

The trails listed on USGS maps differ somewhat between the early (1880s) maps, 15 min maps and 71/2 maps. The first two series were never completed and the last are rarely field checked hence things can be missing such as trails, buildings and things not seen on aerial photos. I found a mining map one time that had all the pack trails in the 1800s. Very few were on the more modern maps. I've found pack trails that have existed since the 1930s and don't show up on any modern maps.

Only time on the ground gives you a chance in heavily timbered areas and if they have been logged, they are likely gone forever.

 

[ShootOkHuntWorse]

With this link you are able to select which vintage of map you want. Then download the pdf. I used to upload them to my Avenza app to view them.

 

[mhabiger]

Definitely some of the older trails are not in the recently published "trail" GIS data sources. However they are in older USGS topo maps. That's one of the reason we provide the 40's-90's topo maps as a topo option in BaseMap.