tgreeno wrote:Jonny wrote:Just a heads up, I have seen some compass' fail in the field. My buddy had his malfunction because of a magnet in his gloves. And some for whatever reason just get turned around and point you in the wrong direction. The river bottom I hunt is notorious for it. I am in no way saying don't carry a compass with you, but you better have options for when one goes bad. I always carry extra batteries for my gps and have a pocket compass in my pack and one of the pin round bubble compass' on my jacket. I also have my phone with a battery charger for it as well and my phone has a compass built into it as well.
Another friend of mine got turned around in the meadow valley/ babcock area a few years ago. Ended up 10 miles by road away from his truck when his compass failed. Took him north instead of south. He also has been hunting that area for probably 30 years.
Don't trust technology, but anything can and will fail on you when you need it most.
I have never heard of a compass failing? And have never had one fail in 40 years of hunting.
Obviously a compass uses a magnet to point to magnetic north. You need to keep is away from metallic objects or other magnets.
Me either. Until it happened to two guys I hunt with. For the guy with the magnetic gloves, if you met him, you would understand why it happened very well. I fully trust my compass and my ability to use it, but it is always my back up to my gps. The other guy, I suspect it was a really old dollar store compass. The area I gun hunted this year, a cheap compass I had on me would just slowly spin in circles, all day in my stand. Another higher quality compass would work perfectly and match up with my gps and phone. Guess which compass is sitting in a landfill right now. Just another reason to not go cheap on something that could be really important to you.
I hunt areas where I can't really get lost unless I try. Hard to walk more than a mile in any direction without hitting a road, atv trail or a river. Obviously don't cross any of them and you will be fine. Real big woods, this probably wouldn't work too well.
A compass is the last thing I would ever expect to fail on me. But it can happen. I highly doubt any decent compass would, but who knows.