Now where was I last week?

[BarnacleBill]

Looking North:

[attachment 232240 north.jpg]

Looking South:

[attachment 232241 south.jpg]


At this beach when the tide goes out it's about 1/4 mile dunes to water, besides the beach being 2.5 miles long.

So it's 25 degrees F with a 20-30mph wind off of the water and I have a detector in one hand, shovel and sifter in the other. I begin hitting targets so I want to mark this as a concentration area. Put down all the gear, take off my gloves, reach in the parka pocket to get out the GPS, turn on the GPS. If it's a "cold" start it could take a couple minutes to lock onto the birds. Meanwhile my hands are starting to freeze being out of the gloves, and I have to start pushing buttons they make smaller every year, with writing I can no longer see because my arms aren't long enough anymore!

Or, well, if it's built into the detector I save time not doing a disrobe routine, don't freeze my pinkies, and don't risk dropping the handheld GPS in wet sand which works wonders for the screen. Have you ever tried to wipe sticky wet ocean sand off of an LCD screen?

Some will not be able to afford this detector, that's just a fact of life. And selling a model without the GPS will not reduce the costs that much because it is all of the engineering in laying out the circuitry, getting the GPS antenna to have a good look at the sky, noise abatement, power conservation etc which is the real cost driver.

HH
BB

 

[Critterhunter]

One thing for sure is that including GPS isn't going to make it any cheaper, but I can see where you're coming from. I love GPS in my car going places I don't know the way to, but in the woods I've got a pretty good sense of direction so I never use one. If I do lose my sense of north, south, east, west...I look at where the sun should be at that time of day, or see which side of the trees have moss on them when it's cloudy out. One time I was trailing a buck I shot and it got dark. Darned if I didn't know which way was which because of paying attention to the blood trail on the ground instead of my sense of direction with my surroundings. After wandering aimlessly for about a half hour in which I must have been walking in circles, I remembered to look at the moon. Kept the moon to my back over one shoulder as my reference point and fifteen minutes later I was back at my truck.

Oh, and yes...I did find that buck the next day so he didn't go to waste.

By the sound of it from those who work with GPS it isn't going to have enough resolution to help you grid. And if it could, I would just have to think that I'd start to feel like I was roboticly mowing the lawn and marching according to commands so I didn't miss a spot. Not my style. I want to relax when I hunt, so I do wish they'd offer a cheaper GPS-less version for those who don't want to pay for that.

Beyond all that, I'm sure the GPS doesn't weigh much but every little bit adds up. I kept hearing about how well balanced my machine was despite being heavy but for me that balance didn't make it any more comfortable after a few hours of hunting, and I'm a young guy in good physical condition used to doing physical labor. So I built a lightweight shaft, ran a lipo battery in it, did a few other mods, and dropped almost 1 and a half pounds of weight from doing those mods. That made a huge difference. Maybe before some people who have concerns with the weight go out and buy one they should put 5.3 pounds of weight on their right shoulder and see if they can handle that after a couple of hours. Not trying to be cute here. I'm serious that I think that would be a good idea to see if the weight is going to be an issue before spending the money.