Garmin Hunt View Maps Vs. Hunting GPS Maps

My son just returned from a duck hunting trip to South Dakota.

I found and uploaded free Public Land hunting maps for Garmins on his GPS. The maps are available through the South Dakota Game Fish and Parks.

http://gfp.sd.gov/wildlife/gps/default.asp

Worked great. He brought home a bunch of ducks.

I hope that Garmin adds other states, too.

Very cool. It would be great if more states can provide this data in a similar usable format.

Do these maps / units give turn by turn directions to where the game is? if not what good is the GPS when hunting game

I think the big benefit is to show you who the owner of the land is so that you can determine whether you can hunt on certain property. If it is state land, one set of rules, federal land, another set of rules, etc.

Blonde moments.

I thought they had a unit that would say something like, "10 point buck, down 400 yards to the south, hiding behind a bunch of bushes, three trees down on your left!"

The free South Dakota hunting maps worked great on both my son's Nuvi and his handhand Garmin GPS.

The hunting maps on the Nuvi allowed them to drive directly to public hunting areas (really accurate he said). Using the handheld while walking around kept them them on the public lands.

All 5 hunters were from Illinois, had never been to South Dakota, and only hunted on public lands, as indicated by the free maps provide by South Dakota fish and wildlife.

Everyone in the hunting party managed to get their limit each of the 5 days they hunted .... so while the free South Dakato maps didn't point to where the ducks were tied up, they certainly proved worth their weight in gold to the hunters.

I agree. I wish more states' fish and wildlife dept's offered this service.

You'd think that I would be able to avoid a double post, given all the time I've spent on this site, but alas, I screwed up. So, this is my edit of the double post.

Provide this information with all the taxes they collect from us serf's!

I just thought I would re-kindle this thread. Has anybody else here tried hunting maps on their GPS? Or, for that matter, what about ATV or snowmobiling maps? I can get by ATVing with just a smartphone, but it is still handy to have a automobile GPS with sometimes. For me, it is usually real simple like when I get to a town, which way from the trail can I buy gasoline or buy food!

http://www.huntinggpsmaps.com/hunt-minnesota-garmin-gps#.VL2...

I was shopping at Cabelas today and I bought the Hunt Minnesota For Garmin Micro SD Card. I inserted it into my Garmin Nuvi 3597 in the parking lot and gave it a try. The most noticeable thing to me is it lists the name of the property owner as you are navigating. It also shows the property lines.

Even though this is marketed at hunters, I can think of other applications for this. It is kind of interesting to drive by properties and see who the owner is. I wonder if they have any plans to allow for a search function by property owner name?

I can't compare this to the Garmin Hunt View Maps because Minnesota is not one of the states that they cover.

So far, I have noticed that the Garmin Nuvi 3597 does not switch to night mode when using this. I will probably post more details as I learn them. I also noticed that this comes on a 2 GB micro SD card.

All current maps have searchable landowner names

I am resurrecting this old post because this morning I received an email from Garmin stating,"We’ve Expanded HuntView Maps Again."

It doesn't mention Minnesota, where I live, or Wisconsin, where I go ATVing from time to time, but when I click on to the Garmin website, I shows that both Minnesota and Wisconsin are available, with landowner data.

What I find interesting, too, is when I click on compatible devices, it shows pretty much a laundry list of the various handheld Garmin GPS units. I rather doubt that this is incompatible with automobile navigators, but it doesn't show them, for the most part.

They list both a Garmin DriveTrack 70 LMT and a Garmin GPSMAP 276Cx. It looks like the Garmin DriveTrack 70 LMT is designed to work with the dog tracking GPS units.

The Garmin GPSMAP 276Cx looks like a rugged, versatile GPS for on the land or on the water. The Garmin website shows a photograph of a boat and a side by side UTV on the GPSMAP 276Cx webpage.

Back to the Garmin HuntView Maps. At $79.99, it is $20.00 less than competing onXmaps. I guess the questions in my mind are how do they differ from one another? Is onXmaps worth $20.00 more? If so, in what way? Certainly for maps and landowner data to have value, they ought to be current. I also think that who sells them will be important, too. If both are carried at Cabelas, for example, side by side, Garmin might win in many cases because of name recognition alone. If someone is there buying a pair of Garmin handhelds, they might be inclined to simply get the Garmin HuntView Maps, rather then the onXmaps, because they are $20.00 cheaper and they recognize the Garmin name.

https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/maps/on-the-trail-maps/huntv...

I am resurrecting this thread just in case any of the newer members haven't seen this and may have experience with either one of these. There is now a bigger price difference, though. The Garmin HuntView Maps are still $79.99. The OnX Maps Premium Hunt Chip is $119.99.

Does anybody have any more recent experience with either of these? If so, which do you prefer and why?