GIS and GPS on the Trap Line in the Near Future?
Ain’t science wonderful? Geography, that boring thing you had to learn in grade school has become a practical tool for the trapper. And it goes beyond finding your way from Gonvic to Markville. It has emerged as the Geographic Information System (GIS) and it can be used in combination with a Global Positioning System (GPS), one of those neat little hand held units like all your buddies own.
GIS’s, in the modern mapping world, exist primarily as a series of electronic mapping layers which can be put into a computer program and then viewed on a screen or printed out. One layer might be a series of lines depicting all the roads in an area and a second layer a series of lines depicting all the streams. By overlapping the two on the computer, a trapper would be able to see the intersections of drainages and roads where all the easily accessible bridges and culverts would be located…a nice tool for laying out a new water line. It helps you estimate how many and what kind of traps should be loaded in the truck.
The people who work with GIS have been very busy making layers. For instance, there are already electronic slices of the Minnesota countryside showing things like color aerial photos, railroad lines, general forest types, topography (USGS Quadrangle maps), lakes, wetlands, streams, roads and others features too numerous to mention. All you have to supply is a little imagination. More layers than you can use are available free from Minnesota DNR on their “Data Deli Site”…your computer will find it on the internet.
There is a drawback to all this and that is cost. GIS programs are expensive to purchase at this time. You can hope that as new programs are brought to the marketplace, the cost will go down. At this time, government agencies, local, state and federal, are the chief customers for these products, but they require complicated programs that are sophisticated far beyond the needs of the average person. Someday in the not too distant future, there will likely be a watered down version suitable to the needs of the trapper. Until then, all you can do is to try and get a friend that is “in the business” to make a few maps for you…those folks are out there.
Now GPS is another story. I know that many of you are already using hand held units to mark trap sites during the season and to note hot spots found while pre-season scouting. If you aren’t aware of it, you should know that waypoints saved on your GPS unit are also map points that can be converted to a GIS layer like the kind referred to above. Like any other layer, it can be overlapped with aerial photos, USGS maps etc., by using a GIS program. In other words, you can put your trap line on the map.
Once your line is mapped, you can see where you have traps and possibly add a few more at an interesting spot close to one of your stops. The aerial photo might tip you off to something interesting and close by that you hadn’t seen from the road or trail.
There are also fairly general topographic background maps available as accessories for your hand held GPS unit. They are sold by some units’ manufacturers. We used these layers in North Dakota last year to find federal and state hunting lands. We then marked way points for good areas and made our time there more enjoyable.
Trap line management can benefit from GPS mapping. You can compare your trap line layout with probable home ranges of species being trapped. This might help you adjust your travel route to give less or greater overlap in order to include more home ranges and avoid over-setting within the same home range. If some of your traps were moved slightly to extend into another critter’s territory, your chances of additional catch might be improved. Mapping can help you make some more intelligent guesses.
GPS and GIS also serves to justify your purchase of another toy…and you know what they say, “The one who ends up with the most toys, wins.”
Con