Kinfolk Hunting Collective

E-Scouting 101

August 12, 2025

Agenda

Welcome/Overview

Why E-Scout?

How to E-scout

Where to E-Scout?

What to E-scout for?

1

2

3

4

5

Why e-scout?

Saves time, fuel, effort

It’s fast!

Evaluates whether to visit

• You can cover a lot of “ground” much faster than physical scouting

• Physical scouting requires driving to sites (time and gas money), and can require hiking deep into terrain. As such, it’s hard to physically scout multiple properties in a day. But with e-scouting, you can visit a few in a night!

• The ultimate outcome of e-scouting is to decide whether or not a site is worth visiting to physically scout.

How to start

1. Find legal locations!
1. Public land
1. Federally owned lands
1. Adirondacks
2. State-owned lands
• Wildlife Management Areas
• State Forests
• And more!
3. City-owned lands
• NYC Department of Environmental Protection
• Towns
2. Private land with access agreements
• Land trusts

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Scouting Platforms

Public maps

Free mapping apps

Subscription mapping apps

Pros:

Free!

Tells you where you can legally hunt public lands

Cons:

Very few features

Not great on mobile

Pros:

Lots of hunting-specific functions (waypoints, tracks, leaf-off, etc)

Great on mobile

Cons:

Pay-to-play

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Pros:

Free!

More functionality than public maps

Okay on mobile

Cons:

Limited hunting-specific functions

No topo maps

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Aerial Imagery

Topographic Maps

Contour lines

Index contour line

Intermediate contour line

• Thickest lines on map
• Helps understand how steep the terrain is (e.g., 100’ indexes mean steep, 10’ indexes mean not steep)

• Thinner contour line
• The numbering indicates the elevation change between each line (on this map they’re 20’ intervals)

Water

Less space between contours = more steep

More space between contours = less steep

Valleys

Water flows perpendicular to contour lines

Ridge

Valley

Let’s map!