Basics of Online Scouting in Massachusetts
>>BURT: My name’s Burt Comins, I work with MassWildlife and today we're going to go over a couple online resources you can use to help scouting for hunting.
MassWildlife Lands Viewer:
>>BURT: First one we're going to look at today is the MassWildlife lands viewer you can see this screen here you have your lands viewer to start exploring and a list of wildlife management areas. Today we're going to look at the lands viewer which is interactive map. The easiest way to get to this is just to google “MassWildlife lands viewer” you'll get to this screen. We can click right here on the lands viewer to start. So now you see we have our map of the state. Couple things just to get you started on this we have our legend down here see we have our WCE's , WMA’s. WMA is what we're going to focus on those are wildlife management areas they’re areas owned by MassWildlife they're all open to fishing hunting trapping and other passive recreation. Next thing we have is our base map so we're going to click that and we're just going to go right ahead and switch that from topographic which is the default we're going to switch it right over to imagery with labels.
Sharing:
>>BURT: Next thing you have here is to ‘share’ so you'll get a link here if you want to share this map with somebody you can send them that link and if you're zoomed in on something when you share that link it's going to go to where you were zoomed into. The other two we're going to look at here are ‘print’ if you want to print something out and also your layers list which we're going to get back to in just a second. The other thing we have up here is our search bar so you can see it starts by search by site and address if you want to narrow down you can click that arrow and sort of filter out what you want to search with these i like to keep it on all I think that's the easiest way to use it and we're going to look at the Frances A. Crane WMA.
Scouting:
>>BURT: So when you search that WMA it's going to zoom you right in you can see here we have it in green outlined in blue so we can see where our WMA is but you can't really see much else about it you also get this little splash screen which we're going to ‘X’ out of for now so for scouting you're going to want to see more of what that property actually looks like so to do that it's really easy we're going to come over here to our layers list and click that find these three dots next to where it says ‘MassWildlife lands’ click on those, go to transparency, and we're going to make this more transparent so now we can we can actually see what the property looks like. So now we can even zoom in a little start to see roughly what kind of habitat types you might find in there some fields, some edge habitat, some forested areas so you have a better look at what it looks like where you might want to start scouting depending on what you're hunting, how you're hunting and just get an idea of sort of a lay of the land so we also have these “P’s” which are all for parking. Help you figure out how you're going to access the property. Next thing we're going to do is we're going to click back on this again, see here we have this fact sheet, if you click on the fact sheet you're going to get to this web, these websites here, and each WMA is going to have this so you can see here the towns they are in, the acreage, wildlife management management zone, location access and then it's going to tell you about the hunting and fishing opportunities so maybe you're a new hunter and you're not sure what kind of animals you're going to find in certain areas this is going to give you an idea of what is known to be on this this WMA you also have some other useful links to the hunting regulations fishing regulations and it's going to give you the contact for the local district office if you have any questions about this WMA. So you can see in the hunting and fishing opportunities right in the first sentence there, it says this area is stocked with ringneck pheasants during that season so maybe you're looking to hunt pheasants and you can certainly find areas that are stocked with pheasants on the lands viewer but another way to find it if that's really what you're looking for is to go to the Massachusetts pheasant stocking maps so when you open our pheasant stocking map.
Pheasant Stocking Map:
>>BURT: This is what you're going to find you get another map of the state and you have these different colored dots all across it those are all areas where pheasants are stocked and the color of the dot tells you how often so red is at least three times a week orange is at least twice a week and yellow is at least once so if you're looking to hunt pheasants it's a really useful resource for you.
Conservation Easements:
>>BURT: So some other lands you might see on the lands viewer are these wildlife conservation easements so you can see the areas are shaded in but they're a different color than the WMA’s so these are lands that are not owned by MassWildlife but MassWildlife has an easement on that property that allows public access. Typically allows hunting but you'd want to check with your district office about that and you can get that information from those fact sheets we just showed. So you might also notice this one has some lines through it quickly we can go back to the legend here which has a little more information now that you're zoomed in, and you can see that it has some additional info about access, so all you have to do is click right on that it's going to show you right up top what that information is you can see here it's about non-motorized boating and some parking information so if you're wondering about a conservation easement and get some information about those on the lands viewer as well so the next thing we're going to look at is MassMapper it's the statewide GIS maps for Massachusetts and again the easiest way to get to that is to just google it.
Massachusetts Map:
>>BURT: When you click through the links you're going to end up with this here, so you have a full map of the state of Massachusetts and this has a lot of really great features to help you with scouting. To start we'll just go through the top, these toolbars up here so the "I” is your default when you open mass mapper and that's going to give you information on a property when you click on it the “I” with this is if you want to look at several properties at a time you can draw a polygon on the map and it'll give you information on all those properties. Next thing we have is to measure distances which is really useful if you want to make sure you're in a legal hunting area if you're that 500 feet from a from a dwelling or if you're 150 feet from a road this can help you determine that. Next one we have here is a permalink so if you zoom into an area on the map and create that permalink you can save that area on the map if you want to re-look at i,t maybe keep some information on it a really good way to keep track all that is just to open up a document and copy and paste that link in there so you can keep track all that stuff. You can draw on it if you'd like. Print the map out and the last one is export data layers but we're not going to worry about that for right now. So we also have a search bar here this search bar you have to be more specific than you are with the lands viewer you actually have to put in a full street address so to start we're just going to type in the address to our field headquarters in Westborough.
Aerial Imagery:
>>BURT: So bring up the address you can click on that it's going to zoom right into that property. Next thing we're going to do is come over here to the base maps and we're going to switch to do 2021 aerial imagery. So now we have aerial imagery that's pretty recent, it's going to cover the whole state and again we can zoom out a little bit and we'll move over to this WMA here that's at our field headquarters you can start to get an idea of what that property sort of looks like. Again, you can see some wetlands some ponds some hardwood forests some coniferous forests, get an idea of what the habitat looks like so this map has a ton of features that can help you out with scouting. We're just going to focus on a few that I think are the most useful for most people so to look at those come over here to all our layers so if you want to find where the wetlands are on this property, I'm going to come over here to your layers. Click on physical resources “hydrography water features” and then “DEP Wetlands” now you can see you have all these different ways to show the wetlands on the property, I like to use “detailed with outlines” I think that gives you the best look so now you can see where the wetlands are on the property and if you click on them it can actually tell you what type of wetland it is if you want to get into a little more detail on that. So now that we have those on the map we want to sort of clean up our layers list here so click back on "DEP Wetlands” it's going to hide those Put back on the “water features” it's going to hide those and we're going to look at one other layer in these physical resources. So come down to topography I like to use the three meter lines so now you get a topo map superimposed over that aerial imagery can give you an even better idea of what this WMA might look like, what you might expect to find and how you want to plan to scout the property. So we can leave those up there again we're going to click on that to clean things up come back up here to physical resources click back on them to clean things up even more, keep all the stuff nice and organized so you know what's up what's on the map. The other really nice feature about MassMapper is it's actually going to tell you who owns the property so maybe you have your eye on a piece of private property that you want to get permission to hunt this is going to tell you who owns that property so you either know where to find them or if maybe they live right on the property you're going to know their name when you go knock on the door so, if you click on a property you're going to come to this screen, the property tax parcels, and you can scroll over to ownership so we can see this is owned by Commonwealth of Massachusetts wildlife management area but this will work for private properties as well it's not just for properties open to the public and you'll have every property in the entire state you'll have this information on and it's updated about every 30 days so it's pretty current. So another really useful feature this map has go back up to this toolbar and find the measuring tool so if you click on this you can measure distances and area for distance you can do feet, meters, or miles for this we're just going to keep it right on feet and you can use this to make sure that your legal distances from roadways and dwellings so you're not scouting in areas where you aren't even legal to hunt so a good way to do this is give yourself some buffer between the building so if we knew we had to be 500 feet from this building, click here, and just scroll out to get to that 500 feet and again it's worth giving yourself a little bit of buffer because these aren't exact but they are pretty close, so see that we end 543 feet there in this wood line maybe look to scale past this wood line so you know that you know you're that 500 feet easiest way to do this is to find landmarks that you can find in the field and measure from those. So another really useful tool we have is we can actually look at historic imagery so to do that we're going to pop over to this other map here that i had saved using a permalink and we want to look at what this this area looked like in the past so to do that we're going to come back over to our layers list, I'm going to click on ‘images,’ click on ‘aerial photos’ so now you can see here you have aerial imagery from all these past years so let's see looked like in 2008, 2009 see the property looks fairly similar, come back 2005. So this looks like it was either a really wet year or just during the wetter seasons just to give you an idea of how the property might change over time or what kind of things you might expect to find when you go out there and look. Just give you another quick example of that here you can see we have an open field, again we're going to go back to images aerial photos and again let's go all the way back to 2005. So you can see it looks a lot different and if you want to see when those trees were cleared just keep going through so 2008 still there, 2011-12 they're gone so at some point during that those trees were cleared if you're looking for a successional habitat or maybe some more edge this is a really good way to find that and see how the properties changed over time so the last tool we're going to look at is Google Earth.
Google Earth:
>>BURT: And again you can find this on google and you can also use this on your phone where i think this has its greatest use, is if you have a smartphone you bring that out while you're scouting or while you're hunting you can actually look on Google Earth right on your phone so I've got a couple project examples here give you an idea what this might look like click on this one to start so this is a project that I saved and again we're right back at that wildlife management area at our field headquarters in Westborough. You can see here you have waypoints, lines, and actually a polygon, so if you wanted to keep track of how you were going into or out of a property you could use this. You want to keep track of areas that you already scouted you could use this here. So really simple to use all you have to do is go ‘new project,’ you can also share these so a good way to do that is Google Drive but for now we're going to do a KML file. So now you have this up here your untitled project click on new feature we're just going to add a place mark we'll add a place mark right there okay you can give it a name we'll call this one ‘start’ and another great feature is you can actually add a photo to that if you'd like so now we have that going to go back that's going to save. Again we'll go to new feature draw a line or a shape, let's say you're walking in here you wanted to keep track of your path, double click when you're done and again you get this where you can give it a title you can add a picture really useful to keep track of all the information that you gather while you're scouting or while you're hunting keep it all in one place. If you wanted to draw that polygon to keep track of areas that you've already looked at again you can just go to new feature, draw a line or shape, instead of making a line, you just close it off. So maybe you found a really good area that you wanted to hunt you could give this a title let's call it ‘area one’ for now and you can keep track all that information. So using this on the computer right now but if you did have this on your phone there would be a blue dot here that would show you where you are in real time so these projects you're going to have to create on a computer but then you can use these files to share them to your phone very easily Google Drive is probably the best way to do that so you can have all this information out and look at it in real time very useful for scouting. The other thing we're going to look at that I think gets overlooked a lot with Google Earth is the street view so again I saved another project over here give you an idea of how this might be useful. So I know this is a place I want to look at the street view and to look at street view you're going to come over to this little picture of a person here ‘click and hold’ drag it out here and leave it on one of these blue lines, so we drop it on that blue line there, now we're going to come in and get a street view of what this looks like and where this can be useful really is for access, so say you're looking at something on satellite imagery you're not sure if you're going to be able to park there or what the access looks like this is a really great way to figure that out before you spend the time to go out even if it's just to eliminate some areas what I like to use this for is for looking for ‘no parking signs’ or looking for areas on the side of the road where you can pull off and leave your vehicle. So all really good features that can be used to help with scouting and the last thing you see here we got disoriented so we're not facing north now if we come down here to this little arrow just click, that it's going to reorient the screen so north is always up at the top. So that's a very basic overview of three tools you can use to help scouting right from home or from your phone to save yourself some time when you actually go out and look at a property. They're not going to be a substitution for physically going somewhere and taking a look but hopefully they can help you save some time and improve your chances of success during hunting season.