>>1601782All of my experience is military based, so I have no tips I've actually tried when it comes to finding a course or procuring your map.
- Know different techniques and when it's appropriate to use them. It rarely makes sense to shoot a straight azimuth to your point and start walking along it, but sometimes that's the best way. More often you should find known points on your map and move there first to shorten the distance that you have to actually maintain a precise azimuth.
- Have a backstop in mind for every movement possible.
- Only use your pace count when it's actually appropriate to do so, sometimes it doesn't matter. It's really just a rough estimate anyway. Minimize the amount of time that the accuracy of your pacecount is actually important.
- If you plan your movement between points smartly it'll be way easier than if you just shoot a straight azimuth, but it'll look way more complicated and take a little longer to plan out. It's worth it, though.
If I were going to try to get into it, knowing what I know, I'd probably just find a local military base with a big training area (if one exists near you) and see if they allow hunting in that area at times. Get a hunting license and see if you can find info on land nav courses, contact their range control and ask, etc. See if they'll give you a map with the points or something. Say it's for orienteering while you set up a blind/check your deer stand/etc.
Alternatively, if you want to just go find shit in the wilderness instead of find white and orange signs, go get a good map (I don't know the difference between an orienteering and topo map but probably either would work), pick a place that would be unmistakable if found, and plan a day hike.
All of this assumes you have things like a compass (has to be super accurate if you attempt dead reckoning, doesn't have to be very accurate at all if you plan around that), a protractor that fits the scale of your map, etc.
