Good video and excellent point about practicing "before" heading off into the woods. Another consideration is terrain. Flat, wooded terrain makes terrain association difficult without key features such as a river (hopefully on your topo map). This is where your compass and dead-reckoning become far more important.
There are times that walking along your azimuth isn't feasible due to terrain or impassable features (lake, swamp, major depression, simply very thick/dense foliage). Understanding how to "dog-leg" or navigate around the obstacle is pretty critical. Those obstacles are often what causes meandering and getting off course. Prominent terrain features are vitally important to identify from your starting point and having a boundary feature helps to keep from really screwing up (such as a major river, power line, rail-road, highway, coast-line, mountain range, etc.) and keeping you inside your intended area or path direction.
Practice in a controlled environment first. Learn the basics and how to use both a topographic map and compass.
You mentioned understanding your time/distance when hiking. This is my primary method of locating our position when hiking on the AT and really narrows down our location quickly. I don't necessarily need a compass other than a quick map-orientation, but I can quickly zone in on our location based on the map and time/distance we traveled. It's pretty important when looking for a marked water source or figuring out if you have enough time to make it to your designated campsite before a heavy down-pour hits or if we need to start looking for a site immediately.
ROCK6
There are times that walking along your azimuth isn't feasible due to terrain or impassable features (lake, swamp, major depression, simply very thick/dense foliage). Understanding how to "dog-leg" or navigate around the obstacle is pretty critical. Those obstacles are often what causes meandering and getting off course. Prominent terrain features are vitally important to identify from your starting point and having a boundary feature helps to keep from really screwing up (such as a major river, power line, rail-road, highway, coast-line, mountain range, etc.) and keeping you inside your intended area or path direction.
Practice in a controlled environment first. Learn the basics and how to use both a topographic map and compass.
You mentioned understanding your time/distance when hiking. This is my primary method of locating our position when hiking on the AT and really narrows down our location quickly. I don't necessarily need a compass other than a quick map-orientation, but I can quickly zone in on our location based on the map and time/distance we traveled. It's pretty important when looking for a marked water source or figuring out if you have enough time to make it to your designated campsite before a heavy down-pour hits or if we need to start looking for a site immediately.
ROCK6
