How Far Do Hunters Really Walk?

GPS tracking shows most hunters stay within a few hundred yards of a road and overstate their range. Here is what the studies measured.

When researchers hand hunters a GPS unit, the tracks tell a consistent story. Most hunters stay close to a road, use a small part of the area, and believe they went much farther than they did.

Four studies measured this directly. Two are from the West and two from Pennsylvania.

Montana elk hunters: 290 yards from a road

In the mid 1990s, Forest Service researchers recorded 99 elk hunts by GPS in a walk-in area of western Montana where roads were closed to public vehicles. The units logged a position every 15 seconds. ^[1]

What the tracks showed:

• The average hunt lasted 4.7 hours and covered 10.7 kilometers (about 6.6 miles) at 40 meters per minute. Hunters on foot averaged 9.5 kilometers. ^[1]
• The average farthest point from the start was 2.6 kilometers (1.6 miles). Fewer than half of hunters went past that. ^[1]
• Only 12.5% got more than 4.5 kilometers (2.8 miles) from where they started. That group was five walkers, five riders on horseback and one on a bicycle. ^[1]
• While hunting, the average distance from the nearest road, open or closed, was 267 meters (about 290 yards). Only three hunters got more than a kilometer from any road. ^[1]
• Hunters on foot spent 26% of their hunting time walking on roads. The ones who went farthest spent the most time on roads: 38% for those who got past 2.5 kilometers, against 20% for those who did not. ^[1]
• The average climb between the lowest and highest point of a hunt was 306 meters (about 1,000 feet). ^[1]
• 60% of hunting time was spent on slopes gentler than the area average. ^[1]

The lesson in that road figure is easy to miss. Closing a road to vehicles does not stop hunters from using it. They walk it. In this study, past about a mile from the start, a third to half of all hunting took place on the old roadbeds. ^[1]

One limit: the GPS batteries lasted about six hours, and a few hunts ran longer than that. ^[1]

Pennsylvania deer hunters: half a mile, and they thought it was more

Researchers at Penn State tracked rifle deer hunters by GPS on a large state forest in north-central Pennsylvania in 2001 and 2002, and also surveyed them. ^[2][3]

• The average farthest point from a road open to public vehicles was 0.84 kilometers (about half a mile). ^[2][3]
• Hunters walked an average of 5.48 kilometers (3.4 miles) in a day of hunting. ^[2][3]
• Asked how far from the nearest road they had hunted, the same hunters reported an average of 2.23 kilometers. That is more than 2.5 times what their GPS units recorded. ^[2]
• Hunters staying in camps inside the forest went no farther from roads than hunters who drove in each morning: 0.85 kilometers against 0.79. ^[3]

Aerial counts over the same forest backed up the GPS data. In 2002, hunters were about three times more likely to be in an area for each kilometer closer to a road, and more likely to be there on gentler slopes. ^[3] A companion paper estimated that 87% of deer hunters were within half a kilometer of a road. ^[4]

In the early morning, 72% of hunters seen from the air were sitting still. By mid afternoon it was 58%. ^[3]

Oregon: hunters pile into a small share of the ground

At the Starkey research forest in northeast Oregon, 341 deer and elk hunters carried GPS units during controlled five-day hunts from 2008 to 2013. ^[5]

Hunter use was tightly packed. The area that held half of all hunting activity, for the most spread-out group, covered less than 16% of the forest. Distance from open roads and the amount of forest cover were the two most consistent predictors of where hunters went. ^[5]

Successful hunters used even less ground. Successful archers' core areas averaged 104 hectares against 681 for unsuccessful ones. And successful and unsuccessful rifle elk hunters barely overlapped on the map, even though they were looking for the same kinds of terrain. ^[5]

California: roads again

On a research property in northern California, GPS tracks from 483 rifle deer hunters over seven seasons showed that hunters of every style, successful or not, strongly favored roads. ^[6] That is a small property with black-tailed deer, so it is a supporting detail and not a western backcountry result.

What this means for getting away from pressure

Put the four studies together and a rough map of pressure appears.

• The first few hundred yards off any road carry most of the hunters. That includes closed roads and gated roads, because hunters walk them.
• Pressure thins fast after about 1.5 miles from the parking spot. In the Montana study, seven in eight hunters never got beyond 2.8 miles.
• Steep ground is underused. Hunters in Montana and Pennsylvania both favored gentler slopes.
• Leaving the road matters more than adding miles on it. A hunter who walks three miles up a closed road has gone far but is still where the other far-walkers are.
• Be honest about your own range. If hunters in a study overstated their distance by more than double, your own guess about how far you went last year is probably generous too. Measure a route on a map before you count on it.

What this does not tell you

• The Montana study is from 1993 to 1995, in one area, with volunteer hunters. Hunters today carry mapping tools that did not exist then. No study has measured whether that changed how far they go.
• The Pennsylvania results are for whitetail hunters in eastern forest. Western units are bigger and rougher.
• None of these studies covers a Colorado season or an over-the-counter elk unit.
• The studies show where hunters went. Only the Oregon study links that to who filled a tag, and it took place inside a fenced research forest with a limited number of permits.
• Fewer hunters does not mean more animals. Where the animals are is a separate question.

FilledTag builds one exact plan for your tag: parking, camp, morning and evening sits, and routes, with every pin checked against public land ownership and road rules. It is free for testers this season at https://www.filledtag.com/#signup.

Sources

1. Lyon, L.J. and Burcham, M.G. (1998). Tracking elk hunters with the Global Positioning System. USDA Forest Service Research Paper RMRS-RP-3. https://www.fs.usda.gov/rm/pubs/rmrs_rp003.pdf
2. Stedman, R., Diefenbach, D.R. and others (2004). Integrating wildlife and human-dimensions research methods to study hunters. Journal of Wildlife Management 68(4):762-773 (abstract). https://bioone.org/journals/journal-of-wildlife-management/volume-68/issue-4/0022-541X(2004)068%5B0762:IWAHRM%5D2.0.CO;2/INTEGRATING-WILDLIFE-AND-HUMAN-DIMENSIONS-RESEARCH-METHODS-TO-STUDY-HUNTERS/10.2193/0022-541X(2004)068%5B0762:IWAHRM%5D2.0.CO;2.short
3. Luloff, A.E., Finley, J.C., Diefenbach, D., Stedman, R.C., San Julian, G., Zinn, H., Swope, C., Brennan, M.A. and Matarrita, D. (2004). A Comparison of Hunter Movement, Activities and Opinions During Two Pennsylvania Hunting Seasons. Final report, Penn State. https://ecosystems.psu.edu/research/pacfwru/reports/hunting-seasons/@@download/file/Final-huntmvmt-082004.pdf
4. Diefenbach, D.R., Finley, J.C., Luloff, A.E., Stedman, R., Swope, C.B., Zinn, H.C. and San Julian, G.J. (2005). Bear and deer hunter density and distribution on public land in Pennsylvania. Human Dimensions of Wildlife 10(3):201-212 (abstract). https://pure.psu.edu/en/publications/bear-and-deer-hunter-density-and-distribution-on-public-land-in-p/
5. Rowland, M.M., Nielson, R.M., Wisdom, M.J., Johnson, B.K., Findholt, S., Clark, D., DiDonato, G.T., Hafer, J.M. and Naylor, B.J. (2021). Influence of landscape characteristics on hunter space use and success. Journal of Wildlife Management. https://www.fs.usda.gov/pnw/pubs/journals/pnw_2021_rowland001.pdf
6. Gaynor, K.M., McInturff, A., Abrahms, B.L., Smith, A.M. and Brashares, J.S. (2024). Hunting mode and habitat selection mediate the success of human hunters. Movement Ecology 12:29. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11021010/