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Betrayed By Your Hunting Photos

Nameless Range

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I have always been good at guessing Montana locations based on pictures. I had an internship in college that required me to review feature-accuracy for every USGS Quad in the state, and have been obsessed with MT Geography my whole life. Often when people post hunting photos I have been able to nail down their location, with only a mountain side aspect and some vegetation in the picture.

Sooner than later, that skill will be exceeded by anyone who can use Google.

Google has now developed an AI that can identify image locations on earth that are not geotagged.

It's not overly impressive in its abilities yet, but as its sample size increases and the "deep-learning" algorithm gets more and more data from previously geotagged images like vegetation, aspect, topography, and drainage direction via shadows, I would not doubt that within the next decade this thing becomes freakishly good at nailing down locations - if only from the picture of some dude with his elk in the timber.
 
There have been several pictures posted on this site that I could pinpoint the location.I too am guilty. I have posted several pictures my self that have enough landscape that other people with knowledge may know where I have been. But I could just be posting pictures of places that I want people to go.
 
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Does it matter? If the critter is dead does that mean another will stand in the exact same tracks someday?
 
Does it matter? If the critter is dead does that mean another will stand in the exact same tracks someday?

What about your shed spots, decent chance another antler will drop in the nearby area.
 
I figure if a guy knows where I take a picture of a dead elk, he already knows there are elk there anyway. I don't show the places I'm going to be seriously bummed if I ever see someone else there.
 
Sometimes even background noises can ruin a good hunting spot.

Wyohighcountry-questioned-bull-elk-backcountry-or-high-fence.jpg
 
From that article, I think hunting spots would be tough to determine. It sounds like they are using cached pics from know locations for the software. Once you get out in the woods, there aren't many of those on the net.

That said, who the hell knows what we will have in 10 years.
 
From that article, I think hunting spots would be tough to determine. It sounds like they are using cached pics from know locations for the software. Once you get out in the woods, there aren't many of those on the net.

That said, who the hell knows what we will have in 10 years.

I largely agree that's the case right now. Though, if you look at Google Earth and turn the Panaramio photos layer on there are quite a few backcountry images. Here's a snapshot of the Bob Marshall area from a high level view. Keep in mind that there are probably 5 times as many geotagged images in this area in the Panaramio dataset compared to what is visible in the screenshot below due to the fact that Google puts a scale-dependency on the visibility of different images at different levels.

bob.JPG

Combine that with all the Flickr, Instagram, and other geophoto collections out there and it get's surprising. Check out this Public Info Template Web App served up by ESRI to highlight some of their widgets. If you click on the layers tab you can turn on all the geotagged Instagram,Flickr, Twitter and Youtube occurrences happening in an area, and by clicking on the little sprocket to the right of the layer name you can filter by timeline or keywords. Also scale dependent so zoom into your hometown to get a good idea. Lots of photos out there.
 
I'll still take plenty of photos, they just wont be on social media of any time. Just like they aren't now.
 
As a breed, Coloradans are notorious hot-spotters. It's in their fancy-coffee laden blood.

And that's a scientific fact.
 
Ollin Magnetic Digiscoping Systems

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