Thanks, good to hear you find this information useful. It helps to know the efforts not in vain. I see the Garmin Legend (color) is 344.95 at
http://www.thegpsstore. Com. How is that compared to what you are seeing elsewhere? I would really like to get one of the newer color models, I've noticed the maps are easier to view on them. Now if I could just find somewhere online to download one of them for free...) These mapping GPS's are the way to go, one of the best tools for hunting I have ever found other than my rifle. If I was not to be able to work one of these into my budget I'd still get a 79.00 bare bones model so I could locate and archive particular waypoints. And speaking of waypoints......
Back up your waypoints! I learned the hard way when an internal battery died, I lost every thing. The models that allow you to share data with your PC make this easy. After your first upload to your computer the Garmin software builds you a folder where these waypoints will all be stored on your hard drive. You can got to this folder and view these as well printout a hard copy. If you want to "manage" these waypoints they sale software to help you but I have never used it. I started my own system before they offered such tools. I simply group my relevant waypoints with a prefix when I name them so the all stay in order in the file. My file looks sorta like this...
123shafercrktrailhead (quads)
123shafercrkcamp (quads)
123shaferckhorsegraze (quads)
123shafercrkgametrail (quads)
123shaferckdeadelk (quads)
234elkhillcamp (quads)
234elkhillgoodwater (quads)
234elkhilldeadelk (quads)
My favorite waypoints always include deadelk in the file names.) By now you gotta be wondering why I want to screw with this file.. The GPS manages my waypoints fine all on it's own. But when the same data is on my computer not only can I copy this for back up but I can SHARE.. Sorta like you show me yours and I'll show you mine. I have traded with many online. I can give you a good drainage in Bob Marshall in Montana with trailheads, camps, graze, etc. If you were to share a good area with me. This is another form of back-up as well, I've returned waypoints to others that have lost all thier data. By copying and pasting this data when e-mailing you eliminate any margin of error. When I receive quads in an e-mail I rename them accordingly and then just copy and past them into the one of my waypoint files. Then I can open my PC's mapping software and look at the waypoints as they lay in the area. Usually at this point I will be trading e-mails with who I am sharing with and we start asking more detailed questions. We can use the drawing tools provided in our mapping software to add in trails and points of interest and then e-mail the maps back and forth. This has worked out great for me when going into new country. I can ride right into a good camping spot in the dark or find a small game trail before sun-up. It's even more effective for finding those 'hotspots' on a lake or bay for fishing. Between all my fishing and hunting locations combined I have a few thousand waypoints. Learning to manage these files also allows me to store them in files of my own creation for extra storage just keeping what I need at the time in the Garmin file that I share with my GPS. You might want to play with these files and get familiar with them before to try to export the ones you have created to your GPS. You can always load them one at a time to your software and create waypoint that way as well.
Here's a screen snag of the Garmin Map Source software.
It's a rather generic browser but there is some good options and this software alone can take you a long ways.