http://www.backpacker.com/prof-hike-the-first-five-minutes/skills/15767

This is a good article on getting "found" again when you get lost while hiking.

Never really been lost, just a bit confused for a day or two. One thing the article didn't say or maybe it did and i didn't see it, Is to leave details at your car or with someone about you destination, so they know where to start looking for you.

JPH I have been confused too, one time while slipping through a pine woods full of honeysuckle in the fog got turned around bad, I was real glad the grain bin kicked on just as it was getting dark or we might have had to spend the night. Since that day I always packed a compass when heading into the woods.

That was a saying from the old mountain men movie. I always chuckled when he said that.

I was tracking a buck I had shot, I was so focused on looking for a blood trail that I wasnt really watching where I was going. I was in a corn field in the late hours and well the corn was not harvested. I couldnt see anything so I figured if I follow a row I would get somewhere. the sky was overcast so that didnt help. I finally ran into a road but man I was really nervous

Me and my brother and Dad wen t to hunt a new property that we had never been on before (got permission day before the trip to hunt it, so no scouting was done). I used flagging tape to mark my trail to what seemed like the best location I could find (at 5AM in the dark), I would tie a bit of tape to a tree about every 50 yards with the intention of removing it as I walked back to the trail. Well at 11:30 I got out of my stand and starting walking my trail back following the flagging. I realized after a couple hundred yards that I could not find the next marker and went back to the last one. I searched for about a half an hour and couldn't find it. I tried to justify where I was and started heading down the valley back toward the cabin we were set up in. The moment I figured out I was lost I freaked out! I am really good in the woods but at this moment i felt like a 3 year old. I took a moment and unpacked my stuff and had a drink of water to calm myself down. After that and some quick prayers I walk back towards where I had set up that morning. I found the last visible marked and let out a few yells (at this point it was 3:30 PM). Good lord had heard me and so did my brother. I heard his yells back to me in the opposite direction of where I had headed. we found each other (he was on the trail to the cabin) and i walked back to see my dad frantically calling my cell phone which had died earlier in the morning.

I could not even get off the coach from exhaustion and leg cramps to make it back out in the evening.

Lesson learned, pre scout every location - if you cant, wait until a little daylight before going in. Charge the cell phone the night before, take a compass and always let someone know where you are going. Had I not turned around after my little break I would have kept walking into a 3500 acre quarry property and bee screwed.

That is by far the most scared I have ever been while hunting.

Emphasis on always carrying a compass, and a map too if available.

No offense to anyone here, But I have no idea how you can get REALLY LOST in IL. There really are no huge vast roadless areas. Where you can wander for days on end. I mean a power bar, some water, and just pick a direction and stick to it and you'll hit some sort of road or farm. I know people get turned around frequently, ( I do too) but unless you're injured, you should be able to get out. If you have a map of the area, don't wait to break it out until you're "mislocated". Get the lay of the land, your entry point, and path long before you ever set foot on a new hunk of land. Look for any obvious High points or landmarks, (hard in IL) see where the creeks run to... If you have a mental picture of the land, you'll be way ahead of the game than breaking out a crisp map and trying to figure out where you are in the dark... I'm headed to the backcountry of Utah here soon, and I've been scouring maps for weeks! You screw up there and you can get REAL lost, real fast.

I have been lost in the woods in illinois many times when i was just an eager to escape society teen. A group of us would head out in a randomly picked vague direction when i was a youth. We had always stated we where going camping for the weekend before leaving, so iguess we never considered ourselves lost before we knew we where going to be late,lol.

When people get lost they are failing to tune in to magnetic north which in most humans is located in pretty much every brain cell they have and is a built in compass.
That being said, people tend to wander in fairly tight circles when lost so it is possible to get completely lost in Southern Illinois, it's just not very likely...:confused:
I tend to agree with Bob for the most part though as every time I have got turned around here in Southern Illinois I could almost every time hear a car off in the distance telling me pretty much where I was and where I had to head to get back to civilization...:cool:

No offense to anyone here, But I have no idea how you can get REALLY LOST in IL.
Someone whom I won't name here has told some stories about "someone" who has gotten turned around while out mushroom hunting though, forgetting what side of the road they were on. I won't say who they were talking about though. :D

Went hunting on Rend Lake one star bright AM, time to leave fogged in - amazing how easy it is to get completely turned around, and how easy it is to boat in circles.

Several years ago we were using a 15' river jon boat on the north end of the Big Muddy fork of Rend Lake. We were surrounded by dead trees and everything looked the same. It wasn't till we'd run out of gas that I remembered the compass. Wind was out of the south and all we had was two canoe paddles to get us back to a boat ramp.

Got turned around at Sanganois 25 yrs ago. 1985 Everything flooded during duck season. It all looks the same from Havana to Beardstown, flooded willows. Old boy running the boat in a driving rain went past the same decoy setup 3 times before we figured out he didn't know where he was. We hadn't been paying much attention, hoods up, heads down just trying to get back to the boat ramp on the west side of the river. Did have map and compass so it didn't take long to get things figured out. Two days later we ran into a fellow at daybreak that seemed to know what he was doing. Wished him luck. Quit hunting about 30 minutes before dark so we could get out of there in the daylight, ran into three other boats all looking for the guy we saw that morning. He was supposed to check in at noon but didn't show up. They finally found him about 8:00 that night. Cold and lost but he was smart enough to tie up to a tree and wait once it got dark. Shot 3 rounds every 30 minutes. Compass is a lifesaver.