Bushnell GPS BackTrack Personal Locator

by Bushnell

• Store and located up to three locations
• Utilizes the latest digital technology
• High sensitivity GPS receiver
• Self-calibrating digital compass
• Compact size stores easily in your pocket or purse

Product Description

Amazon.com

There's nothing quite as refreshing as a good hike or snowshoe trip, but there's nothing quite as terrifying as getting lost on the trail. Enter the Bushnell GPS BackTrack personal locator, which gets you back to your car or home base safely and easily. The BackTrack is a breeze to use, with an intuitive two-button design that employs GPS technology in its most basic format. All you have to do is mark the location of your car, campsite, or anything else (the BackTrack stores up to three locations) and then forget it until it's time to return. At the end of the day, just select the stored location and the BackTrack will display the direction and distance to travel until you return. You can use it to locate a treestand or trailhead, to find your car in a crowded parking lot, even to rendezvous with a group. Plus, it's extremely compact, so you can stow it conveniently in your pocket, pack, or purse.

The BackTrack is weather-resistant and operates on two AAA batteries (not included). It also comes with a lanyard for easy attachment.

About Bushnell
Bushnell has been the industry leader in high-performance sports optics for more than 50 years. The company's guiding principle is to provide the highest quality, most reliable, and most affordable sports optics products on the market. Bushnell product lines enhance the enjoyment of every outdoor pursuit, including nature study, hunting, fishing, birding, and stargazing. Indoors, the company's binoculars bring the audience closer to the action in fast-moving sports or the fine arts at theaters and concerts.

Product Description

The Bushnell Backtrack- Never Get Lost Again with the easiest to use personal location finder. Just mark the location and BackTrack will help you get back. Use it at the mall and stadium parking lots, at the festival, the park, for travel or your next outdoor adventure.

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6 x 2 inches ; 1.6 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B001F7BL0U
• Item model number: BSHL-01
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (184 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #12,277 in Sports & Outdoors (See Top 100 in Sports & Outdoors)
  • #50 in Sports & Outdoors > Exercise & Fitness > Fitness Technology > Sports & Handheld GPS > Handheld GPS Units

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

155 of 161 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Get to where you were December 4, 2008

By H. Fields

Color Name:Green|Amazon Verified Purchase

This item is great for both the backwoods and shopping mall. I got it for my wife to find her car when she exits the mall... Yes, some of the parking lots are huge! The day that we received it, we went to a new park and brought the Backtrack along. By the time we got to the field that our grandson was at, we couldn't see the parking lot, and there were 4 of them.
When the game was over, I pressed the automobile icon and followed the direction that the Backtrack pointed us to. It led us to within a few feet of the car!
It works great and is easy to use.

56 of 57 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars It does exactly what real GPS technology does - November 30, 2009

By Mark M. Monteleone

Amazon Verified Purchase

Real GPS technology is a large number of satellites 12,500 miles in orbit sending a very weak time signal for a computer processor to calculate the holders position in space. Most users don't know or understand that the receiver is not getting blasted with 50,000 watts from their favorite rock station ten miles away, or even a cell signal two miles away. Interference from structures will stop the signal, period.

I recently purchased a Backtrack as an economical aid for deer hunting and travel cross country. At the price, Brunton and military compasses can't and won't do the same job without a geodesic map and literally days of training - training I've had repeatedly in 22 years in the US Army Reserve. Much of where I hunt has no decent map, and overhead satellite photography is remarkably low quality in these less densely populated areas. If there is any difficulty in the woods, the real issue isn't which way is north, it's the actual distance and heading from a known point.

For the price point, the Backtrack works fine. It does not have an extremely fast response time, but given reasonable patience, it will orient you to the compass and let you know what heading and distance you are from the start point. Reasonable is up to two minutes - which is all it needed the first startup. At that point I set the home icon with the extremely simple two button controls.

I tested the unit at distances of yards and miles, and found when handled properly like a compass - held parallel to the ground with no motion - it would show equal distances and complementary headings between two points. At about 700 yards it changes to tenths of a mile, and when between home and say, a parking point, you can measure the exact distance between - straight line.

When traversing rough terrain with a unscaled pictographic map, such as printed by the conservation department for most areas, it was simple to keep aware of our position on that map and get a basic idea of the scale involved. I felt more secure with the Backtrack telling me my car was 739 yards away at 356 degrees than trusting my memory of which way an old wooded ravine might go. Again, a compass would have only told me which way was north - something I checked using a Silva Ranger model I purchased while in the Infantry school. It can't tell me a distance and heading to a known point unless I literally pace it out and recognize it on an accurately scaled map.

As for literally following the arrow, even a compass won't help you make a better decision to avoid the rough patches and get on a trail heading in the general direction. The Backtrack can't do your thinking for you.

Will a GPS show you your car's location in a parking lot? Yes, and for the price, it should. But you will have to learn the menus, operation, and still set the start point where you parked it - raining or not. Just put it on the dashboard and wait. When you're done, give it a minute, hold it flat, don't wave it around, and use normal routes. Walking through walls is asking a bit much. The Backtrack will get you there - if you can remember what you drove. At that point, you might try your keyfob.

72 of 75 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Bushnell Back-Track January 4, 2009

By Maleko

The Back-Track does what it says, holds 3 waypoints, with 3 icons, a house, a car, and a star, so if you were on a hike you can set your car or the house icon as the base, and use the other two as waypoints, so it's not bad for day hikes. The unit has two buttons a mark/backlight button, and an on-off/waypoint button. You turn on by holding down the on/off button, then tap the on-off button to cycle through the waypoints. To mark say the car, just hold the mark button down and it clears it and sets it to 0yds. Once you start walking it shows how far in yards and then miles you've walked and the arrow points back to where you started. It turns off automatically in 10 minutes if you don't touch any buttons, and when you turn it back on, resumes where you left off so your waypoints stay intact until your reset them. It does seem to acquire fast with the sirf-star chipset, it's accurate as long as you keep the unit horizontal. Once it's vertical the arrow tends to point downward, so sometimes if it's tilted in your hand the arrow will move off true north or not exactly at your car, but as you walk closer it's dead on. The blue backlight isn't that strong but is clearly visible at night. All in all, it does what it says. It does lead you back to your car, house, campground, and the built in compass could help you on a hike. A built in clock with gps time would have been nice, maybe next version? Well worth 50 bucks though.