They say lightning never strikes the same place twice and criminals should never return to the scene of the crime, but in the world of the outdoors, getting back to a previous location may mean the difference between success and failure.

You’ve been idling around in your boat for more than 20 minutes, staring at the screen of your depth finder and looking for that one prominent piece of submerged structure that no one else has discovered. When you finally locate it and spend hours hauling in fish after fish, you understand the importance of being able to return to find it again.

It’s late summer, and you’ve started your pre-season deer scouting. After a sweat-inducing hike through the mosquito- and tick-infested dense summer growth, you hit the mother lode and locate a wall hanger’s favorite travel corridor. Now is the time to map it out and ensure you’ll be able to return to just the right spot to set up your ambush site before the season starts.

Location, location, location! I overhear the real estate agents saying it all the time as my wife tunes into another marathon session of Home and Garden Television, but the mantra holds true for just about every outdoor activity you can imagine.

Whether you’ve stumbled upon a fairy ring of delicious mushrooms and want to return the following spring or you’ve hiked into a wilderness area and found a perfect campsite, keeping track of the details is vital. There are two ways of approaching this task. Both will save you a lot of time and energy and may prove to add a bit of fun to your outdoor experience.

If you’re an outdoors person and haven’t had the opportunity to put a GPS (Global Positioning System) unit to work in the outdoors, then add one to your wish list. Now that the technology has been on the market for several years, a good entry level unit can be purchased for under $100. Used devices can be found on EBay and other outlets for substantially less.

For those who’d rather avoid these marvels of modern science, there are some tried and true methods for keeping those important spots recorded someplace other than the forgetful recesses of your mind.

Get a close-up map of the area you’re using and take it along with a pencil on your next outdoor outing. If you’re using one of the many public areas in northwest Missouri, this is a simple task.

Go online to the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Web site (www.mdc.mo.gov) and simply print off one of their area maps. Many of these maps include contour lines, showing elevations both underwater and on land. Most have important landmarks already recorded on them.

If you are looking for something with a little more detail, go online to one of the online providers of aerial and satelite photographs, such as Google Earth (www.earth.google.com) or the U.S. Geological Survey’s web site at (www.terraserver-usa.com). If you don’t have internet access, stop by your local library or head over to a friend’s and make use of theirs, because these photos are priceless.

Keeping track of all your hotspots on a GPS unit, map or aerial photograph is just half of the equation. If you’re going to take the time to mark a significant landmark, you should also take a few moments either during the trip or directly afterwards to reference the location and jot down a few notes about it.

For instance, if you’re catching crappies in spring on a dropoff near shore, keep an outdoor journal handy and reference the location, along with other details, such as air and water temperatures, weather conditions, what the fish were being caught on, had the fish spawned or not and so forth.

The same goes for hunting or anything else. It would be foolish to mark a spot on your GPS or map during hunting season as an ideal location if the conditions the following season change. Maybe the reason the area was so good is because of a bean field that may be in corn the following season.

Don’t forget to add your end-of-season entries into your outdoor log book. If you passed on several nice bucks and shot a trophy at a certain spot, record the details. If you return and achieve less than satisfactory results, write a little note describing what conditions changed. Eventually, you will develop a sure-fire way to pattern the entire area throughout the year.

Keeping better track of important locations in the outdoors along with a few notes about your little honey hole will help cut back on wasted time finding it again. Your log entries will also serve to improve your outdoor skills by pointing out the exact combination of conditions that led to your success.