It's not a very big advantage in the woods. I'm doing amateur astronomy for the past 30 years. The moving star map is naturally imprinted in my brain. And I can reliably identify almost any visible star by just a handful of nearby stars visible through the very small openings in tree tops. So, I can tell the North direction using any visible stars. However I've realized that it works well only for the northern hemisphere, preferably at +55 latitude, and solely because of 20 years of watching the sky from that old home place. IOW, the other methods are still important to know.

Has anyone seen the film 2012 yet? Lets hope we can keep the pointy end of the needle to the right of the image after Mayan calendar begins a new cycle in 2012 if we still want the pointy end of the needle to point the geographical North pole. Well not exactly the geographical North pole but will instead point to 79.74N, 71.78 W, which is the north geomagnetic pole (actually the geomagnetic south pole)





If only the geomagnetic poles and geographic poles were actually were in the same place and the geomagnetic poles didn't constantly wander around!!

As long as your are on one of the contours marked 0 declination and have followed the above last five posts then you should be able to get your magnetised needle (sharp pointy end) to reliably point to the Geographical North Pole.