I am trying to map out the locations by gps of all of the blinds on the family ranch. Anybody familiar with any software that would be able to indicate where the blinds, houses, gates, etc. are located and overlay the locations on a satellite image of the property? Also what gps would be good for marking these locations and connecting to the computer? Is it possible to do this with google earth?

I did ours using Google Earth. You can draw lines in to mark the fences and get long/lat that will get you real close to the acual position. I pin pointed stands and water troughs using different marking icons. Once you've marked everything you can save image and print it out.

use google earth.

very easy

using google earth, you should be able to come up with something like this

There's an iPhone app called "Field Notes". If you drive around the property you can mark game trail crossings, fence corners, feeders, blinds, etc. etc. and export all of them to Google Earth in .kmz format. You can also snap pictures that will pop-up in the information tab when viewed through Google Earth. Pretty cool stuff.

Of course, you can also just drop pins in Maps from your iPhone to get lat/longs that can be manually entered into Google Earth.

^^^^ that sounds pretty good!

I have used Delorme maps, and have GPS built into the computer. It works the same as above, but possibly not as clean of an interface.

Google Earth worked great for me...

Check out www.depiction.com. I use this for all my mapping. It isn't free costs $199 but it gives you a lot more flexibility than google earth. Once you create your map it stores everything on your local hard drive so you don't need to be hooked up to the internet to use it. You can also simulate floods and other events. It can read gpx,shp,gml, kmz, and csv files. You can also place icons based on at lat/long or you can just place them with a mouse. Has a lot of built in icons or you can use your own.
They also have a cheaper version called depicitonprep. www.depictionprep.com it only costs $29.95 but doesn't have all of the bells and whistles.

x2 - and its free and they update the photos fairly ofter. Also,Garmin makes some very user friendly GPS units

I wouldnt say "often"....the google image of my ranch has to be at least 4-5 years old. I had to get an areal photo done this past season to get an accurate picture. They might update photos from less remote places more often but ours is out in the boonies so we were SOL.

Check out Garmin. You can use their software to create a .kmz file and upload to Google Earth.

Why, every County in Texas usually has an aerial survey of the propertys...DD