My typical turf is somewhat different - the desert southwest and its attending mountains, which can be full of brush and very tall, dense trees at higher elevations. When I am bushwhacking off trail, what counts is the drainage in which you are traveling and how the trend of that drainage is related to your eventual goal. The critical points are the places where you will hop over to another drainage or follow a ridge line. Usually the precise compass direction in which you are going is fairly irrelevant, since you are often searching for a lane that will get you around the thick brush or waterfall, etc. that poses an obstacle. If you are following a trail, you need to check to ascertain if the trail is depicted accurately on the map (many are omitted or are works of fiction); sometimes you are sketching in the trail as you saunter along.

In practice, I am rarely consulting my compass, but I am constantly observing terrain features and confirming my position. I do, however, religiously carry a compass, because when you need it, nothing else will do quite as well, not even a GPS, which these days, is almost always along for the ride as well.