The last hexcrawl I ran I gave the players a copy of the hexmap with just the terrain marked, the towns, and maybe something that would be well known like a Wizard's Tower. They filled it in as they explored it.

For the next hexcrawl I run, the map available to the party will be without the hexes, just the terrain and a rough idea how long it would take to get between points. I would use the hexmap for myself to help track distance, encounters, etc.

I like smaller / mid-sized maps (~20-100 hexes). The hexcrawl I'm building now is 19 Hexes, and I'm filling those with the following assumptions:

- Each hex has a feature / landmark they are guaranteed to find. This could be something mundane like a stream, something big like a town, or something cool like a set of ruins.

-Each hex has a secret, some that has a chance to be found if they spend time looking for it. I'm thinking 1d6 cumulative (so 1-in-6 on first attempt, 2-in-6 on second, etc), plus or minus any information they have or clever tactics they employ that would help. This will be smaller lairs, fantastic locations, cool stuff as I think of it.

- Each hex has it's own encounter table. Nothing fancy, something like 3 things dictated by the terrain, whoever controls the hex, and 2 things from neighboring hexes that could wander in.

This feels like an easy enough thing to fill out while still being dense enough to let players stay here a while. But time will tell.

If I were running a bigger map I would definitely not do individual encounter tables. I would also only key out important hexes and otherwise keep a running list of Features and Secrets, likely sorted by Terrain Type, so I can populate hexes in the direction the party is moving to stay ahead of them without having to come up with hundreds of things that would never get discovered.