In today’s increasingly digital world, hunters have more powerful technological tools at their fingertips than ever before. In times past, hunters had to rely solely on verbal directions, paper maps, compasses, or memory alone, when heading into the backcountry. But with the rise of today’s advanced GPS hunting apps and devices, hunters can now access pinpoint GPS location/tracking, detailed terrain maps, and a wealth of useful information right from their smartphones. When used properly, these innovative and powerful new apps can significantly enhance any hunter’s experience, improving hunting success, safety, and convenience.
Today, we’ll give you the details of some of our favorite hunting apps and perhaps help you choose one or two that might be perfect for you and your unique preferences and situation. So lace up your boots and let’s get started!
onX Hunt
onX Hunt app is a GPS-enabled, multifunctional app intended to help hunters virtually explore or scout new areas and terrain, using 2D (and 3D, in desktop) maps, satellite view, topographical maps, and property lines. But there’s a lot more to it. In addition to virtual location scouting, you can record historical data within the app. You can mark hunting spots, trails, game sign, trailheads, gates, parking areas, landmarks, friendly property owners’ addresses, cowsheds, feeders, water tanks… anything you want to record the location of within the app. These types of saved locations can be categorized and organized in different folders or libraries in the app.
The onX Hunt app also provides real-time weather updates, and if you’re hunting for turkey or any other game that prefers specific types of trees or cover, there are map layers individually tailored for this use. You can show coniferous vs. deciduous tree distribution, acorn-producing oaks, nearby crop distribution, and thermal cover for deer, for example You might have so much fun looking around the app and playing with its features that you forget to actually do any hunting! (Kidding, of course).
Video: 5 Features You Need To Know How To Use in onX Backcountry
One thing you should be aware of with OnX Hunt is they offer both a mobile app and a desktop version. We HIGHLY recommend that if you’re virtually scouting or exploring a new area, sit down at a desktop or laptop computer and take advantage of the excellent user experience. The larger the monitor or display, the better. The 3D map view is only accessible via the desktop/website map, and it’s very helpful. When exploring potential new hunting areas, some of the most useful features or layers you can toggle on and off within the app are public/government land, and private property lines. The private property lines show up clearly delineated in orange/red, and you can even see the property owner’s name and info in most cases. Our favorite way to view and scout areas within this app is by overlaying the excellent topographical map on top of a satellite/photographic image of the area. You can obviously also view these maps individually (and who doesn’t love to study and explore topographical maps), but by overlaying the topo map onto the satellite, you get a more comprehensive idea of what to expect in the area. You can better see where the key ridges and peaks are, where marshy bottomland or creek beds are and what they might look like, and more. One very welcome feature is that you can work on a desktop or laptop, place your waypoints or notes or saved locations via the website maps, and when you open your app on your phone, all that info is automatically saved there. Very cool.
If you hunt very rural areas where cellular coverage is spotty, you’ll be excited to learn that you can download your target area to your phone and all your info and maps will be available in offline mode. We recommend selecting a 5 or 10 mile portion of the map to keep things realistic and not consume too many resources on your phone.
The only minor issue we found with the onX mapping info is that the double-dashed lines marking roads can sometimes be either outdated or incorrect. Sometimes a road will be shown but in real life it doesn’t extend as far as it does on the app’s map. This is somewhat common with all electronic maps, however, and any map is only as good as its latest information update. Plus, you can easily mark areas that are problematic on the map after you know for sure from personal experience. That way, next time you’ll remember what roads or fence lines need to be adjusted or corrected in the map overview.
Additionally, the property lines displayed shouldn’t be considered legally binding. In any real-life dispute, we find it best to give the benefit of the doubt to the landowner, try to make friends, and leave a good impression for next time.
If you want a similar app but aren’t particularly keen on hunting, onX also uses their same app/mapping technology in apps targeted for offroad vehicles, fishing, and general backcountry/hiking use, and all are worth checking out.
So what does all this functionality cost? Current onX pricing comes in several tiers, depending on the features you want, and whether or not you want access to a single state, 2 states, or nationwide maps.
- The onX Hunt Premium Single State subscription is $34.99 for a year. It includes a single state’s land ownership maps, offline maps, GPS tools, topo/satellite/3D maps, weather and wind forecasts, trail camera integration, and more. If you’re hunting a single state, we think this is a huge bargain for everything you get.
- The Premium Two State package is $49.99/year, and includes all of the features of the Premium Single State subscription, but you can add another state. This is ideal for home-town hunters who have hunting property in one other state, or who have friends/family in another state where they intend to hunt.
- If you hunt (or want to hunt) all over the US, the $99.99 Elite Yearly subscription, paid up front, saves you $80, and you get nationwide land ownership maps and everything in the above packages. Plus you get exclusive Pro Deals, with money saving offers, as well as Expert Resources with a bunch of cool hunting and outdoor classes included, and more.
- If you don’t think you’ll need a year’s worth of access, you can choose the Elite Monthly package and get all the Elite-level access for $14.99 a month in a pay-as-you-go format.
Is it worth it? It depends on where you hunt and how you hunt. If you exclusively hunt your own property or a well-known hunting lease, it’s probably not worth it to you. There are still some cool bonus features that might tempt a younger or tech-savvy user, and the Elite level classes you get access to are interesting, but may not be applicable to a hunt-at-home customer. However, if you plan to hunt un-scouted areas, public land, or expand your hunts to any new areas or states, particularly if you’re paying a lot of money to travel or get tags/guides for a hunt, the onX Hunt app is a huge bargain compared to the cost of those types of hunts. You can virtually scout the area and gain vital information that can set you above other public land hunters, for example. If you’ve ever walked into a completely unknown area with a tag in your hand, you will understand just how much better it can be with a little advanced information, and onX Hunt is one of the best hunting apps out there in our estimation, and probably gives you the most for your money.
HuntStand
HuntStand is a very full-featured GPS hunting, property management, and outdoors app with a user-friendly interface and many desirable features. As the name implies, one of the primary features of the HuntStand app is that it allows you to create and manage reservations for hunting stands or hunting blinds within a shared hunting area. Users can create custom hunt areas, or join/share with other HuntStand user-created areas. When used properly and all participants are members and users of the HuntStand app, it’s super-convenient to be able to reserve, clear reservations, and see others’ reserved hunting stands via the clear and easy app interface on any mobile device. This can eliminate arguments and disappointment over who has rights to a particular game blind or hunting stand within a deer lease or other managed hunting property.
However, the HuntStand app is far more versatile than just an online system for creating and managing hunting stand reservations. Anyone with property can benefit from the free version of the app, which is one of the better free mapping/hunting/property management apps around. This app is very useful for creating and sharing group maps, such as for a property owner or hunting lease host who wants to share details of his area with guests or hunting party members. HuntStand also offers sophisticated wind and weather forecasting, allowing hunters (or hikers) to plan effectively based on real-time conditions. With detailed terrain information and seemingly hundreds of options for map layers and overlays, it’s a very versatile system with a lot of cool features. Multiple map views and info are included (depending on whether you’re using the free or subscription version), such as tree cover, natural atlas, satellite, streets, solunar, contour/topographical, and many more.
Video - HuntStand 101 HuntClass: Complete Hunting App Guide for Scouting, Mapping & Tracking
Via the app, you can easily view detailed property ownership data, add or remove advanced mapping layers, and use the predictive weather tools. One super-helpful feature is the Trace function, where a property owner or manager can either walk or ride a particular trail on the property with the Trace function toggled, and the GPS-enabled mapping software will save and log that trail on their custom map. It can be named, edited, and combined with other trail systems already traced in the area.
As you might expect, once you’re in the app and have created a custom hunt area (basically focusing on a particular section of a larger satellite map), you can add pins or saved locations for essentially anything you can think of, from hunting information such as stands, blinds, trails, gates, washes, ridges, overlooks, creek beds, game sign, sightings of wildlife, feeders, fence damage, or anything else you may find useful. You can categorize different types of location pins and quickly and easily toggle them on or off so your desired view of the specific map area doesn’t become too cluttered. If you only want to see the property boundary and the water in the area, it takes 2 seconds to clear all the location pins, toggle on the appropriate selections, and there you go. It’s a very user-friendly and mostly intuitive experience, even in the free version of the app. You can then choose whether you want to share your custom hunt area map to the HuntStand community, or just the admin, or just your specific group of users, or to no one. You can even get a high-resolution print of your customized map printed (for a fee). Just remember not to delete your hunt area from your app, because if you do, all the trails, info, tags, and pins you’ve saved will also be deleted.
One of the only criticisms we have of the HuntStand app, at least in our experience with the free version, is that you can’t zoom in to some properties as much as you’d like. We could find no reason why some custom hunt areas/maps were available for more zoom on a device but some weren’t, and sometimes we’d be able to zoom in to our custom hunt area but then a week or so later we wouldn’t be able to. This is a minimal complaint, however, since the app is so useful overall and, well… It's free to use most of the map-creating and sharing features.
HuntStand is also the first app to offer monthly updated satellite imagery. Every month a new satellite image of your selected area is uploaded to the system, and it includes years of historic imagery. This layer is lower resolution than other satellite maps available in the app, but sometimes it’s very useful to trade clarity for recency of the data. For example, the monthly satellite map layer is perfect for viewing:
- Timber thinning activity and clear cuts
- Flooding and flood damage
- Wildfires and prescribed burns
- Agricultural activity
- Recent snow and ice cover
Should you pay for HuntStand Pro?
The free version of HuntStand allows you to create and share custom maps of your property or hunting area, and includes the following free map layers: Google Satellite, Google Hybrid, Google Terrain, Mapbox Outdoors, (with trails, contour lines, park boundaries, and more) USGS Topo Quad, Google Contour, and Google Streets. That’s a lot of great info available for free.
If you’re a property owner or manager and just want to create custom maps for you and your organization or friends to share, the free app offers a lot, and might be all you need. However, for hunters, there are dozens of other layers and additional perks available when you sign up for a subscription to HuntStand Pro, which costs $29.99 per year at the time of this publication. With HuntStand Pro, you can access all the free map layers above, plus these additional, premium map layers and hunting tools in the United States and Canada, including:
- Property boundaries
- Property ownership data (US only)
- Monthly satellite imagery (US only)
- Public hunting land maps
- National aerial imagery (US only)
- 3D mapping
- Stand reservations
- Unlimited offline maps
Plus, with the Pro version there are no ads. And you get all the dozens of hunting-specific features such as friend finder, distance measurement, game sightings/harvest logs, HuntZone/LandZone wind speed and direction overlays, and much more. So, if you’re a hunter who wants all the information possible and/or who wants to utilize the stand reservation feature, then the Pro version of HuntStand is definitely worth it. If you’re hunting whitetail deer, you’ll likely be interested in stepping up your subscription further to HuntStand Pro Whitetail.
HuntStand Pro Whitetail features
For $69.99 annually, this whitetail deer-hunting oriented upgrade to the HuntStand Pro package includes all the Pro-level map layers and features. Still, it adds specific premium perks like whitetail rut maps, 15-day predictive/historical whitetail activity forecast (a proprietary model informed by decades of research from North America’s top whitetail biologists), and unique whitetail habitat maps. If you’ve got buck fever, this upgrade is definitely worth it.
GoHunt Maps
Designed by hunters for hunters (particularly in the western US), GoHunt combines a well-thought-out user interface with powerful tools and functionality. The app features precise GPS tracking, detailed property boundaries, hunt- and species-specific info, and on-and-offline map capabilities, including proprietary elevation layer technology for their maps, along with dozens of other layer options. The app integrates seamlessly with updated scouting analytics, helping hunters pinpoint hotspots and improve their success rates significantly. GoHunt collects and organizes tons of info annually and reports on game conditions, keeping their user community continually updated. And if you are looking to draw a tag in a specific area or for a particular species, GoHunt’s software helps you determine the areas where you have the greatest odds of drawing your tag, which is super cool. Just like the other apps we’ve discussed, you can create custom maps, input waypoints or pins for anything you can think of, and it will all sync seamlessly within the app and be saved and backed up via your GoHunt app profile.
One of the features we really like about GoHunt’s app and mapping interface is the ability to stack multiple maps on top of each other, or view multiple sources/overlays at one time. You can see topographical grid lines on top of satellite images, and you can put property owner info/boundaries on top of that, and maybe add government-managed land shading. This would be cluttered if you left them all at full opacity, but GoHunt allows you to easily adjust the transparency of each layer so you can view the information in exactly the way you want. GoHunt’s app is so full-featured that it’s almost difficult to talk about everything it encompasses, so we recommend you try their free trial and play around with it. Just remember to cancel within 7 days or they’ll stick you with the full (and not inconsiderable) $169.99 annual fee.
Video: GOHUNT Maps 101
GoHunt premium features include:
- Species/weapon filtering and hunt-finding tools
- Best-in-class draw odds algorithm
- Detailed, boots-on-the ground unit profiles throughout the west
- Public and private land boundaries
- Offline maps to use in the field
- Ability to import all of your waypoints and data from any mapping service
- Multiple hunting layers to help you find the perfect spot
- Real-time tracks and rangefinding
- Earn and redeem rewards and cash back on gear via GoHunt partners
- Predictive draw odds for future seasons
- Filtering tools to find more hunt opportunities
- Profiles for every single hunt unit in the west
- Overviews of rules and regulations for every state
- Behavior profiles of any species you can hunt
- Expert strategies, advice, tips, and tactics from diehard hunters
- All 50 states included (but primarily focused on big game in the western US)
- Color-coded public and private land
- Immersive, interactive 3D
- Custom-designed topographic maps
- Slope and terrain analysis tools
- 10+ years of historical satellite imagery
- Digital rangefinding tools
- Web, iOS and Android compatible
If you’re hunting big game in the western states, especially if you plan to hunt in more than one state, then we find GoHunt’s somewhat hefty annual subscription fee to be worth the price of entry. If you’re focusing on the south or eastern regions, or if you only need details on one state, then there are other resources and apps that probably provide a greater value.
GoHunt also offers their Insider upgrade, which they describe as being like Zillow, but for hunting. The easy-to-use filtering and search tools mean you just pick the state, species, or season you want to hunt, then sit back and see everything available to you. We haven’t tried it and most reviews we can find from people who have say it’s not worth the money. So take that for what it’s worth.
However, the basic GoHunt subscription offers a lot for what you pay, including significant discounts on hunting gear. Every Christmas they give you $100 credit toward gear in their affiliate store, which is a significant refund on your annual subscription fee, if you want to look at it that way.
GoHunt is certainly not the least expensive GPS hunting app, but for some people, it’s the best.
Choosing the right GPS hunting app for your needs
Selecting the ideal GPS hunting app for you involves considering factors like map quality, offline functionality, tracking accuracy, weather integration, hunt type and location, user interface/UX, and whether you even want or need the information provided. As we discussed above, if you’re a stand hunter that hunts the same corn field every year and knows every inch of the property, you probably aren’t going to get much benefit out of any of these GPS hunting apps. However, if you’re new to hunting and aren’t sure how to get started, then a comprehensive app like the GoHunt can be a great intro to the activity and the community.
If you want detailed hunt information, property lines, and detailed hunt-specific maps from multiple states, then a GPS app can be a huge benefit. If you plan on hunting just your home state and are well-versed in the ins and outs and the terrain, then again, a GPS hunting app may not be the best investment.
Furthermore, if you’re not much of a hunter but are more interested in managing property or creating custom maps with your unique details included, then an app like HuntStand—even the free version—is certainly worth looking into.
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