As a kid, I remember sorting through piles of paper maps with my dad and perusing topo lines, seeking new places to bowhunt. Later, in the woods while hunting, we would stress over knowing if we were on public or private ground.
Today, scouting with maps, planning and mid hunt navigation can be completed from the simplicity of a single app, and there are no more concerns about knowing unit boundaries or land ownership. From bowhunting whitetails in farm country to pursuing elk deep in the backcountry, having a top-notch mapping system on your phone can greatly improve your effectiveness as a bowhunter.
If you have not taken advantage of the tools these mapping systems offer, you’re missing out on numerous features that can drastically improve the outcomes of your bowhunts. The following are — in alphabetical order — the top five GPS mapping systems available for your phone today.
GoHunt
Though the GoHunt app was designed with the western hunter in mind, mapping is available for bowhunters in all 50 states. Whether scouting imagery from the comfort of home or navigating new country with boots on the ground, this app provides detailed maps and boundaries for every hunting location.
One unique feature that GoHunt uses is historical imagery. It holds years of satellite images, allowing for previous views of areas you’re scouting. It shows if, when and how the habitat has changed, such as when a burn or logging occurred, past winter snowfall amounts, water access, or usual amounts of summertime feed.
Further intel into these findings is easy with GoHunt’s interactive 3D feature, which allows easy searching, panning, tilting and zooming of points of interest. As with all hunting apps, you will want to download a map of your hunting area before you are in the field. If you forget to do this before you leave the house, don’t worry: GoHunt boasts 10x times the mapping area of other apps with fast downloads that can be completed at the truck before trekking into the woods.
No matter if you are scouting and find a promising spot for future reference, or want to mark a location in the middle of your hunt, you can snap a quick photo and add it to your pin to share with your hunting buddies, or help you remember why you dropped a pin in the first place.
One of the most effective ways to use GoHunt and make the most of your membership is to combine their hunt analysis tools with e-scouting on your phone. These tools will help you find more hunting opportunities by providing you with top-of-the-line hunt knowledge for each state.
Let’s say you want to bowhunt mule deer during the early season in Colorado, but don’t want to wait years to draw a top trophy class unit. Using GoHunt’s filtering system, you can determine what Colorado early season archery hunts provide decent trophy potential while also seeing the odds of drawing a tag in each unit. Further tools include hunt statistics, state regulations, game species profiles, and hunter proven tips and tactics.
Membership: $149 per year or $12.50 per month
HuntStand
For both the western bowhunter and the whitetail fanatic, the HuntStand app provides realistic, aerial 3D images of any area you are learning, with a “fly through” feature. This imagery is updated monthly, giving the most up-to-date views of any habitat changes. For the high-country bowhunter, this means a precise understanding of terrain before executing a stalk. For the whitetail hunter, this means knowing the detailed ground layout before placing the right treestand or blind.
Further accentuating this feature is the line measurement utility that measures from point to point, as well as any drawn shape. This can be useful in determining if a stalk will result in getting within shooting distance, locations you may camp at, or how much seed you need to buy for your food plot.
A unique and useful feature is HuntStand’s connectivity with StealthCam and Muddy trail cameras. By connecting the Command Pro app with HuntStand, you can view photos, import pins, and check camera status through the HuntStand app. Using HuntStand on your desktop will allow you to sync your trail camera photos with weather changes and create a heat map with deer activity.
It doesn’t matter what you are bowhunting, the weather will dictate how you hunt. HuntStand provides current and future weather forecasts, as well as a weather map that outlines a daily radar system, temperatures, rain and snowfall, fire details, and drought history. All this information can help you plan accordingly for the right clothing and gear, as well as form an effective hunting strategy.
Rather than having to share pins individually with members, you can create a hunting group that shares your hunting map with friends. If everyone in your group isn’t hunting, or you don’t want to share certain data points, you can control who has access to which points. You can also communicate via the group feed and sync your maps so everyone knows what is going on during your scouting or hunting trips.
If you don’t always like using your phone while scouting or bowhunting, HuntStand offers an array of options for printing paper vinyl and canvas custom maps.
The Pro Whitetail Membership has all the benefits of the Pro membership plus an annual rut map, whitetail habitat map, the peak times of whitetail movement, and whitetail activity forecast.
Pro Membership: $29.99 annually ($2.49 per month); Pro Whitetail Membership: $69.99 annually ($5.83 per month)
HuntWise
The HuntWise app hosts top tier means of planning and scouting for big game species across the United States that include personalized maps, 3D angled imaging, customizable drop pins, state specific map layers, offline maps and easy sharing with friends. The app will even tell you if the area you are researching maintains cell phone service.
What sets this app apart is its HuntForecasting that details numerous factors for the serious whitetail hunter. These factors include but are not limited to drops in temperature, wind direction, barometric pressure, the moon phase, storm fronts, and rut activity. HuntWise uses its RutCast feature to monitor each of these factors to guide you in deciding which days are the best to be in the treestand during the rut. HuntCast gives general recommendations about deer movement at any time of the season. The WindCast feature will tell you which way the wind is blowing for each pin on your map.
Furthermore, these suggestions are not just based on a generalized algorithm but are county specific in each state. This allows you to optimize your chances of arrowing a buck by making sure the days you are on stand have a high probability of deer movement. This can also be beneficial to those who bowhunt multiple states by deciphering various deer activity from region to region.
To further your whitetail know-how, HuntWise has incorporated Whitetail Strategy 365 with Jeff Sturgis of Whitetail Habitat Solutions. Jeff shares his wealth of knowledge by providing education on things such as property management, deer characteristics during the rut, peak hunting days, and finding the perfect stand location.
Additionally, HuntWise has its own social feed. This is essentially their own social media site that is built specifically for like-minded hunters. Here you can ask questions, talk gear, share tips and tricks, and show off your successful photos without worrying about flak from antihunters.
Also worth noting is the landowner feature that HuntWise provides. To find a property owner’s contact information, all you must do is tap within the property boundaries you are interested in hunting and HuntWise will display the owner’s phone number and property address. Finding contacts for bowhunting permission can’t be simpler than that.
Pro Membership: $4.99 per month; Elite Membership: $9.99 per month (includes RutCast and Whitetail Strategy 365)
OnX
The O.G. of hunting apps, OnX has been guiding millions of bowhunters for years throughout the United States and Canada. To this day, OnX continues to provide a multitude of GPS mapping facets that let hunters confidently know where they stand, while also providing more chances to notch tags.
Potentially the greatest feature OnX has to offer is the array of map layers available for each state. These layers give immense amounts of information for different land times, state wildlife management areas, hunting unit boundaries, landowner information, past burn areas, trophy data, wilderness areas, roads, crop layers and more. No matter where or what you are bowhunting, these layers can provide crucial hunting intel.
Combine these with the basemap layers and you have a powerful number of e-scouting tools within your grasp. The basemap layers include a topographic layer, a satellite layer, and a hybrid layer that combines the two. Spending time alternating views through these options will give a better understanding of the landscape you will be hunting.
Often, there is no cell phone service available while bowhunting. This gets frustrating when you can’t send waypoints with your hunting partners. OnX now offers offline waypoint sharing on cellphones of the same make (Android to Android, iPhone to iPhone). With this function, you can drop pins to each other while in the field, regardless of service coverage.
OnX custom waypoints possess a laundry list of capabilities that include the ability to narrow down deer habits on a particular farm, pattern elk movements, mark stand locations, keep track of trail cameras, and help you find your way back to the truck. The tracking feature also comes in handy for times when you want to know where you’ve been, like when hiking a particular route in the dark or following a blood trail.
Elite Members get full access to the hunt research tools to help plan your next out of state hunts. These include HuntReminder so you don’t miss any draw deadlines, up to date draw odds, success rates, and further research of species and units through Huntin’ Fool.
Membership: one state, $34.99 per year / two states, $49.99 per year / 50 states, $99.99 per year
Spartan Forge
Relatively new, the Spartan Forge app is quickly coming to the forefront of the mapping game with its background in military surveillance. Due to its use of UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) imaging, mapping images are incredibly crisp, providing some of the clearest electronic scouting in satellite and topographical mode.
Unavailable with any other hunting app is the Spartan Forge LIDAR layer. It provides impressive underlying imagery of hunting areas that details slopes, ravines, contours, roads, creek bottoms, rocky terrain and field edges. Whether you are scoping out areas in the mountain West or are looking for the perfect pinch-point to ambush whitetails from a treestand, this layer allows you to see the layout of the land without any vegetation and create the perfect plan of attack.
Another cool feature of the Spartan Forge app is the Blue Force Tracker Technology. It allows sharing of updated pins and live locations within your group. Simply create a boundary for your hunting area and add individuals to the group. Each member will be able to keep tabs on new pins that are dropped, as well as each person’s location, keeping everyone in the loop about how the hunt is going and where everyone is.
The Deer Predictions feature is one that will get the attention of whitetail daydreamers. This feature will help you make informed decisions about which stand locations to sit based on likely deer activity for the day. Using data sets from collared deer and weather patterns, the app gives predictions about deer movements in core areas, transition areas, and full range areas. It also gives predictions as to whether deer activity will be normal, abnormal or very abnormal. Combining your deer knowledge and experience with these predictions can help place you in the right treestand for a shot opportunity.
Being no strangers to hunting research, the Eastman’s team has built their TagHub membership with Spartan Forge to create an excellent source for hunt analysis, electronic mapping, and planning for adventure bowhunts. All TagHub members get full access to Spartan Forge functions.
New to the bowhunting game or have questions about gear and tactics? CyberScout technology gives AI generated answers to all your outdoor questions such as safety and survival tips, shooting techniques, wildlife habits, food plot management, and other bowhunting tactics.
Membership: $59.99 per year or $8.99 per month
