In this episode of The Epic Outdoors Podcast we talk with Matt Seidel of ONX Hunt. We cover many aspects of mapping and GPS systems in relation to hunting. We go in depth on the products and services offered by ONX and share some stories where technology made a huge difference in the hunt. By utilizing the tools that are available to us we can be much more efficient and effective hunters. This is one you don’t want to miss.
Disclaimer: this podcast has been transcribed from the original audio and likely contains errors. This transcription does not reflect the views and opinions of Epic Outdoors LLC. Please consult the original audio with any concerns.
01:07:31:08 –> 01:07:34:23
Technology just changes. I mean, that’s can get stuff faster. I know
01:07:34:23 –> 01:07:38:11
We’re close. Like are we on public or private and made the decision easy.
01:07:38:23 –> 01:07:41:04
Your way points, tracking park ups,
01:07:41:24 –> 01:07:43:04
Anything to do with Western Big Game.
01:07:46:15 –> 01:07:46:29
Welcome
01:07:46:29 –> 01:07:50:02
To the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour.
01:07:50:27 –> 01:08:08:12
Hey everybody, Jason Carter and Adam Bronson here with the Epic Outdoors Podcast. We’ve got a special guest on with us. We’ve got a a Matt with Onyx Hunt Maps. Of course, many of you know a bit about the Onyx Hunt maps. It feels like they’ve taken over the industry, at least the map industry. Hi Adam. Yeah,
01:08:08:21 –> 01:08:08:27
Absolutely.
01:08:09:05 –> 01:08:57:21
So before we get started on this podcast, we do wanna let everybody know that we are working with Onyx Maps. You can go on to onyx maps.com, o n X maps, m a p s.com, and you can join up for their elite membership or premium membership. The premium membership is 29.99. It includes one state of your choice. The elite membership is access to full 50 states for 99.99, and if you enter promo code Epic, E P I C on their website, you’ll be eligible for 20% off. So once you do that and you have an account, you can update the current ships that you have for your GPSs. So not only do you get the app for your phone and, and basically it’s a G P S unit with your phone. You can go update the chips you’ve got and it’ll update all the changes that happen in the mapping industry.
01:08:57:24 –> 01:09:40:24
So anyway, just keep that in mind as we’re going throughout this podcast. Onyx Maps is a, is an incredible company that’s basically a leader in the industry of mapping. And, and we as hunters use it all the time, all the guys here in the office, we’ve, we’ve got Onyx maps on our phones as well as the chips in our GPSs. So it’s a must use for for hunters out there and you’re gonna find out why. But anyway, remember Onyx maps, O N X m maps.com, enter Epic in the code and you’ll get 20% off. I wanna thank Under Armour for sponsoring these podcasts and YouTubes and all kinds of different things that we’ve got going on here at Epic Outdoors. And so we appreciate them and their support and so anyway, with that, Matt, you on with us?
01:09:41:17 –> 01:09:44:04
I am, yeah. Thank you Jason. Thank you Adam for having us.
01:09:44:18 –> 01:09:53:18
You bet. We’re happy to have you and, and we appreciate you spending some time with us. Of course. It’s Monday morning, it’s kind of busy. I’m sure you guys have probably sold a few maps today.
01:09:54:13 –> 01:10:05:11
Yep. Already. I’m sure they’ve been trickling through. It’s really picking up in the east. The whitetail hunters, you know, back east are really taking off the last couple weeks with their rifle seasons and late seasons.
01:10:06:00 –> 01:10:11:05
Yeah. We think our hunt’s hunting’s over and it pretty much is out west for, to a large extent, but
01:10:11:08 –> 01:10:18:24
Well, and back east you got all kinds of private and just crazy like those guys live on, you know, on hunting private or or trespassing on private.
01:10:20:06 –> 01:10:27:02
Yeah. You know, 40 acres here, 20 acres here. Yeah. And, and just trying to get permission. A lot of ’em are when, when they find a new spot.
01:10:27:02 –> 01:10:40:28
So yeah. Probably changed everything. Probably some people probably lost some leases by using Onyx hunt maps, you know, and the, everybody’s finding out who owns what and then they’re getting hit up for, for real money instead of just, you know, bottles of wine. Yep,
01:10:41:08 –> 01:10:46:10
Yep. Yeah. Little more competition now. All I think all across the hunting industry for those properties.
01:10:46:25 –> 01:11:06:17
Yeah. You guys have changed, you guys have changed that landscape for sure. And so we’ll give us, maybe just as we start, maybe give us a little bit of background of yourself and, and how you become affiliated with the Onyx Hunt maps. Of course, you know, as I understand it, you started quite a while ago. Maybe you’ve even had a company name change since you’ve been there. I don’t know.
01:11:06:21 –> 01:11:12:03
Yeah, I’ve been involved in, in a couple of those back when it was hunting g p s maps.
01:11:12:07 –> 01:11:19:00
Yeah. We were talking Adam, Adam mentioned that this morning and I’m like, it was, it was like hunting G p s or hunting. Hunting something.
01:11:19:15 –> 01:12:03:24
Yep. Hunting G p s maps. And it was great back then, you know, 10 years ago for, you know, ss e o value and, and all that stuff with Google search and everything, you know, picking that name and U r l really, really helped us get a lot of traffic and a lot of people were searching those keywords trying to find a solution like this. You know, as, as our founder Eric, who was for his own hunting, he grew up in, you know, eastern Montana and loved taking people out hunting and guiding and doing, doing all that stuff. And when he moved to Missoula with his wife, he was looking at elk on properties and deer and he was wondering, I, who owns that? I think as we all tried to figure out, you know, 10, 15 years ago, who owns that? Is this fence in the right spot?
01:12:04:15 –> 01:12:43:12
I wish I just could know and not have to worry about it when I’m in the field. You know, we all have few days and precious time. We don’t wanna be dealing with landowners and trespassing and wardens, all of that stuff, you know, you know, we’re trying to do this to enjoy the outdoors. So he created, you know, that first gathered all the data from Montana and created that first g p s chip in, in 2009 for his personal use and just found so much value out of it. He thought, I think I might be able to help other people out with this product. And so that’s really what spurred it, is just helping other people, you know, enjoy their time outdoors and, and know where they stand. Yeah. And, and it just kind of took off from there.
01:12:44:01 –> 01:13:00:27
Well we, we, we remember the days Eric showed up here at the office when we were, we were with a different company and they, he shows up and in fact, Adam, correct me if I’m wrong, we didn’t my dad try to buy or try to buy in or figure out how to get Eric on more. It was, it
01:13:00:27 –> 01:13:24:03
Was pretty, he was kind of in his infancy Yeah. Was just starting to gain some traction. And so, you know, yeah. Eric, you know, we came down, looked at some partnership ideas and things that like that. But yeah, that, I mean that’s, we’ve got chips from those days that Yeah. Predate any landowner names or anything like that. Just yellow and, and green and blue and white squares on your g p s? It
01:13:24:03 –> 01:13:34:11
Was, well we got, yeah, we got chips with like five or six states on one chip. Of course. Don’t want to give the public any ideas, but just, you know, pretty awesome. Just an awesome
01:13:34:23 –> 01:13:39:12
At the time. Yeah. That’s been 10, yeah. 10 plus years. Yeah. I dunno. Maybe not quite. So how
01:13:39:12 –> 01:13:46:10
Did it change kind on your guys’ accessing public land and kind of how you thought about it? Or what, what tools were you using before that and how did it help
01:13:46:10 –> 01:13:47:06
The transition? Well,
01:13:47:06 –> 01:13:47:18
Just paper
01:13:47:21 –> 01:14:06:26
Maps. Paper maps, yeah. Pretty much. And then, you know, yeah, it’s, you get, you’re hiking in the mountains and is, you know, same questions you posed a minute ago, is that fence, right? ’cause you know, whether you’re interpreting the paper map wrong or the fence is really, you’re like, is that really private? Can I go jump the fence right there and hunt or not? It was,
01:14:06:26 –> 01:14:44:29
Yeah. And then we also have like, you know, different laws on corner jumping and, and can you corner jump or not? And we would, you know, I remember hunting 44 in Colorado and with a friend of mine, CT Lindstrom, and we would have the paper map out, and of course the paper map has g p s co g p s lines basically lines, you know, ticks and stuff. And then we would have our G P s set to the same data that the mat paper maps in. Yeah. And then we’re sitting here, you know, we are sitting right here and this says it’s public and, and you know, it may be marked private because somebody wanted to market private. And so, and so we’re like, yeah, go ahead Clint. Why don’t you be the Guinea pig all glass jump
01:14:44:29 –> 01:14:46:02
Out, all glass for you.
01:14:47:10 –> 01:14:52:05
Okay. If he gets away with it and there’s 14 cars that drive by then I’m jumping the fence after Clint does so
01:14:52:05 –> 01:15:50:26
Well. And the other thing was, yeah, you get states in Colorado, it’s a good example of that. They’re posting laws. They don’t have to post anything. You know, other states, Utah, you know, if it’s not cultivated property cultivated laws are pretty standard for like Idaho, Utah, if it’s cultivated at agriculture, it doesn’t have to be posted. But other states it, the burden’s all on the, the hunter or sportsman. You’ve gotta know where you’re standing or where you’re hunting. It doesn’t need red paint or sign or, or anything. And so yeah, it was what, what it did is gave you more confidence exactly what it did and allowed you to, you know, walk with that clip to your chest on your pack strap and look down, glance at it all the time was you were, ’cause you know, there’s not always a fence. A lot of these you’re dealing with a, a private forest service boundary on a side hill up a mountain and the, you know, there’s no fence. And so it was very good. And, and obviously, you know, part of what I’m sure we’ll talk about today is where it’s come from that period of time and, you know, 2009 or 10 or 11 when that was really, you know, taken off. Well
01:15:50:26 –> 01:16:00:23
This is, this is even empowered game and fish agencies. I know particular I, I was visiting with a game warden and, and he uses it, he uses the chip to, you know, to enforce
01:16:01:01 –> 01:16:01:11
Force
01:16:01:11 –> 01:16:25:08
To ride a particular, huh. Yes. Literally. And, and you know, of course you get some of these, generally the landowners we’ve come in contact are very good guys. But there are some landowners that would love to not see hunters, you know, in or even near their property. And so they might claim they own the, the whole mountain and they don’t, but Yeah. You know, and you, and now it’s just kind of empowered everybody is that, I mean, obviously you, that’s the feedback you get.
01:16:26:01 –> 01:16:55:29
Yeah, yeah. Just people, just all the stories we get in testimonials every week coming in to our team here. It’s just great. And people, you know, people have, you know, the general public, you know, has limited days and vacation. This is, they take their vacation time to go hunting and you know, like I said, they don’t wanna be dealing with trespassing and not knowing where to hunt. They just, they really do want to just go have a good time, you know, spend time with friends and family, hopefully harvest an animal and, and just take advantage of, of our public lands here. Yeah.
01:16:56:11 –> 01:17:22:04
Well, let’s get, maybe we’ll get started. Talk about your company, the history. Of course, we’ve started on the history and then kind of how it’s evolved and what, let’s just like talk about the product, like gimme mobile, gimme the sales pitch, you know. Yeah. Mobile app, g p s, computers, all the, yeah. So some of the listeners that don’t, maybe haven’t used it or haven’t had a need or whatever, like maybe they can learn about it. And then Adam and I can kind of grill you with a few questions we got. Perfect.
01:17:22:11 –> 01:18:16:20
Perfect. Yeah. So we’re, we’re, we’re a Montana, Montana made company. You know, we’ve, we’ve grown everything here in Montana locally, we’re in Missoula and we started, Eric started the company in 2009, like you mentioned. And he, he was, you know, talking to, talking to you way back in those days. I remember, I remember when I, I came on in 2011, we did, we did some, some partnerships and some sales as well on that chip product. But yeah, it was hunting g p s maps and, you know, we really did good with the G P S market. We got, you know, into retail, sportsmans, you know, Cabela’s, all the major retailers and they really, really love the product. And, and it kind of flies off the shelves during hunting season that G P Ss chip. And so as we were growing, growing the team, so our G I SS team, we grew that team, that all the data is collected internally by our, by our g I S team.
01:18:17:03 –> 01:19:00:19
And so we’ve grown that team to about 17 people now. And, and all of our sales team and all of our customer service is all in-house marketing. And, and for the app product, which I’ll, which I’ll get to in a minute, but we have, you know, about 20 engineers that, that code, the app, the web map, all that stuff that, that goes out the door to make sure it’s working on your phone as well. But, you know, the first three or four years was great for the chip, but everybody kept saying, I wanna view this on my iPad. Or now as the iPhone started to come out and smartphones started to take over, you know, at the beginning of 2000 10, 11, 12, people were like, Hey, I want to, I don’t have a G P S, but I’d love to see this data on our, on my phone.
01:19:00:29 –> 01:19:55:18
So we started developing an app for iOS and Android and, and launch those in 2013 to kind of add another complimentary product so people could use their dedicated Carmen g p s, which was super popular in the west. You know, everybody’s using those Carmen GPSs to hike the mountains and stuff. But in the east, in order for us to kind of grow that way, the carbon g p s market just wasn’t really there, you know, hunting those smaller parcels like we mentioned, and, and having cell service all the time. There wasn’t the need for the dedicated G P s. So, so we launched the app and, and that’s really helped us get this data and, and this kind of knowledge out to the eastern hunter as well. And so that, that product has grown, you know, over the last four years getting ready to wrap up another strong year here in 2017 and have some exciting stuff for 2018 as well.
01:19:56:14 –> 01:20:12:09
Wow. That’s crazy. Well, I know the, the app has gone crazy. Of course I’m using the app a lot and at first I was, you know, it was just a, you know, it, it’s, I don’t know if that that sucked my battery, if my phone sucked, you know what I mean? But
01:20:13:02 –> 01:20:14:24
It is the app. Yeah. It’s a little bit
01:20:14:24 –> 01:20:48:22
Of a version. Yeah, yeah. With everything that’s going on on your phone. And so, but I, you know, and we can talk about that a little bit, but you know, your G P s has, you know, obviously has G P S built in it and when it’s on, even if you don’t have service, as long as you downloaded those maps, you got the site, you know, you’ve got good, good enough memory to be able to, you know, hold your maps Yeah. And download those. You know, I would always, always turn it on airplane mode because once in a while, if you get one bar of service, it’s, it’s fighting, you know,
01:20:48:26 –> 01:20:51:15
It does try to find service and drain your battery. Yeah.
01:20:51:16 –> 01:21:08:22
Well it tries to find service and then you kind of got half a map coming up and it’s Gotcha. It’s churn through it for a minute. So if I just turn it on airplane mode, it’ll just automatically use the map that I downloaded and it’s awesome. Just cranks. Yep. And so is there any other tricks to the trade on that? On, on, you know, the
01:21:08:22 –> 01:21:09:12
Mobile app? The
01:21:09:12 –> 01:21:09:23
Mobile app?
01:21:10:21 –> 01:22:03:29
Yeah, definitely. That’s what I do on my hunts and recommend is, you know, downloading those maps beforehand and that stores it, you know, right on your phone. And then when I’m out there, I definitely turn my phone into airplane mode as well because when you’re, even when you’re in service or intermediate service, it’s, it’ll still try to load those layers, you know, from, from the cell service. And so like you said, you just kind of get half a map loading here or there and, and it can be annoying. And then battery life too. So the app running, pinging the servers all the time can drain the battery, but then also your, your cell service just trying to locate satellite and connect with, you know, internet and all that stuff, your regular phone functions. So it’s great to turn it into airplane mode. And you know, I was in Nevada and my phone lasted, you know, I took a little charger or two, but, you know, two or three days pretty easy with some use in the back country before you really had to charge so
01:22:05:15 –> 01:22:38:00
Well. So maybe, yeah, talk us through, since we’re kind of on that, that subject of mobile device, you know, phone, you know, versus some of the G p s each platform, what the benefits of each are, you know, can you use a chip across multiple ones or how they can get, you know, and obviously then you got your desktop computer either before you leave home or I guess in some cases if you’re, yeah, you’re on a hunt and you got that in camp or something, you know, each night and, and want to go, you know, look at it there and things like that. How does, how does they, where does the pluses minuses of some of them applications of ’em all?
01:22:38:25 –> 01:23:09:15
Yeah, so, you know, with the dedicated G P s that comes as a, as a micro, micro SD chip. And so the state’s preloaded on that chip and it, it’s locked on there. And so any G P s you plug that into, it’ll load up the information so you can plug it into your new V, maybe through driving around, I have one in my truck, a Garmin new V for driving around, looking at the maps that way. And then when you’re getting ready to go hike, you know, you can put your chip in your, in your Rhino or or Oregon or Montana, g p s, whatever you’re using in they,
01:23:09:21 –> 01:23:18:24
So are they for the listeners there or do you one one state per chip or, I mean, obviously varies. Yeah, combinations. One per chip. Just one per chip. Yeah.
01:23:18:25 –> 01:23:19:20
Yeah. One state per
01:23:19:20 –> 01:23:27:00
Chip, because it seemed like, well, not as in Idaho and maybe you’ve done away with that product, but I could get a multi-state chip, but like a Idaho one, this, this
01:23:27:01 –> 01:23:27:24
Like a package three
01:23:27:24 –> 01:23:29:06
State? Yeah, like a three state. Yep.
01:23:29:13 –> 01:23:34:23
Yeah, we used to have the regional chip and that did not have landowner names on it. Okay. So you
01:23:34:23 –> 01:23:35:02
Could get,
01:23:35:05 –> 01:23:38:14
You could get more states, but there, it wasn’t, we didn’t,
01:23:38:19 –> 01:23:39:04
It wasn’t popular.
01:23:39:21 –> 01:23:44:04
It wasn’t popular. Yeah. And it just added, you know, added some complexity for us. And so we just wanted
01:23:44:04 –> 01:23:49:28
To, now you get to the one state that’s got everything on it. Yeah. You know, land ownership, landowner names, everything full, the full
01:23:50:15 –> 01:23:55:09
Units. So the product to buy, there’s one chip to buy, you want Arizona, you got Arizona.
01:23:55:26 –> 01:24:10:27
Yep. Okay. Yep, yep. And all of our packaging now count with that purchase, you get a free complimentary year, there’s a code inside it, so you get a free complimentary year for your app and a web map membership. So, so it kind of gives you the complete package there. So
01:24:10:29 –> 01:24:14:02
A chip and an an app for a year is what you’re saying? Yep. Yeah.
01:24:14:11 –> 01:24:17:16
Yep. And then you’ll hide your chip forever, right? Yeah. And if you want to keep continuing the
01:24:17:16 –> 01:24:33:21
App, you can. And so how does that work? Because the app is good for, you can have five states collect at once, and so the app, you can, you can choose, you give them the access to, if I buy an Arizona chip, I only get the app usage of Arizona, or can I use the app for any and all states for a year? If I buy in
01:24:33:21 –> 01:24:45:05
Arizona, you can select, yeah, you can select one state. So, wow. Okay. I would, I would, I would guess most people might choose Arizona, but maybe if they’re comfortable with their chip in Arizona, they might want to, you know, be looking around if they have a hunt in Colorado.
01:24:45:11 –> 01:25:01:08
Okay. So you’ll give a complimentary state kind of thing, like you buy a chip, you can have a, well, and I, and I, and I joined full price service, you know, on the app and, and you know, continue to use it. And then I, I didn’t even know you gave a free state. I just buy a chip if I’m in New Mexico, if
01:25:01:08 –> 01:25:02:04
You go to that state. Yeah.
01:25:02:04 –> 01:25:18:20
Which I, and I like it because the phone, again, sometimes, you know, if you’re doing email, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, I mean, pretty soon you’re down to 20%, 10%, whatever, and you gotta jump outta the truck. I just, I like to have a chip and I like the app, you know?
01:25:19:12 –> 01:25:33:04
Yep. Yeah, I think the thing I use the app the most for is kinda that overlaying the, the property lines in public with the aerial imagery. So I just find that really useful and looking at the terrain that satellite
01:25:33:04 –> 01:25:40:11
Imagery put the land ownership Yeah, the layering over the Yeah. Satellite image that, that is the biggest benefit I see too. That way that’s
01:25:40:11 –> 01:25:41:28
The big pro versus the G
01:25:41:28 –> 01:25:53:14
P s. Yeah. It’s not just a topo map. And you actually get to see what’s clear, what’s thick trees, what’s, you know, a glassing knob or something like that. You get to kind of see what it actually looks like on the house.
01:25:53:14 –> 01:26:19:12
It’s a regular maps app that comes with your phone. You can see, you can switch it to satellite and see some of that, but of course it doesn’t have all the fun stuff, stuff you got, you got, you got guzzler layers in Nevada, you’ve got all kinds of layers, you know, that you can add. Of course, of course the landownership and the public and, and private and whatnot. But, you know, yeah. Then there’s some, you know, you’ve even got possible entry and exit or access points and cool, cool layers. Yep. You know,
01:26:19:25 –> 01:27:15:23
Lots of really fun layers that nationwide trails data set. And I use that. And then this year my hunt in Nevada, since I was back country, I turned on the trail slow player, which is kinda like a green, yellow, orange, red, but it, for every 10th of a mile it shades the trail, whether it’s kind of relatively flat, steeper or steepest. And so using that map was really nice, like knowing what trails I wanted, you know, to go into, to set up camp and, and et cetera. And then it also, next to that layer is the trail mileage layer. So if you turn that on, it’ll, it’ll tell you like 1.2 miles between, you know, this junction and this junction 0.5 to the next, you know, whatever the, the kind of junctions are. And so you can quickly add up. ’cause you, I, I think we probably all know, like when you’re looking at a trail and you’re trying to draw a straight line and you’re like, oh yeah, it’s only how two miles in. And then you start hiking it and it ends up being four miles, you’re like, oh yeah. Should forget about to switchback stuff.
01:27:15:23 –> 01:27:21:21
So that app, it calculates it all on the, you know Yep. Squiggly line, switchbacks, all that and tells you what it’s, yep.
01:27:21:21 –> 01:27:23:11
So. Yep. Exactly. So how do,
01:27:23:26 –> 01:27:38:04
You know, talk a little bit about, you know, the different, you know, then we haven’t really talked about the desktop stuff or, or laptop stuff, the computer, how Yep. The applicability between your phone G P s and that and what syns and how to get data and waypoints and all that.
01:27:38:23 –> 01:28:26:03
Yep. So the, so we have our web map at, at OnX maps.com and the web map is kind of like the, the desktop internet version of the app. So on your phone, you, you would wanna run, you know, the, the Hunt app from your app store, and then on your computer you can log into the web map and those are both part of your membership to move to hunt. So you get access on your phone and your, and your computer, and it’s basically the same account. You log in and wherever you log in, you’re don’t have all of your data you’ve stored. So all of your waypoints tracks, lines, shapes, anything you’ve done and then access to your account. And so now with cloud-based technology, any markups tracks you make, anything you do in the web map will automatically sync right then over to your phone.
01:28:26:12 –> 01:29:11:16
And anything you do out in the field, you know, on your phone, when you come back to the office and log in, all of that data will already be there in web map for you. So that’s kind of all that cloud syncing. And that’s, that’s really good for like scouting at home, you know, planning all your markups where you wanna put camp, your glassing points where you set your trail cameras, et cetera. And then when you’re out in the field, all that data will be there waiting for you. So that’s kind of how those two work. And then on the G p S side, if you are doing markups and stuff on your Garmin G P Ss, you can, you know, plug that into your computer, open up the Garmin Basecamp program, that’s Garmin software, and then you can just export you data to your computer.
01:29:12:16 –> 01:30:10:04
And then inside our web map we have our import export tool. So you just hit import if you want to put data from like a Garmin or Google Earth or some other system into our mapping system. And that’ll just be kind of like a plug and play. You just hit import, find that file on your desktop or downloads or wherever you have it, and just hit import. And then if you want to get data out of our system, you can hit export. And so I use export to send some data to my friends and stuff as well. Wow. So you can hit export and know, you can export as a G P X file, which goes to your Garmin, or you can export it as K M L K M Z, which youm like Google Earth into Google Earth. Yeah. So you don’t lock your data down, you can do, you know, kind of whatever you want. I’m, that’s something I’m super passionate about, is letting you own your data. Because as a hunter myself, you know, I wanna have kind of control of that. Maybe I wanna back it up or send it to a friend or whatever your need is, you have access to your data.
01:30:10:15 –> 01:30:33:06
So I’ve got like a thousand waypoints from year 2000 till now. I can pull those into a current, my current, you know, whatever desktop application, web-based application web, pull ’em in, I’ve got ’em forever. And then I can download ’em back to PS my phone or g p s or, or at least access ’em through my account. Maybe it’s on their cloud-based Correct. Technology. It’s on there all the time. It’s, yep.
01:30:33:22 –> 01:30:52:22
It’s always there. Yep. Yep. Wow. And there’s something we’re excited about getting in here in the near future is some folder systems for your data into the app and web maps, so you can organize by folders and, and do a little more customization there. So I think it’ll be a useful tool to help, you know, people organize all those years and years and years of, of accumulated knowledge
01:30:52:22 –> 01:31:01:03
That they have, it’s all secured, secured down. Like you’re dealing with somebody’s social security number, I imagine. Yep. These are hunting spots, these are hunting spots we’re talking about. You can have,
01:31:01:03 –> 01:31:01:25
We don’t have social
01:31:01:28 –> 01:31:04:14
Security number, but you, I don’t want anybody looking at my G P s.
01:31:05:02 –> 01:31:12:18
Yeah. We, we don’t have a God view. So we, we don’t, don’t look at anybody’s data or have, have a tool that allows us to do that. So.
01:31:12:25 –> 01:31:16:03
Wow. That’s awesome. Holy cow. Yeah,
01:31:16:03 –> 01:31:17:10
That’s great. Well, yeah,
01:31:17:10 –> 01:31:19:00
You got a lot of valuable information, so.
01:31:19:28 –> 01:31:51:03
Absolutely. So what, I guess yeah, talk with us, you know, or maybe some of the people that haven’t used it, like I said, just tell us the basics of, of how your technology, whether it be, I guess we’ll go back to the field, so to speak, in terms of the mobile and the G P SS app, you know, how it works, what happens if you’re, you know, offline or don’t have service, you know, if you gotta download stuff prior to all those types of things. You know, just the basics of that before we get into then the types of, you know, you know, really applications that you guys are
01:31:51:03 –> 01:32:36:10
Gonna use. Well, and I think too yeah, as you’re talking about it, it, it, you know, for us when we’re dealing with videos, you know, of course throw phone scope in here, you’re taking videos of the game Yep. And it’s taken up data, it’s taken up space. And the same thing with like these maps, you’re downloading maps and all this, at some point it’s worth when you, when you upgrade your iPhone or whatever phone you have and you upgrade it, it’s worth like, I got a 256 gig phone, you know what I mean? And yeah. And, and or, and my last one was a 1 28 and I, Adam and I have talked a lot about storage and managing storage and whatnot, but Moore’s better, especially the, the, as time goes on, technology increases and, and all of this, these things. So kind of maybe for our listeners, keep that in mind when you’re updating your phone, so
01:32:36:23 –> 01:32:57:27
Yeah. Yeah. Phones are not, not just used for, you know, text and Right. My phone calls anymore. They’re a tool, right. I mean, I, I have all of my email, my work, you know, on my Google drive, you know, then you have all of your images and phone scope and, and maps and they’re really, and whatever else you have specialized for your job or, or your needs, they’re really becoming a tool. Yeah,
01:32:59:01 –> 01:33:14:02
Yeah, that’s right. And so, and so let, like Adam was talking about, maybe just kind of go through and, and just give us a quick sales pitch. Of course we’ve talked about a lot of your products, but from a new a newbie’s perspective, he gets on, he goes to onyx maps.com,
01:33:14:02 –> 01:33:17:16
The app and how it works from then forward, or whether it be a G P S chip or
01:33:17:16 –> 01:33:25:29
The Apple and you can update your chip and just a few things like that used to be download. You just plug, you know, download it right to your G P Ss. Yep. But of course, I, I like the chips, but,
01:33:26:19 –> 01:34:35:03
Yep. Yeah, so with the chip, you know, like I said, you can, you know, purchase that at, at a retailer, you know, our website and that’s just a plug and play system. Really simple. If you’re going on a Western hunt or anywhere, and you, you need to know property ownership, public land, if you’re hunting state D L M Forest Service and you just wanna be confident where you’re at and you have a Garmin G P s, that’s just a super simple system. It’s in a plug into your G P Ss, that’s all you have to do. Just turn on your G P s, then the maps will be loaded for you. It’s basically a 24 K topo map. So it’s gonna have your topo lines, all of your trails, your roads, everything you need, you know, for getting around. It’ll have your hunting units there for elk, deer, antelope for most of the states on whatever species you wanna look for. And, and then just that public and private ownership. Yeah. So you can change batteries pretty easily, you know, if you don’t have to worry about chargers, you know, if you have some of the rhino walkie-talkie garments, you can talk and see your, see your partner’s location. So that’s a really, really good g p s unit if you’re hunting with a party.
01:34:37:16 –> 01:34:48:01
And you could also use the Garmin base camp software, like I mentioned, for planning at home as well. Yeah. They have a software system that, that lets you view the chip and do markups and stuff like that.
01:34:49:00 –> 01:35:12:07
So, you know, I, I’ve got a couple of stories at some point to interject, but just wondering, like data changes, you know, people buy properties, correct. Yep. Buy state grant, state land or whatnot. And I found sometimes, like this year, a couple of times my phone showed different than my chip and I, and I, I just was wondering which is accurate. Maybe, maybe there’s a glitch or So
01:35:12:14 –> 01:35:12:27
How often you
01:35:12:27 –> 01:35:26:13
Updated? Yeah, maybe. Or maybe there’s a glitch or maybe not. Like, just tell us about the, the reliability of the accuracy and then, yeah, and what’s your, of course you got what, 17 people in the G i s and 20 engineers. I mean, this is beginning to be big business.
01:35:27:06 –> 01:36:02:03
Yep. Yeah. So on that land ownership, that’s a really good point. You know, we have the chip and the app and you know, you would think they would have the same land ownership, right? They’re the same names and, and they do at some points, but at, you know, on the app, we are able to update changes on the fly, right? So everything’s coming from our server. So if we update Wyoming this week, bam, all that land ownership for Wyoming gets updated right into your app. You don’t have to do anything. Okay. Now, if you have a chip, you know, you might’ve bought it 1, 2, 3, 4 years ago, depending, how
01:36:02:03 –> 01:36:03:16
About 10,010? How about,
01:36:03:17 –> 01:36:03:26
Yeah.
01:36:04:09 –> 01:36:04:16
How
01:36:04:16 –> 01:36:05:16
About you’re with
01:36:05:16 –> 01:36:06:14
The land ownership, right?
01:36:06:25 –> 01:36:11:03
Adam’s still using the original chips, just praying that white means white, which is private
01:36:12:13 –> 01:36:14:16
And there’s been no state sections get sold
01:36:15:03 –> 01:36:15:15
In that.
01:36:15:25 –> 01:36:16:04
Yeah.
01:36:17:00 –> 01:36:47:06
So on that chip, it’s up to you, you know, to come back to our website and, and do an update if you want. So we have an updater, and then you just plug your chip into your computer and, and it’ll swap out the file for you. Updates, you know, are available every year for those, for those chip products. And the way to get your update is you have to have a, a membership to hunt. So you have to have an app or a web map membership, and then you get free updates for any of your chips. All of your chips are just free updates as long as you have
01:36:47:06 –> 01:37:05:29
That app. And so to get a membership, is that just like my, like say I bought the Hunt app for a hundred bucks. Yep. Is that my membership? Is that what you’re talking about? That’s your membership. Okay. And I can update my cards. Adam could have his cards updated from eight years ago for free and they’re updated right now for free, as long as he’s paid the a hundred bucks or whatever it is for the Hunt app.
01:37:06:11 –> 01:37:17:11
Yeah. Yeah. In the, in the past we used to have the app membership was kind of separate and then you could buy chip updates, you know, for $30, $30 a year. And the app membership was, you know, $30 a year for the one state, a hundred from all 50
01:37:17:15 –> 01:37:18:08
Then apps adjusted.
01:37:18:21 –> 01:37:30:04
Yeah. Yeah. We just rolled it all into kind of one product to make it easy, easy for everybody to understand. So you buy a chip, you know, you buy buy a chip if you need that new chip. And then everything else is kind of involved with
01:37:30:04 –> 01:37:42:26
The, well, it’s smart business too, because if a guy wants to update his chip, you’re kind of not, not forcing him to buy the app for your phone, but it’s a natural, you buy the app for the phone, you get all your chips will be updated for free. Yep. You know what I mean? Yep.
01:37:43:00 –> 01:37:56:20
And it’s added value. So, you know, we were charging that $30 a year for the update anyway. And now you can kind of think of it the same way. You’re still paying that $30 a year, but for your trip update, but now you get access to the app and the web map. Yeah. Kind of for free. So,
01:37:56:23 –> 01:37:57:17
Okay. Kinda rolls
01:37:57:17 –> 01:37:58:04
It all into one.
01:37:59:05 –> 01:37:59:27
Okay, cool.
01:38:01:12 –> 01:38:35:27
So on the phone for like, just to wrap up with the, the use in the field or, or you know, getting the phone app, you know, you just go to your app store, iTunes or Android, you know, download the app, search on next hunt, it’ll pull that up for you and then, you know, if you already have an account, whatever you could, you just log in and start using it. You don’t have an account or a membership, you know, you can have a seven day free trial. There’s no charge after that. So you get seven days free. We don’t take your credit card or anything after seven days you can decide to buy or not. We’ll hit you up with some marketing probably, but
01:38:37:14 –> 01:38:37:23
Oh yeah,
01:38:37:23 –> 01:38:38:24
You’re gonna want it. Test it out.
01:38:38:26 –> 01:38:47:18
So Oh, you’re gonna want it. I, I did that seven day free trial when I was in Idaho on a deer hunt. And then pretty soon I was bought it on the drive home that I was gonna hit day eight.
01:38:48:12 –> 01:38:50:02
They’re like, this can’t go away anyway,
01:38:50:10 –> 01:38:53:02
This cannot go away. Yeah. It has to show up every time.
01:38:53:19 –> 01:39:03:09
So how do you do that for listeners on a per state basis on the mobile part of it? Or is it not, not as much like the G p s chip where it’s by a state by state basis.
01:39:03:14 –> 01:40:02:10
Yep, yep. So it is by state. So we have a one state membership or a, or a 50 state membership. And that’s just kind of how the app store, which we’re kind of controlled by because we do a lot of business through the app stores. But with their subscription models, we kind of had to do a one or all membership model. So you can do one state, you can do, you can pick Montana, Colorado map away, you’ll have your layers from what call for your state. So you’d have like public land for that state, private land for that state. All of the access areas, all of the private walk-in areas. Montana, they’re called block management, Utah, CW News, Idaho Access. Yes. Or whatever that state program is for that state. You’ll have section lines. And then on the nationwide trails, you know, you’ll nationwide layers, you’ll have all of your trails, all of your hunting units, you know, force fires, timber cuts, wilderness areas, lots of really cool layers.
01:40:02:21 –> 01:40:14:20
Well, it’s kind of cool, like some of the access programs, you know, for Kansas for example, there’s some walk-in areas and Yep. And I, I can’t imagine, I, you’re, I, I mean you’ve gotta be doing that probably as well, you know?
01:40:14:23 –> 01:40:18:24
Yep, yep. We have all of those for, for every state that has that program and we update
01:40:18:24 –> 01:40:39:10
Those every year. Before that you mentioned wild wilderness areas, which are public lands, but I hunted Wyoming this year. And that’s important to know, if you’re a non-resident up there without an outfitter, you need to know where regular national forest changes to wilderness because Correct. You’re breaking the law and you cross that without a guide. You’re
01:40:39:10 –> 01:40:41:20
Driving along and the wilderness butted up against the road.
01:40:41:21 –> 01:40:53:02
Oh, right next to the road. So literally out, out one side of the road, you could, I couldn’t shoot something, even though it was off the road. It was just cherry stem section, very small section. Most wilderness doesn’t go right to the
01:40:53:02 –> 01:40:54:17
Road. You, you had to be tempted to
01:40:54:17 –> 01:40:56:18
Shoot something. No, I didn’t see anything. I was not, there was
01:40:56:18 –> 01:40:57:27
Nothing. Did you venture over there? Tell the truth.
01:40:57:28 –> 01:41:00:00
There was sheep there, so I didn’t see a deer. Oh, you
01:41:00:00 –> 01:41:01:09
Did venture over there? Well,
01:41:01:12 –> 01:41:02:21
Yeah, one side was good.
01:41:03:08 –> 01:41:04:06
Oh, okay. Never
01:41:04:06 –> 01:41:08:18
Left the truck. All right to incriminate me. I don’t want lion game fish showing up here tomorrow.
01:41:09:12 –> 01:41:13:10
Me neither. Go go to Bronson’s house. That’s where he keeps his GPSs. Yeah.
01:41:13:14 –> 01:41:35:26
But no, yeah, that’s an example of, you know, it’s not just about public land because not all, you know, in, in that state instance, you want to know, or a wilderness boundary that could come into play in like a region h deer deer hunt, where you’ve got, you know, national forest, but then wilderness in the high country, you need to know. And they’re not on fences. There’s no fences there. It’s just a elevation contour line or something that the
01:41:36:02 –> 01:41:48:10
Downside to all this is that you could tell the game war. You could say, I didn’t know. And he’s like, no, nope. I called the Onyx guys and you’ve got a subscription. Not only do you have a subscription, you own six states. You were using it.
01:41:48:29 –> 01:41:51:24
I, I subpoenaed the your account at Onyx and
01:41:52:00 –> 01:41:52:29
You’re giving ’em ideas.
01:41:53:05 –> 01:41:56:09
Yeah, well it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.
01:41:56:09 –> 01:41:57:17
Guess I brought it up. There’s
01:41:57:17 –> 01:42:01:02
People on revocation right now because of things like that probably. You
01:42:01:02 –> 01:42:15:16
Know, that’s what’s crazy about, well anyway, about these phones and the location services, like we’ve, we’ve had big, and I guess we’re veering from the subject, but the phone g p s system is amazing, let’s just say that. Yeah. And there’s pretty much nothing you’re doing that somebody doesn’t know about
01:42:16:29 –> 01:42:18:00
If you’re not careful. Yeah,
01:42:18:03 –> 01:42:18:09
I would
01:42:18:09 –> 01:42:19:22
Agree. If you’re not careful. That’s right.
01:42:19:22 –> 01:42:37:29
Yeah. So another thing I, you know, that I’ve found was interesting is the overlays of the game activity, I don’t know what you call it, game activity, you know, winter range, summer range. You had that overlay on the phone, at least the phone app when I was in Colorado. And I was like, holy crap, this is cool.
01:42:38:17 –> 01:42:47:26
That probably leads us into, yeah, the question of, yeah, like where this data and maps come from. I mean, not all states have have that what Colorado does, but Yeah, you’re limited
01:42:49:01 –> 01:42:49:27
What the state can give you
01:42:49:29 –> 01:43:09:29
What Yeah. Tell us or the listeners like, you know, you’re not, you’re not drawing these all on yourself. These are, I guess, and I’m, you’re not giving away prop priority secrets here, but just for the, from a confidence standpoint, where do you get your layers, your data, your maps, your land ownership, all that, just so everybody kind of has the confidence. Okay. Yeah. That’s where I would’ve to go get it myself.
01:43:10:25 –> 01:43:32:22
Yeah. So we, we aren’t creating, you know, any data ourselves, like going out and, and measuring or surveying or, or doing stuff like that. So we’re, we’re getting data sets, you know, on land ownership, you know, that’s from the county, you know, we get that tax records for that. But as far as like hunting units, you know, that has to really come from each game agency, state, state,
01:43:32:24 –> 01:43:33:16
GI player. Yeah.
01:43:34:04 –> 01:43:41:17
Game ranges or et cetera. And so we might take it and, and, and do some fine tuning, you know, with colors and shades. Yeah.
01:43:41:17 –> 01:43:43:27
Make sure it visually looks, but good. Yeah.
01:43:44:14 –> 01:44:03:18
Yep. But, you know, we’re really relying on, on those resources and we have some great, great partnerships with a lot of the states. Colorado and Wyoming are two of our big partners. And, and like you can mentioned earlier, all of their game wardens are, are, are, are using our product. I think in almost every state I can think of.
01:44:04:00 –> 01:44:05:27
I hope you’re making ’em pay full price.
01:44:07:14 –> 01:44:08:03
Oh, a little bit.
01:44:09:16 –> 01:44:13:22
Whole package deal for the whole game agency or something. Yep. Good, good.
01:44:14:03 –> 01:44:41:06
Well that, that’s the testament too. If you’ve got people like that relying and using it, I mean it’s not a legit, it’s not a hobby shop garage, it’s legit turned out thing. I mean, government sanction mean you’re using Yeah. You’re using government entities, whether it be federal and state for your base land ownership or base maps, you know, one to 24 and all that you’re not. Yep. And you know, building it from there, layer, layer calling state, you know, federal county landowner name, keep
01:44:41:06 –> 01:44:56:22
All that. I keep looking, I keep looking for that 200 inch overlay. Like here’s where 200 inch deer lay, you know what you could do a Boone and Crockett overlay of counties and numbers of Boone and Crockett bucks or Bulls or Rams or whatever taking in specific counties and have that overlay for that. You could, you know,
01:44:57:14 –> 01:44:58:11
We do have that in there.
01:44:58:18 –> 01:44:58:27
What
01:44:59:14 –> 01:45:05:08
We have a partnership with Boone Crockett now that we launched, well maybe about two months ago. You haven’t seen that layer yet off?
01:45:06:00 –> 01:45:06:29
No. Is it, is it
01:45:07:23 –> 01:45:07:29
It
01:45:08:11 –> 01:45:08:20
Is it
01:45:09:00 –> 01:45:14:12
Now I’m gonna be hunting with Jason. I thought what he’s gonna be doing is sitting on that wondering how I wonder what’s died in this county. Well,
01:45:14:12 –> 01:45:20:18
And then if you touch that and maybe it’ll kick you over to Boone and Crockett’s website and you get to look at all the, do you guys have an interactive like that?
01:45:21:29 –> 01:45:32:17
It’s not set up like that yet. We’ve been talking with them about stuff. Just total entries. Yep. Right now it shows total entries. I’d love to, you know, we would love to look at it here in the next year and make it kind of filterable by.
01:45:33:01 –> 01:45:33:09
So if
01:45:33:09 –> 01:45:40:15
You’re, if you take a buddy hunting outta state and you’re sitting somewhere and he says, why’d you bring me here? There’s nothing big. You just say, ’cause this layer, look at this, look at
01:45:40:15 –> 01:45:40:23
This layer.
01:45:40:29 –> 01:45:44:16
This is what’s died in this county in the last 10 years that made Boone Crockett
01:45:44:22 –> 01:45:50:26
Dude. Which, which comes back in if I’m at home on my computer, that would be a great overlay look, it’s
01:45:50:26 –> 01:45:52:21
A great tool for applying for
01:45:52:21 –> 01:46:07:20
Change. Yeah. Especially if you’re, if you’re talking general season deer and elk options because you know, some states you’ve got 50 or 75% of the state that you could go hunt on the general season tag. And so how do you narrow that down, you know, that
01:46:07:23 –> 01:46:24:11
Just another that’s, I had, I thought I had a $500 idea, you know, for something gonna make you guys a hundred grand, maybe you’d kick me 500 for that. Night’s a good idea. Geez, I’ve already thought about it. Yeah. Just speaking of new stuff, I guess, like what other things are you guys thinking about up there?
01:46:26:15 –> 01:47:18:20
So we, we launched the sharing waypoint. And so right now if you make a waypoint, you can like tap it and hit share and then that’ll just send it like via text or email or basically whatever kind of your native sharing functions are. I know you, you can send it through Facebook, whatever, but we’ve been using that a lot to just share a waypoint like, hey, this is the camper meeting at, or Hey, I gotta pull down, this is where I’m at. Can you send reinforcements? And so when, when somebody else clicks that when point link and their text message or email, it’ll open up the app and automatically save that waypoint right on the map for them. Wow. So, so if I send you a waypoint, Jason and I say, here, here’s where we’re camping in Colorado. Meet me here in four days and you hit that link, it’ll just save it right into your phone to your database and you’ll be able to know right where to drive to to meet me at camp. So
01:47:18:20 –> 01:47:19:16
Crazy. That’s a really
01:47:19:16 –> 01:47:20:09
Pretty cool tool.
01:47:20:14 –> 01:47:21:12
Yeah, that’s really,
01:47:21:12 –> 01:47:23:02
It’s getting a lot of use in in our
01:47:23:02 –> 01:47:32:18
System. Is it? That’s great. Well, and the more interaction you can have with your customer, you know, the more tide they become to you and they, they have to keep you, you know? Yeah.
01:47:32:20 –> 01:47:51:24
And we’re really focused on building those tools that, you know, as, as hunters ourselves, those tools that really are gonna help you in the field. You know, trying to stay away from, you know, some of the gimmicky stuff and and stuff and really have tools that are gonna really help you. ’cause that, you know, obviously that’s what does drive value, but that’s, that’s what we want in the product for ourselves as well. So
01:47:51:24 –> 01:47:57:00
Yeah. Can you print the maps? I mean, how have you, are we at that point? I haven’t even looked.
01:47:57:10 –> 01:48:24:21
Yep, yep. So if you log into web map, you know, you can print all of the maps you want for free. You know, right now the farthest furthest I’ve gone is printing like eight, eight and a half by elevens, you know, I’m sure, yeah. People can figure out maybe how to print a bigger map or, or put ’em together. But yeah, all of that is printable if you know how to print it from your phone. I don’t know how, but I’m sure people could print from the phone or do a screenshot as well on their phone to, to share with somebody.
01:48:25:00 –> 01:49:06:21
One, one thing I wanted to, you know, one thing I wanted to talk about too is like, not all maps are created equal. We can buy, you know, in Colorado for example, there’s 14 different manufacturers and one shows a particular, for example, in New Mexico, I’ve got maps, some show ponds, some don’t. And they might even be the same, what do you call it, Adam, the same one to 100,007 scale, a half minute map scale, same scale, you know? Yeah. Seven and a half minute map shows this, but this seven and a half minute doesn’t like what, what do you, I mean, of course you got 17 G g I s guys, but Yeah. Have you found what you feel like’s the, the best? Are you modifying that a little bit with your own G G I S guys or, yeah,
01:49:06:24 –> 01:49:59:29
We’re still, we’re still modifying and, and improving stuff. So on our, our topo base map that we have in our app, that’s all a map that we make ourselves from data. And so we just got done with another round here of updating it. It’s gonna have some hill shade in some more pon tours, a little bit of coloring, and it’d be a little crisper. So we’ve been launching that probably in January. But, and the nice thing about our topo map or like everything we do is everything is updated every year, you know, and so, and everything can be updated on the fly, you know, and changed. And so I think we get a lot of customer feedback and so we can make changes whether instantly, like by that day or two, if it’s like a parcel error that we think is wrong or has been updated and we can just verify and update that quickly in the record system all the way to like the topo and, and, and, and making layers and, and stuff.
01:50:00:03 –> 01:50:52:29
So I think that’s one of the benefits of our system is just really engaging with our customer base. And I think that’s one thing I was gonna mention, like on the land ownership, the public lands is, you know, now we have, we have 10 years of kind of customer feedback on our dataset. Here’s like a spot that was wrong or here’s, ’cause you know, you’re talking to federal dataset or county records. I mean we’re talking 300 million different parcels know throughout the US and so of course there’s gonna be some errors or somebody put something in wrong or you know, the county hasn’t updated it or the federal government doesn’t update that often because, you know, they’re not too worried about tax revenue. Yeah. So we’ve got, they’re not thousands and thousands of Yeah. From, from the, from the county. From the county directly from that ownership. So we’ve got thousands, thousands of, you know, customer feedback, you know, game warden feedback, you know, stuff from the state agencies that, that’s really proprietary to, to our
01:50:52:29 –> 01:51:05:01
Dataset. Well we just, we just wanna throw our hat in the ring, like if you got any new stuff that’s just coming out that’s all exciting, you need somebody to test it, just hit [email protected] or Adam at de we’d be happy to work with you on
01:51:05:01 –> 01:51:07:13
Some of that stuff. Yeah, we’ll get you guys, we’ll get you guys set up with some new stuff coming out.
01:51:07:17 –> 01:51:13:00
So tell us, like, let’s say I’m going to Canada. Do you do anything up there or where, where, what’s your limit?
01:51:13:09 –> 01:51:27:14
Canada. Yeah, not in Canada yet. Okay. I’ve been researching the data up there over the last month and looks like there might be some possibilities there. So something probably make a decision here and might make a push for, for next fall.
01:51:27:18 –> 01:51:30:21
So we’re talking 50 US states, is that where you’re Correct.
01:51:30:29 –> 01:51:59:02
Right now? Yeah. Okay. And, and it’s great. We have, it’s amazing, amazing how many customers, you know, there are in states you want to think of or that I didn’t think of, you know, a couple years ago, but, you know, Hawaii and Rhode Island and Maine and everything. It’s just, I, I guess there’s the same problem and same issues kind of inherent to the hunting, right? I mean, it’s up to the hunter’s responsibility and to really know Yeah. What property and you can’t go hunting really unless you have a property or public land or know where you’re at. Right. Or you can step
01:51:59:02 –> 01:52:01:17
On ground that you know, you’re Yeah. Got the green light.
01:52:01:29 –> 01:52:47:26
Speaking of that, so I was in New Mexico hunting elk and it was kind of crazy. Just it was the last day been a tough, tough hunt. Chris was in the truck with me, which he’s here recording the podcast. Yeah. But anyway, he’s in the truck and my g p s was dead. My phone, it was about dead. I was, so I’d had it on, I, I’d had the locations turned off and the app closed and everything we’re cranking down the road. And I look up and there’s this fricking giant bowl and it was all kind of mixed in public and private a little bit, but good, good sized chunks of both, you know, so it’s not like you’re, you’re really dicey. And so anyway, we come to a screech and halt and, and I’m like, crap, I know we’re closed. Like are we on public or private?
01:52:48:00 –> 01:53:35:11
And, and so I reach over, I turn my locations on it, open up your app and, and when it comes up, it comes up. I can see we’re on, we’re on public of, I don’t know, probably for a quarter of a mile or something, you know, I could tell, you know, and so I, you could tell kind of the way the fence is jogged and stuff and I was like, yeah, he’s on public right now. Like he’s on public. Anyway, long story short, killed the bull and did it, you know, conscience free. Anyway, it just made it, it made it awesome. Made the decision easy and it was a real live, I mean situation where, you know, that had a huge part in play whether we hunted that bull or not. So
01:53:35:18 –> 01:53:53:19
Yeah. Great story. Yeah. I mean, I don’t care if you’re using our product or you can find something else like it, but you need to, if you’re hunting, hunting, you need to be using something like this now. It’s just gonna be, it’s just in a, give you peace of mind and give you that advantage of those split those split moment decisions
01:53:53:19 –> 01:53:54:06
That you have to
01:53:54:06 –> 01:54:04:15
Make. We’ve all been there when you’re like, you passed up a bucks ’cause you didn’t know when you come back next year with them, you finally decide to buy the map. And we’ve referred that and they go back to next year and they’re like, yep, it was public.
01:54:05:02 –> 01:54:14:16
Yeah. Oh yeah. I’m sure you guys have heard a lot of that. And like, like Jason said, I mean, when I’m in a state particularly, it seems like a Wyoming, Colorado, Colorado places that,
01:54:14:18 –> 01:54:15:23
That we’re not familiar with.
01:54:15:27 –> 01:54:56:17
Yeah. You, you don’t live around and Yep. You’re sometimes seeing for the first time. Yeah. Just the, just the general drive and over overlays you drive and you cross cattle guards and look and you’re, you’re mapping it out that day or two before you get a mental game plan. And then when you go out and set on foot, there’s lots of places that I’ve used my G p s just, just to navigate so you have that peace of mind. ’cause a lot of this stuff, there’s not, there’s not fences, there’s, there’s other places. It’s very easy, you know, fence corners and where you gotta go when there’s not, you know, when a Yep. Private landowner butts right up against national forest and they probably own the grazing rights up, but they’re on the forest so they don’t need to fence it and keep the cows off that and off their private.
01:54:56:18 –> 01:55:42:18
Yep. ’cause it’s on one and the same. Yeah. You, you get off on your public land point and Yeah, sometimes it’s a pain in the butt to have to walk vertical uphill for a quarter or a half a mile before you can make a hard left and go side. Hilling have, it could be done, but you have a hundred percent peace of mind to know that. And we’ve killed animals like I’m sure a lot of other people have. Well, that’s doing it that way. And then you have, like you said, total peace of mind. The satisfaction know that I did this public land and it would be not impossible, but other places be very difficult to stay. You’d be guessing without, without something tr you know, navigating on your chest as you’re walking up, staying, you know, 50 yards, a hundred yards onto the green while you’re, while you’re going up a non fence hillside before you bank to the left.
01:55:42:23 –> 01:56:18:24
Well, and nowadays, like if you, you, you do something and even if it’s un unintentional and you, you end up, you know, getting busted for doing, you know, taking an animal where you shouldn’t have or something like that and you take it across state lines, you’re liable for a laci act violation, which is a felony, no hunting, no guns, you know, kind of thing. And so it’s pretty serious in this hunting industry to know where you’re at and to do it Right. And, and that technology, I mean, you know, and I’ve always said, you know, develop products, it’s like bread and water where people have to have it. This is becoming bread and water, the hunting industry.
01:56:20:07 –> 01:56:20:16
Yeah.
01:56:20:19 –> 01:56:35:11
Yo, it’s a, yeah, it’s like rifle guns, shells and G P s G P S with the landman ship. It’s really that, that big a deal. And other places you don’t eat it. I mean, we all know we go to our mountain that we always hunt and you don’t need it.
01:56:35:17 –> 01:56:45:09
Nevada’s got a load of public land, like, so you’re not as worried. But, but it does have the cool overlays of guzzlers and different things. And so anyway, and then, you know, I know, yeah.
01:56:45:09 –> 01:56:59:17
My hunt on my hunt in Nevada, I, you know, it was all wilderness and, and forest service. But I did end up using our forest fire layer that shows the old forest fires that I found a batch of group of bowls, like 10 bulls in the burn post rud.
01:57:00:15 –> 01:57:00:29
That’s awesome.
01:57:01:18 –> 01:57:02:05
M so
01:57:02:13 –> 01:57:03:23
That’s an awesome layer. Yeah.
01:57:04:05 –> 01:57:10:28
Forest service. But you know, just finding that fire and that food source and water source too with the guzzlers in springs, so. Geez.
01:57:10:29 –> 01:57:59:10
Yeah. That’s crazy. Well, that’s awesome. I know I was hunting with John Peterson who’s here, here in the epic office and we were over there in Colorado and you know, he, he comes in and he had done, he works nonstop on the magazine and all the digital side of, of Epic and so he didn’t even have time to Prec scout. Well he had come, he come in with this phone and open up the Onyx app, which I didn’t even know he had it. Yeah. Like we don’t, we don’t talk a lot about the hunting side of things ’cause we’re just going a hundred different directions and, and the office work versus hunting and, and everything else. He opens up his map and I’m like, what are all those data points? And he’s like, oh, I was just chilling at the office. Of course he doesn’t just chill at the office, but I was chilling and I opened up my app and just started marking access points, what I thought would be good.
01:57:59:22 –> 01:58:36:09
Were hard to access public land pieces, maybe in and around private and this and that. He had like 15 or 20 little points on there. And I’m like, I mean, I, I’m not that good. Like, just like you telling me about the forest or the forest fire there, I didn’t even know it was there and I could look and see it, you know what I mean? Yep. But we’re going so hard that I just know if I touch enough things on my phone, it’ll get me to where I need to go, you know? Yep. I don’t, I haven’t had time to get, you know, intimately familiar with all of these different aspects of, of your products. And so that’s why I’m really, you know, appreciative of myself, of being able to go over ’em with you and just,
01:58:36:09 –> 01:59:13:20
That’s one of the Yeah. One of the nice things is it is like the default settings that we set up for you, like when you first install the app or buy, it’s like public land, private land hunting units. It’s like what you need to go hunting. Yeah. And so, you know, a lot of people just stick with that and that’s fine. Like, it, it is exactly what they need to go hunting. Now if you wanna dive in more and do more research on boot rocket or kind of make some assumptions on, you know, feeding and, and timber cuts and force fires and, and all that other stuff, then there is more data for those that want to dig in and kind of customize. But it’s, you know, the nice thing is it’s simple and easy when you install that app for first time. It’s just default settings. So get you what you need to get out in the field and then get started.
01:59:14:09 –> 01:59:36:02
I did, I did have a question. So when you open up this, the hunt app and you can touch satellite, hybrid or topo, so I can get the, the topo satellite integrated or I can just get topo only or satellite only. When I did do satellite on only, it kind of has a yellow tint to it. Is that normal or do I need to adjust something in my settings?
01:59:37:23 –> 01:59:39:00
It shouldn’t.
01:59:39:17 –> 01:59:40:27
Okay. It’s got it. Just
01:59:40:27 –> 01:59:41:21
So there might be something going on.
01:59:41:21 –> 01:59:42:21
Yeah, I need to look, it should
01:59:42:21 –> 01:59:46:03
Be the same color as when you have the topo topo on top
01:59:46:03 –> 01:59:57:03
Of there. Okay. ’cause topos white. Topos white and really clear and easy to look at. And I’ve got a little bit of yellow, I might need to throw my iPhone away. I don’t know. So I was just wondering about that. And
01:59:57:20 –> 02:00:03:28
Anyway, you’re working on some new aerial imagery too, so we’re hoping to have, have some new aerial imagery for, for 2018 hunting season,
02:00:04:17 –> 02:00:08:08
Be able to look at 200 inches, like not just trees, but like 200 Yeah.
02:00:08:08 –> 02:00:08:21
Too in,
02:00:11:06 –> 02:00:31:08
So maybe yeah. Just, you know, talking about that in 2018, you know, you alluded to a little bit earlier in the updates and things like that, but you know, as we’ve talked about since 2009 or 10 when Eric was kicking this off till now less than 10 years, it’s amazing the technology that just keeps rapidly changing. You know,
02:00:31:26 –> 02:00:35:02
Companies like phone scope, companies like Onyx weren’t even
02:00:35:05 –> 02:00:35:23
Existence.
02:00:35:23 –> 02:00:40:12
The more, the more technology changes, the better off you guys are. I mean, it just keeps helping. Yeah.
02:00:41:03 –> 02:01:25:24
And, and especially with the phones and you know, we, this last year we did about a one year rewrite of the entire app because with technology, you know, we launched in 2013, so 13, 14, 15, 6, 3 and a half years or so, you know, technology just changes. I mean that’s, you can get stuff faster, phones have better memory processors, everything, you know, servers, all that stuff we have to deal with. And so we spent the last year rebuilding the whole app with the focus on just stability. That was really it. Making sure your maps loaded, making sure we didn’t have any downtime, which we did this hunting season, making sure all the same maps work, which were like 99%, you know, on, on there. Yeah. So that was kind of our goal. And, and we launched that I think what, July 31st of this year. And it’s been phenomenal.
02:01:25:24 –> 02:01:59:28
We haven’t had like, really any, any problems, any customer having problems, you know, this hunting season. And so now we’re looking at, we have our, we have our kind of foundation built back up again and we have our, our engineers, you know, monitoring that, servers, all that stuff. Now we get to have a little bit of fun and, and play around with some more tools. We want to, you know, improve that sharing functionality. Yeah. Which I said share waypoint, share waypoint with your buddies. I’d love to start sharing a track. I, I’d love to share a track that you did on a hike and, and maybe do some group sharing and being able to share with
02:01:59:28 –> 02:02:18:21
A group of people. Well, I could see in the future, like Epic members, like we have a membership experience database where if I went to say unit 18 in Colorado, I could share, I could open up, I could have an 18 folder and share it with other Epic members. You know what I mean? I could see like Exactly that’s where this is headed.
02:02:19:06 –> 02:02:46:20
Yep, yep. So you can just make a custom folder and share that with, you know, three or four people. Maybe you, you know, are part of the epic, the epic outdoors and you know, you drew a tag this year and another guy drew one next year and you wanna send him all the way points from your hunts. Well you could easily just share that, that folder of information and get on the phone and explain it to him. Yeah. So I think that’s be a really useful tool. The other one is location. So being able to see your hunting partners location on your map while you’re in the field, kinda
02:02:46:20 –> 02:02:47:21
Like your G P s. So
02:02:47:21 –> 02:03:02:23
That has safe has some safety in it as well. So, you know, being able for me to keep track of, you know, where my dad is at if we’re hiking or my friends being able to meet up and meet somebody if they house. So it’s kind of that location tracking because it’d be a fun thing to
02:03:02:23 –> 02:03:12:06
Play with. Yeah. In this day and age, there’s just almost no excuse for getting lost and people not knowing where you’re at, especially if you, if you’re at least on the hunt with one other person.
02:03:13:00 –> 02:03:14:06
Yep, yep.
02:03:14:25 –> 02:03:15:02
So,
02:03:15:15 –> 02:04:00:20
You know, you, I we’ve talked about primarily hunting. I know there’s other applications, but since we’re hunters and hunting business and, and and you are Hunter and and whatnot, that’s kind of what we’re talking about. But have you, and I know maybe no state is making a uni universal statement, but like, just once again for the credibility and reliability of your, of your data and whatnot, have you had any game of fish or has there been cases that you guys have been aware of where Simpson says, I used my Onyx mat and I know I was stand on public. Is that, I mean, I know it’s not universal that up stands in the court, up held the court, but Yeah, I mean, if they’re using it and game and Fish are using it and, and you’re using, I mean, I don’t know how, unless you, lately
02:04:00:26 –> 02:04:02:20
Yours isn’t updated, maybe yours wasn’t
02:04:02:20 –> 02:04:30:06
Updated. Yeah. Maybe it’s too old. I guess there’s instances like that, blah blah. Yeah, that was, that was 2000 and that’s sold in the last five years. So there’s, if you have an updated, updated chip or updated app Yep. And have you had anybody game wardens or that, I mean, said, hey, they’re good as long as they’re following this, you guys’ date is awesome. I mean, I’m sure they’re saying that anecdote, maybe they’re not on the record saying it, but maybe they are. Yeah.
02:04:30:24 –> 02:04:41:27
You know, I can’t, I we don’t have any cases on the record that I can think of or remember about, you know, anybody getting a ticket or, or a situation happening. So
02:04:42:15 –> 02:05:00:09
Well, and I think as long as a guy is doing everything he can do to, to do it right, it’s obviously intention is, is part of that equation, you know, as I, I intentionally went on private or something, but you know, if you’ve got the chip and your chip says you’re good, I
02:05:00:09 –> 02:05:08:20
Mean standing on green, yellow, blue, I mean you’re trying Yeah, I can’t imagine that’s probably you’re not hearing of the case is because they’re probably not getting a ticket and not having to go fight it. Because if you
02:05:09:00 –> 02:05:13:27
That well judge is gonna look at you and say you did everything you could do. That’s right. And you were trying. That’s right. Yeah.
02:05:14:11 –> 02:05:45:16
Yeah. I think the only thing is like maybe in like state like Wyoming with all the, I know that I’m down there, all the new oil and gas roads and, and all the roads that can be confusing and it’s really hard to figure out. And so just to be clear, like our, the roads on our map are just like from the county, you know, state nationwide dataset. We don’t color code them or anything if they’re public or private. So that’s one thing that does get tricky. I ’cause a lot of those roads are so beautifully maintained and you think you would able,
02:05:45:17 –> 02:05:47:24
You think they’re a county road. Yeah. Yeah.
02:05:48:14 –> 02:05:50:20
And especially for those antelope, punters and deer hunters.
02:05:51:05 –> 02:05:56:20
Yeah. I’ve done it. We roll up to a gate and if there’s a great big silver lock, it’s usually not a public road,
02:05:58:01 –> 02:06:08:06
Even though you, it looks like it is, it’s just going to protect their investment down the Yeah. Down the road. Their, all their equipment, they don’t want people driving up to and shooting it up, vandalizing it and whatever. But yeah,
02:06:08:08 –> 02:06:53:08
And the tricky thing is, is like the counties, like, like at one point a lot of those, some of those roads, it, some, it’s just were county roads right? 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. But for some reason they get abandoned or whatever and then they’re still called a county road in the county Rutgers, right? Yeah. The county road 68 or whatever. But it got abandoned 20 years ago, but nobody changed the name of the road. Everybody still knows it’s a county Road 68. So Yeah. So some, yeah. So it gets tricky. No, Wyoming’s a tricky spot, but the game wardens do a do a really good job there of Yeah. Of giving us feedback and, and I, I hope, I know that they, it can cause frustration from time to time with landowners and stuff, but they, they do love having this map to, to help ’em out. So
02:06:53:09 –> 02:06:59:28
Yeah. Tell us about the types of membership, elite versus premium. I don’t know if there’s a standard, what, what do you got?
02:07:00:29 –> 02:07:26:17
Yeah, so I guess there is a basic, which is free and that allows you to view all the base maps. So you can use your, your aerial, your topo map hunting units, come with that. And then you can do all of your way points tracking markups and save one map for offline use. So if you just want a really cool g p s with some tools and you’re hunting a lot of forest service and stuff where you don’t care about property ownership, then by all means go ahead
02:07:26:22 –> 02:07:28:26
And you can download the app and it’s free, free version.
02:07:29:00 –> 02:07:55:10
Yep. Okay. Yep. Yeah. Cool. So if you’re out in Forest Service or you just want a free G p s, I mean basically it’s like a $300 Garmin G p s, you know, it has the, the base maps and, and the tools you need to use offline. Okay. But if you want to then have kind of those specialty layers, you know, that we were talking about along with the public and private, we kind of have the two options. Premium gives you one state, so that’s our one state membership premium. You just choose which state you want.
02:07:55:22 –> 02:07:56:00
Okay.
02:07:56:17 –> 02:08:00:11
And Elite is, is all 50 states and that’s,
02:08:00:21 –> 02:08:05:15
And five up at one point, you just click the five you want right now and you can adjust that at all times.
02:08:06:06 –> 02:08:25:17
Yep. You can adjust at all times. So in the layer settings we, you can like turn five states on at once because of course if you turn all 50 states on and are trying to load the servers Yeah. With all 50 states for the data, you are not gonna have a good experience. Yeah. So, but we, we lock that down for the customer so they don’t have to deal with that so.
02:08:27:01 –> 02:08:36:04
Well that’s awesome. All right, well cool. Is there anything else you wanna talk about that maybe we didn’t bring up that, I mean, obviously you know your products and your business a lot better than we do.
02:08:37:16 –> 02:09:21:10
I think, you know, you know, I think for those that haven’t used their phone, you know, as a G P S, you know, two things is, you know, you can save maps for offline use and so you’re always gonna have your maps even if you don’t have service. And then, you know, all, all of the phones now have a G P S built in and they’re pretty darn accurate, just almost as accurate as your garment g p s now. So if you do not have cell service or wifi or whatever, your phone still has a dedicated built-in G P S, so you’ll still have your location no matter where you’re at emergency. Like if you’re outta service, so you have your phone, then your phone now has dedicated G P S and you can save maps. So basically, you know, it has that same functionality as a dedicated G P Ss now.
02:09:21:24 –> 02:09:48:17
Cool. Well Matt, we sure appreciate visiting with you. It’s been awesome. There’s a lot of technology out there. You guys are obviously leaders in your industry. It’s, it’s impressive. We’re using your products and we’re not paid to use ’em. In fact, we’ve paid full price for anything that we have. And so, you know, it’s not something we’re paid to say, we use them, you just gotta have ’em them, you gotta have them. And we just want to thank you for your time here on a Monday.
02:09:49:09 –> 02:09:52:29
Thank you so much everybody. Yeah, thank you Jason, Adam, appreciate it.
02:09:53:12 –> 02:09:54:20
Okay, thanks Matt. Thanks.
02:09:54:20 –> 02:09:55:16
Alright, take care.
02:09:55:24 –> 02:10:55:24
We wanna let everybody know that the full Curl Society will be getting together, it’ll be February 10th right during the Hunt Expo, and this’ll be kind of in a room off to the side February 10th at the Hunt Expo. And it’s, it’s a time where guys can apply and buy tickets where they’re giving away 10 different sheep hunts. That’s right. 10 different sheep hunts fully paid. So the winner’s not even needing to put up a small fee. There’ll be three stone sheep hunts given away, $5 sheep hunts given away, as well as a desert sheep hunt and a Rocky Mountain Bighorn. And so anyway, it’s a great opportunity for guys to apply basically for, for hunts that otherwise cost lots of thousands of dollars. And you can sign up, you can get [email protected] and great opportunity for guys to, to win some hunts. There’ll be 10 hunt winners in the room. February 10th during the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo
02:10:56:03 –> 02:11:29:11
Here at Epic Outdoors, we produce a hunting magazine, nine issues of the year. The first six issues are state by state research driven issues, breaking down the states, the drawing odds, kill percentages, best places to go, whatever your goals are for that state, whether you should even apply for that state or not. Coming from January through June, we break those down the rest of the year. We go every other month. Very informative magazine, a hundred dollars a year, get you that magazine as well as the ability to call and consult with us consultants, develop a strategy, bounce ideas off us, things like that.
02:11:29:17 –> 02:11:47:11
Yeah, so, so with this magazine, you know, it just is covers Western big game hunting. That’s what we specialize in. That’s what we stick to. So the western states, Canada, Alaska, Mexico, from a big game hunting perspective. So a hundred bucks a year and, and it should be everything to do with Western big game hunting.
02:11:47:18 –> 02:12:36:26
We also offer a full service license application service. If you’re too busy, you find yourself missing deadlines or you travel a lot with your work, missing deadlines. In some cases we’ll put you years behind drawing a certain tag that you’re after. We offer for a maximum of $500. We’ll handle all of your Western State applications. We’ll incorporate the information you give us. You can be as in interactive with us and picking your units as you want, or you give us a criteria. We can pick your units, match the weapon type species, states, all those types of things that you’re looking for. We do that for a lot of guys. We help them draw a lot of tags. If you find yourself, like I said, too much going on in your life, whether it be business or travel or whatever, you missed deadlines. Consider calling us for your license, application, service needs and be glad to help you out.
Recent Comments