Attention BC Hunters that own smartphones. Very cool App!

egmonster

egmonster

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A buddy of mine has made a program called Hunt Buddy BC. It is a pretty cool resource for BC hunters.

Off of the website:

"Hunt Buddy BC is an iOS and Android smartphone app that helps interpret the Hunting Regulations Synopsis for British Columbia, Canada. Pick a spot on the map or use your GPS location to see open seasons, maps, motor vehicle and other restrictions for the Management Unit you’re in. Pick any date to see the seasons & restrictions that will be in effect when and where you’re planning to hunt. You don’t have to wade through the tables and maps – it’s all there, and it’s organized so you can find what you need quickly and easily."


I use it myself and I really like it. Actually it really helped me out recently when someone called the cops on us for "heavy continuous gunfire" up in a logging slash that I KNEW was ok to shoot in. Good backstop. Safe as can be. But a rec site operator down the hill from us doesn't like noise. So the cops showed up and I greeted him and showed him the copy of the regs that the app has built into it. It quickly and clearly showed we were well out of the no shooting zones. He was happy with everything and left us to our shooting. I could have found the regs without the app, but it made is so much easier. If we were outside of cell service it still would have been fine as all the regs are stored offline.

If you guys think this is a good idea then think about buying his app. I know he works pretty hard to keep it all updated, polished, and adding things to it to make it even better. Doesn't make much off of it for all the work it involves.

I hope its not against forum rules to give him a mention but this is definitely one program that is a huge asset to hunters. Its in the Apple App store and Google store as well.

Cheers
 
So after playing around with this thing it's actually pretty cool.

First off, I always download the reggie pdf to my phone and tablet but the pages render so slow it's a pain.

The app has the same pdf in it but it renders so fast on my old Samsung phone you can endlessly flip from page to page without a stutter.

The main page that opens when you launch the app uses your gps location to give you open seasons in that area and if, for instance, you click on mule deer it gives you the open dates, mu's and bag limits.

There's also a map page with mu's overlaid. Regular plain maps or satellite etc. are selectable. I haven't figured out if you can pre-cache maps yet or not.

If you're like me and like to keep all of your crap on your phone I'd recommend it.

BTW, I'm not a shill! I just tried it and like it.


Edit: You can pre-cache maps. I selected satellite maps and zoomed up on my hunting area. Turned off wifi and exited the app. Restarted the app and the maps were still there. Just like most other mapping programs it will only cache the amount of detail you zoom up to.

One thing I'd like added is the ability to select a whole area to cache in full detail like you can do with Google maps. That would be easier than zooming in and panning an area you'd like cached. Other than that, 2 thumbs up!
 
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Thanks guys. I will pass on the feedback to him 07blackwater. He is a fellow hunter and made this app because he thought it would be a cool thing to do with a smart phone. He said is always looking for ways to make it better.
 
Hey 07blackwater, i sent those comments to him. Here is what I got back from him.

"Wow, that's a pretty good review. Cool. Thanks!

Yeah the reason rendering is fast on Android is that it's not rendered at all... as he pointed out, PDF rendering is brutally slow on Android. I had to give up on it. Plus the fact that there are no free libraries - licensing fees would have been as much as my entire sales of the Android version so far. So I just use pre-rendered JPEGs. Tradeoff is bigger app size and not as sharp when zoomed in.

I wish I could cache satellite maps on either platform. But both Google and Apple expressly forbid it. I could cache Open Street Map tiles, or topo maps (may yet do the topo map thing; haven't decided) but not the good stuff. There are some apps that do it (GPS Kit on iOS comes to mind) but I don't know how they get away with it. It's specifically prohibited in the Google Maps API terms & conditions. Google could shut off that app at any time, but they haven't for some reason.

Would love to have a feature that caches maps for the selected MU. One button, boom, done. No messing around selecting rectangles off the map, minimum/maximum zoom scale etc. But it's not allowed. :-("

Explains a few things. Cheers!
 
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