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Gaia

JBDaddy

JBDaddy

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jan 21, 2018
Messages
766
Location
Lenawee, MI
Going scouting this weekend before green-up, and revisited the apps I have on my phone: Huntstand, onX and Gaia. Thought I'd refresh what I knew about them.

I didn't care for Huntstand when I played with it. Today I still think the weather, lunar, huntzone/wind, and parcel info is cool, but it seems "noisy" to me - lots of stuff on screen, I can't figure out how to layer topo on satellite for id'ing places I want to check out before I go in, etc.

It's easy to find onX reviewed on podcasts, blogs, etc. I like it, but it's slow on my older phone (Galaxy S5), and my trial has expired. I hunt near 2 state lines I'd like to cross, so it's state-by-state pricing sucks for me - I'd rather pay based on a list of areas or a radius from "home". Now it's crashing my phone, so I have to rely on youtube, screenshots, etc.

I thought Gaia was cool, but onX looked spiffier, so I left it alone until after my trial expired. Oops. So today I searched for "onx vs gaia" for recent info to compare them without using them and found these:

https://blog.gaiagps.com/gaia-gps-vs-onx-hunt/
https://www.overlandbound.com/forums/threads/gaia-vs-onxmaps-private-land-info.6377/

Cost wise, onX appears to be $29.99/state or $99/elite/national per year.
Gaia is $39.99/national per year - would be a better deal for me.

Once the free trial is over, the free version of Gaia only gives you the Gaia Topo map and very limited features. And then I found this: A 3 month premium membership on Gaia, free.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bowhunting/comments/79p710/free_hunting_app_for_the_season_great_maps/

That 3 month premium code worked for me today, and I'm pretty impressed with the layering I can do - state park areas + private property info + topo, all on top of satellite.

Thought I'd share the info about the 3 month trial in case anyone else wants to give it a good look.

Screenshot_20180322-142055.png
 
I started using Gaia recently, it took me a little while to get used to. A little more complex than OnX, but Gaia has a lot more features. I like the USGS Topo for Gaia a lot more defined than Onx. I’ve only had the app a few dats but Gaia is far superior to me. I’ll never fall for the marketing hype of onX again. And the maps load a lot faster for me also.
 
WVLungbuster said:
I started using Gaia recently, it took me a little while to get used to. A little more complex than OnX, but Gaia has a lot more features. I like the USGS Topo for Gaia a lot more defined than Onx. I’ve only had the app a few dats but Gaia is far superior to me. I’ll never fall for the marketing hype of onX again. And the maps load a lot faster for me also.
Click to expand...

Does Gaia have private and public land plat data? That’s the big advantage of Onx IMO and why I keep using it. Too many small private parcels where I hunt and I need to know property lines. I find the topos not high enough for fidelity for some of the areas I have been to, and the satellite imagery changing on zoom level is perplexing and annoying. Should be able to set sat imagery historically.


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WVLungbuster said:
I started using Gaia recently, it took me a little while to get used to. A little more complex than OnX, but Gaia has a lot more features. I like the USGS Topo for Gaia a lot more defined than Onx. I’ve only had the app a few dats but Gaia is far superior to me. I’ll never fall for the marketing hype of onX again. And the maps load a lot faster for me also.
Click to expand...

Also GAIA tracks me when I don’t have cell signal. Huge game changer for me


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d_rek said:
Does Gaia have private and public land plat data? That’s the big advantage of Onx IMO and why I keep using it. Too many small private parcels where I hunt and I need to know property lines. I find the topos not high enough for fidelity for some of the areas I have been to, and the satellite imagery changing on zoom level is perplexing and annoying. Should be able to set sat imagery historically.


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Click to expand...

Yes it does. Also gives you the owners name. Very useful


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Here’s a trick for you guys that like OnX Hunt but don’t want to pay the $99 yearly national fee or even the $29 state fee for it. Instead of using OnX Hunt download OnX Roam! $9.99 yearly national subscription. It has all the open land, public land and land ownership info, topographic, world imagery etc. You can mark stand locations with waypoints, save maps offline for use when u don’t have service and/or to save your phones battery life. When OnX Hunt came out I had already been using Roam for a couple years and was going to switch over until I saw how they were gouging hunters for the same info available in Roam. $10 for a national membership in Roam compared to the same info for $100 in Hunt.

Admittedly I’ve never even trialed Hunt but I’m sure by using Roam I’m missing a couple features that are helpful to hunters. However, there are two things that I use my map app for 98% of the time, whichever map app that happens to be. Those two things are map scouting, both for open land to hunt and for specific high traffic areas within those properties and Roam does a very good job with this and is very simple to switch between satellite imagery and Topo which makes dialing into a spot easy. Second of course it’s used as an infield gps for waypoints of interest and walking in blind. Both of these two things Roam is very good at and at a 90% discount per year I figure I’m ok missing a few special features for hunters.
 
sureshotscott said:
Where do you find the property owner info? I've looked through the Gaia layer library and all I'm seeing is layers that show public lands.
Click to expand...

Under layers it should say US private land. If it’s not there then click on more layers and you should be able to add it

c635e7f2b246872de4362e22b935d85e.png


5f061acb03fb5138ad30954ef984e196.png



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Dakotablues said:
GAIA feels superior to OnX in almost every way IMO. The map layers are superior.
Click to expand...

Couldn’t agree with you more. I think a lot of people use OnX because that’s the main one that is heard of on the outdoor channel etc. Probably not a bad program if you hunt somewhere that you always have cell signal. I used it for a bit and it was good but not as good as Gaia IMO


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DannyAttacksTheMountain said:
Couldn’t agree with you more. I think a lot of people use OnX because that’s the main one that is heard of on the outdoor channel etc. Probably not a bad program if you hunt somewhere that you always have cell signal. I used it for a bit and it was good but not as good as Gaia IMO


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Click to expand...

OnX works awesome without cell service too. Just download the map in advance; just like GAIA.
 
I've used onx (don't really care for due to performance issues) and huntstand (like that you can get limited property lines for free). I'm not really thrilled with the layers, interface, or interoperability of any of the apps I've seen. I really want something more GIS-like that I can pull in (and get out for use elsewhere) my own data plus leverage built-in stuff. Is Gaia (or anything else) a good fit?
 
Dakotablues said:
OnX works awesome without cell service too. Just download the map in advance; just like GAIA.
Click to expand...

Hmm interesting. I haven’t had to do any actual downloads with Gaia. With OnX I tried to download ahead of time and when I got to where I needed it the map wouldn’t show any details. But hey maybe my experience was different then others


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mattsteg said:
I've used onx (don't really care for due to performance issues) and huntstand (like that you can get limited property lines for free). I'm not really thrilled with the layers, interface, or interoperability of any of the apps I've seen. I really want something more GIS-like that I can pull in (and get out for use elsewhere) my own data plus leverage built-in stuff. Is Gaia (or anything else) a good fit?
Click to expand...

I have used all the ones you mentioned and I’m assuming you mean by “pull in and get out for elsewhere” that you mean you’ll have it for when you get into the field. If so, I can do this headache free with Gaia. Only issue is when in satellite mode the image is a little blurry when zoomed in. I basically just use the topo, hiking map, and property lines in the layering system. If I want details of satellite imagery then I just use google earth from the laptop at home


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DannyAttacksTheMountain said:
Hmm interesting. I haven’t had to do any actual downloads with Gaia. With OnX I tried to download ahead of time and when I got to where I needed it the map wouldn’t show any details. But hey maybe my experience was different then others


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Click to expand...

One issue with onx is that it defaults to try to sign in and use maps over cell signal. This is a real problem if you have a tiny bit of terrible service, it's better to have all or none. One fix it to put it on airplane mode so it just goes straight to the downloaded map. The only problem with this is you can't text or call, which when you're wife is super pregnant, that's not an option :)
 
I mea
DannyAttacksTheMountain said:
I have used all the ones you mentioned and I’m assuming you mean by “pull in and get out for elsewhere” that you mean you’ll have it for when you get into the field. If so, I can do this headache free with Gaia. Only issue is when in satellite mode the image is a little blurry when zoomed in. I basically just use the topo, hiking map, and property lines in the layering system. If I want details of satellite imagery then I just use google earth from the laptop at home


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Click to expand...
I mean that I have sometimes better quality data more tuned to my liking for things like
Contours
Trails and roads
Water
Years of stand locations

I need at a minimum to be able to import/export gpx or other standard formats. Even better would be the ability to display and layer shapefiles and similar, and ideally user supplied images (e.g. Geotiff, geopdf, etc.)

Because monetizing subscriptions to free data is so much more profitable, a lot of these apps are making it difficult or impossible to pull in my data, and don't always offer something similar.
 
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