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HuntStand vx OnX

Onx hands down, it gives me the confidence to hunt areas, especially public I never hunted before. This is the first year I ever hunted out of state and I gained that confidence via Onx Hunt. I highly recommend it. Although I have had minimal to no issues accessing my information online "live" if you will, you save an area/map while you have access under "Off Grid" and then later IF you are having trouble accessing your saved info., just access it from Off grid and you can see everything you saved, your waypoints etc. I always carry a GPS and a compass when hunting large tracks of relatively unknown public but I rarely have needed to use them if at all. It is a great resource. I went with the Elite with the THP discount.
i actually got lost on MD public land this winter. my phone died and my flashlight went out on the hike back and i was only about a half mile from my truck when it died. not sure where i went wrong but i have never got so turned around in my life. regret not having a compass, extra light, or a handheld gps. it was below freezing and the only time ive ever been freaked out in the woods hunting (a couple acid trips in college probably topped it). took me an extra hour to get back to my truck
 
I think anyone who hunts large forests and has gotten turned around or lost learns immediately how important it is to have a backup navigation method - preferably a low tech one like a map & compass. The handheld gps is a great backup, but your batteries can still go dead and the gps itself can die independent of the battery, in which case your spare batteries still don’t help. (That happened to me once - thank goodness I had a map & compass!)


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I think anyone who hunts large forests and has gotten turned around or lost learns immediately how important it is to have a backup navigation method - preferably a low tech one like a map & compass. The handheld gps is a great backup, but your batteries can still go dead and the gps itself can die independent of the battery, in which case your spare batteries still don’t help. (That happened to me once - thank goodness I had a map & compass!)


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I should have added in my previous post, to have a reliable power cell when relying on electronics for navigation in relatively unknown areas. @Nutterbuster reviews one on his YouTube channel recently.
 
How is the coverage of Huntstand in regards to property boundaries? I'm primarily interested in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
 
I just took a look - the coverage of property boundaries and owners is excellent in all of those states.


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I use OnX when in the field. My biggest gripe is that they updated their map for my area, and the new images were taken during the summer, so you can hardly see anything through all the green, at least for e-scouting. I wish they had a feature similar to google earth, allowing you to scroll through different dates
 
A few years ago I was bouncing between huntstand and scoutlook before settling with scoutlook. I had played around with onx a few seasons ago via trial version and didn't really understand what all the hype was about. After scoutlook merged with huntstand, it seemed to get really clunky and didn't update location/position information well while in the woods. I did really like how easy it was to get weather information and the scent zone thing was kinda cool. But the clunkyness drove me away. I ended up purchasing onx this past season and transferring all of my waypoints. Weather updates and wind speed/direction a bit less user friendly to get to but are available and the offline maps improve reliability in the field for position/location updates... still not getting all the hype on onx, it works but isn't as user friendly and seemed to lack the things I enjoyed about scoutlook, so the search continued. I stumbled on Gaia maps and though it isn't geared as much for hunting, and lacks weather/windspeed, I found that it provides all the maps onx does including property information and position/location information was more accurate and quicker to update even online than onx does for a lot cheaper. I ended up using/testing both all season... unfortunately neither fulfill what I really want out of them but both have pros and cons. I find myself using Gaia more frequently knowing its limitations and only opened onx for windspeed/direction or while at home comparing maps between the two apps on the computer.

It all comes down to personal preference as everyone wants something slightly different out of a hunting app. Use the trial versions for a while and see what works best for how you hunt/plan/navigate. Good luck
 
It’s overkill, but I always use a hand held and onx. I love the onx, but I can’t swap out the batteries In My phone so I always use the gps as my primary. Plus it tracks every where I go and I love that feature.


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Both offer a free trial for 7 days definitely use both. Around me, (rhode island) OnX is useless for any sort of E-scouting. Every aerial photo is midsummer its awful and the resolution is poop too. Huntstand i feel like i can damn near see buck beds. I also like the wide variety of map layers with huntstand. My only gripe with huntstand is their topo map goes by meters instead of feet and you lose some perspective. Hope this helps
 
Never even heard of gaia is it an app or just a website? I hear a lot of people use basemaps. Dont have experience with that either
 
Never even heard of gaia is it an app or just a website? I hear a lot of people use basemaps. Dont have experience with that either
Its an app as well as website. Same concept as OnX. Shows imagery, private landowners names and boundaries etc.
 
I have the free version of Huntstand and the paid version of OnX, and much prefer OnX for the mapping and use it the most. That being said, I do like the Current Hunt Area piece of Huntstand, and wish OnX offered something similar so that you're not having to look for waypoints from months ago if you haven't looked at a piece of property in awhile- this would make it much more user-friendly in my eyes.

In regards to sharing waypoints, a group of 4 of us did this for turkey season this year on some public we were all hunting, and I posed the idea to OnX that they add a team-type filter or setting where everyone in your group can access the same waypoints saved when that feature is on, without having to manually send each one, and also make the group locations visible to all members, which would help when meeting up in the woods or keeping an eye on a youth hunter for safety purposes- they seemed to like the idea and said they were working on it, so we'll see how that actually pans out.
 
I really liked Scoutlook but it merged with HuntStand this past fall and I tried my best to accept the change but ended up hating it. OnX is my goto now and all I use. It works great in offline mode if you download the maps of your hunting areas. My only complaint is it sucks battery life extremely quick even when in offline mode. Can’t understand why that is but not a real big deal since I carry a battery pack anyway and can recharge.

I found that switching to airplane mode when using off-line maps saves some battery life.
 
Another vote for GAIA here. I have friends who use OnX and I find that GAIA has all of the same features plus more than OnX. I know OnX is more heavily marketed towards hunters, but I got into GAIA through the off-roading I do and carried it over to my hunting. To me the big difference is you pay for the whole country, not just your state.
 
I use onxmaps and basemaps for me its a perfect combination. I am going to Peggy back of some people's points a little bit. Onxmaps very user friendly downloads maps are the best the public land is best in my opinion i can find alot of conservation public land i dont believe you can do on other apps. Alot of icons selections which really nice. The biggest negative for onxmaps is E scouting i dont like graphics very poor in my opinion and you always get images that are in the summer when all leaves are on the tree. I don't care for the topography maps not very detailed very basic i don't like the contour line's. As far as navigating on onxmaps I use a compass or GPS navigating to help find way points. Use onxmaps by itself is very difficult task in my experience. GPS is way more a accurate and should always have compass for backup i carry 2. Basemap and onxmaps are the exact opposite of each other as far as strengths and weaknesses E scouting on basemap is way better they use google earth maps the topography maps are way better more detailed the images and the 3D maps of hills and mountains are far Superior. I am just talking hunting whitetail deer hunting out west for elk is a different ball game. They have some new apps just for that. Overall if had pick one onxmaps is still king in my opinion.
 
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