WildMap Knowledge Base

The emergency button is a hold-to-activate control — single taps won't trigger it, so you can't fat-finger it walking through scrub. Hold for about a second and the action screen comes up.

What it actually does:

• Shows your coordinates — lat/long in the format most useful for radio calls and signed messages to emergency services (decimal degrees).
• Pre-fills a distress SMS — taps your phone's native SMS app with the coords already in the body of the message. You pick the recipient (000, a mate, whoever) and add context.
• Last known signal pin — the spot where your phone last had a working data connection. Useful if you've walked out of signal and need to retrace to make a call.

None of this calls 000 automatically. WildMap is not a PLB. If you're hunting deep country, carry a real emergency beacon (PLB or InReach). The emergency button is a coords-and-SMS helper, not a satellite link.

Search is the fastest way back to ground you already know. Type a few letters, the matches narrow, tap one to fly the map there. It searches across multiple sources:

• Property and station names — cadastral data, where available. Useful when a mate says "meet me at the back of Glenburn."
• Towns and localities — anything from a capital city down to a four-house siding.
• Mountains and peaks — over 1,500 OSM-tagged peaks across Australia. Mount Hotham, Mount Sterling (if it's in OSM — not all are; submit missing peaks if you find one), Bluff Knoll.
• Coordinates — paste in a lat/long pair and WildMap flies you there.

Search is online-only — it needs a data connection to query the geocoder. Once you've flown to a spot, the map view itself works offline if you've saved that area for offline use (see GPS + Recording + Battery → Save Areas).

WildMap ships with 40+ waypoint icons grouped into six themes:

• Marker — generic placement glyphs (pin, flag, star, X) when none of the themed icons quite fit.
• Animals — game-class icons (stag, doe and similar) for tagging spotted-from / observed-here pins. Pair with field sign for a fuller picture.
• Field Sign — wallow, rub, scrape, tracks, scat, carcass, trailcam, salt lick, bedding area, feeding area, shed antler. The catalog that earns its keep.
• Terrain — glassing points, crossings, junctions, marsh, road, waterfall, bridge and more. Mark the ground itself, not what's on it.
• Infrastructure — camp, car, 4×4, trailhead, parking, dam, mine shaft, bore tank. Built features that anchor a hunting plan.
• Special — kill site, hazard, water, spring, blood trail. Kill-site pins pair with the harvest log automatically.

Every pin is fully customisable. Pick the icon, set a colour (eight hunter-tuned shades — green, amber, sage, grey, orange, water-blue, brown, red), give it a name, add free-text notes, attach a photo. Anything you set can be changed later from the waypoint detail sheet.

Long-press the map to drop a pin. The icon picker appears centred on your finger so you can pick without losing the position. Stored on your device in IndexedDB — works offline, syncs to the cloud when you're signed in.

On desktop the equivalent is right-click anywhere on the map.

Open the Waypoints panel (left sidebar on desktop, Trips chooser on mobile) to see every pin you've dropped. From there:

• Search by name to find a specific pin in a long list.
• Filter by category — only show kill sites, only show water sources, etc.
• Edit any pin: name, icon, colour, notes, photo. Changes save immediately.
• Bulk export to GPX — handy for sharing a hunting block to a mate's GPS unit, or backing up before a phone wipe.
• Import GPX — got an old route file from another app? Drop it on the import screen and WildMap absorbs the waypoints + tracks.

Swipe-to-delete works on mobile; right-click on desktop. Deletes are soft — the pin is hidden but recoverable for 30 days if you're signed in (see the privacy policy for the lifecycle detail).

Track recording runs continuously in the background. Hit record from the rail, lock your phone, walk all day — when you stop, the full route is there: distance walked, elevation gained/lost, average and peak speed, total time, time moving vs. stopped.

GPS must be on before you record — without a location fix WildMap has nothing to trace. Tap the GPS button on the left rail (lower-most) to enable. Once it's green you're good to record.

Background recording reality:

• Android: the recording shows a persistent notification while running. You can stop from the notification or from in-app.
• iOS: background location permission ("Always Allow") is required. Without it the track gets gaps when your phone screen is locked for more than a minute or two.
• Don't swipe the app away — that terminates the background service on iOS and can on Android. Use the in-app stop button or the notification's stop action.

Long-day battery tips:

• Battery Saver Mode (Settings → Battery) — below your chosen threshold (default 30%) WildMap slows GPS polling and pauses non-essential animations. Track keeps recording, just sampled less frequently.
• Cut other heavy background apps — music streaming, navigation from other apps, group chats with notifications on. Recording shares the radio.
• External battery — a 10,000 mAh USB-C bank will keep most phones recording for 18+ hours.

Recording stores live to your device — if the app crashes or the phone dies, the track up to that point is recoverable on next launch.

Save the track at the end of the day and it lives in Trips → Tracks. From there you can review, share, export to GPX, or use it as a template for a planned route next season.

Field notes are everything that isn't a kill but is worth remembering. The category list builds up over seasons:

• Sign observations — scrapes, rubs, scat, tracks. Tag to a waypoint for spatial context.
• Animal observations — sightings, group sizes, behaviour. Worth tracking through a season to see when the rut starts on your patch.
• Property notes — fence damage, water levels, gate combinations (in notes only, not the title), road conditions.
• Trip incidents — gear failures, near-misses, lessons.

Each entry can carry photos, a tagged waypoint, and free-text. They show up in the Hunt Diary timeline alongside harvest entries — so you can scroll back through a whole trip in one view.

Field notes work fully offline — record them in the field, they sync when you next have signal.

The harvest log is your kill record — built for the kind of trend-spotting and licence-record-keeping serious hunters need over multiple seasons.

What you record per kill:

• Species and sex.
• Date and time of shot.
• GPS coordinates (auto-filled from your location, editable).
• Weight (live or dressed — your choice; record what your butcher needs).
• Weather and wind at the time of the shot (auto-filled from the live forecast, editable).
• Distance of shot, calibre, ammunition, broadhead — whatever's relevant to you.
• Photos — multiple per entry.
• Notes — anything else you want to remember.

Game-licence record requirements vary by state and species (VIC GMA, NSW DPI, TAS). WildMap's fields cover the common requirements; consult your state's regulations to confirm what's mandatory for your licence type.

The Hunt Diary's Notes tab is where every standalone field note lives. They include the structured kind (sign type, tagged waypoint, photos) and the end-of-day reflection kind (just free text about how the day went).

Useful prompts when you're writing one at the end of the day:

• Overall conditions — temp, wind, weather, moon phase.
• Pressure on the country — heard other shots? Saw vehicles? Foot traffic?
• What animals were where, and when.
• Gear that worked. Gear that didn't.
• What to bring next time.

Over years, the Notes timeline becomes the most useful thing in the diary — pattern data on your specific country.

Cadastral data is the boundary lines between parcels of land — who owns what. WildMap colour-codes parcels by tenure type so you can read the map at a glance:

• Crown Land — green. Public land. Some of it is huntable (state forest, national parks where permitted by season), much of it isn't. Always check the GMA overlay before pulling the trigger.
• Freehold — yellow. Privately owned. Hunting requires the landowner's permission — verbal or written, depending on state law.
• Roads — outlined. Hunting from or across public roads is illegal almost everywhere; check your state's regulations.
• Reserves and parks — varies by state; check the parcel detail and the GMA overlay.

How to use it: Tap any parcel to see the Inspector summary — owner (where data permits), parcel size, tenure type, and the address if mapped. On private land, you'll see the registered owner's name and a parcel ID; on Crown land, the managing agency.

Coverage varies by state. VIC has the most complete cadastral data (sourced from MapShare VIC); NSW (six.nsw.gov.au), TAS (theLIST), and NZ (Linz) are progressively rolling in. Where data is thin, you'll see boundaries but no owner detail.

Hunting zones in WildMap come from the official state regulators — these are the legal binding overlays, not user-curated.

Victoria — GMA species:

• Sambar Deer — year-round on most public hunting land. Sambar Hound season: 1 April – 30 November, closed during Easter weekend. (Note: the Sambar Hound layer composites into the main Sambar raster — there is no separate toggle.)
• Hog Deer — strictly 1–30 April only. Tags issued by ballot; carry your tag.
• Fallow Deer — restricted areas only; see overlay.
• Duck (waterfowl) — limited season, declared annually. Bag limits vary by species.
• Pest species — pigs, foxes, rabbits. Open most of the year on most tenures, but check the overlay — some declared parks exclude even pest hunting.
• Quail — 4 April – 30 June, state-wide (no separate map toggle — it's the whole state).

Tap any zone polygon for species details, season dates, bag limits, and a link to the GMA regulations.

NSW, TAS, and NZ overlays follow each jurisdiction's regulator — sources are noted in the layer's info icon.

The legal disclaimer that needs saying: WildMap is a planning aid, not legal advice. Always confirm against the current state regulations and your specific licence conditions before hunting. Seasons change; regulations change.

Five fire-history layers cover the two states where the data is reliable:

• VIC bushfire history — DEECA-published polygons of every recorded burn since the 1930s, colour-coded by recency.
• VIC planned burns — Forest Fire Management Victoria's controlled burn polygons, separate layer so you can distinguish wildfire scars from planned burns.
• TAS fire history — Tasmania's equivalent, going back further in some areas. (Field format is "YYYY/YYYY" string-typed in TAS data, which the layer handles internally.)
• Active incidents (VIC) — live feed from data.emergency.vic.gov.au. Shows current fires, not historical.
• Road closures — official + WildMap's curated road-closure overlay for known seasonal cuts (note: WildMap's data is hand-coded approximations refreshed twice a year; for legally binding closures check VicTraffic).

Why hunters care about fire history:

• Recent burns (1-3 years) — typically poor hunting. Stock has moved; understory is gone; access can be restricted.
• Mid-recovery (3-8 years) — often excellent. Regrowth pulls deer in for browse; sight lines are still open. Many experienced sambar hunters target this exact window.
• Old burns (8+ years) — back to typical.

Tap any burn polygon for ignition year (where recorded) and burnt area.

Three overlays bundled together because they're typically all about access and logistics:

• Bush huts — most VIC alpine huts mapped (sourced from VICTrack, OSM, and contributed). Tap a hut for name and any contributor notes (water availability, condition).
• Camping grounds — formal campsites and known informal ones. Coverage is thin in places — submit missing ones from the hut detail sheet if you know the ground.
• Waterways — named rivers, creeks, and major dams. Useful for orientation and for picking water sources to map back to.

Note: WildMap shows huts and campsites for navigation context — it does not handle bookings or permit allocation. For Parks Victoria campsite bookings use the Parks Vic site directly; for formal alpine huts, respect any code-of-use signage at the site.

3D terrain tilts the map into perspective, using Mapbox DEM tiles to render true elevation relief. Useful for:

• Reading approach lines — much easier to see a saddle, a ridge spur, or a re-entry valley in 3D than on a flat 2D map.
• Planning glassing positions — see what's visible from a proposed glassing spot before walking there.
• Stalking — pair with the Slope Angle overlay to read steep ground; sambar tend to bed below ridges in specific gradient bands.

Toggle 3D from the Map Layers panel. Pitch the map with two-finger drag on mobile, or right-click + drag on desktop. The compass icon (top-right of the map controls) snaps back to 2D top-down.

Slope Angle overlay shows colour-coded gradient bands across the visible terrain — green for gentle, red for very steep. Especially useful in the high country where reading slope from contour spacing is slow.

3D terrain works offline if you've saved that area for offline use, but the DEM tiles are heavy — budget the bytes if you're working with metered data.

The Weather panel shows current conditions and a 12-hour forecast for the centre of your map view. Data is from OpenWeather. Pan the map and the panel updates (with a small debounce so it doesn't thrash).

Weather tab:

• Temperature, "feels like", humidity — current.
• Wind direction + speed — current, with the direction shown as a compass needle, not just text. Speed in your chosen units (Settings → Units).
• Near [town] — the closest named locality to your map centre, so you know what you're looking at.
• 12-hour forecast — hour-by-hour temperature, wind, and conditions.

The forecast skips below zoom level 9 (continental view) — at that scale a single weather reading isn't representative. Zoom in and the panel populates.

Solunar tab: predicted periods of peak animal movement from moon position + phase. Four daily windows for your map centre — two majors (~2 hours each, moon overhead / underfoot) and two minors (~1 hour each, moonrise / moonset), plus an overall day rating.

The bench science behind solunar predictions is contested. Plenty of hunters swear they see the pattern, plenty are sceptical. WildMap shows the windows; what you make of them is your call.

The wind pill is the always-on wind context — it never goes away while the rail is visible. It updates as you pan the map (desktop, cursor-driven) or as you walk (mobile, GPS-driven).

• Direction needle — a small compass arrow showing where the wind is blowing FROM (meteorological convention: a "northerly" comes from the north).
• Speed — in your chosen units.
• Colour band — the pill shifts colour with wind speed: green calm, yellow moderate, orange strong, red dangerous-for-precision-shooting.

The pill is the entry point to every other wind tool — tap for forecast, long-press for the fan menu (scent cone, wind probe).

The scent cone is one of WildMap's most-used decision tools. It takes the current wind direction and forecast variance, and renders a coloured cone projecting downwind from a point you pick.

• Cone width reflects wind directional variance. Steady wind = narrow cone (predictable scent path). Gusty / shifting wind = wide cone (anything inside the wider angle is "at risk" of scenting you).
• Cone length reflects an approximate carry distance based on wind speed. Higher wind, longer carry.
• Inverted reading — anything INSIDE the cone is downwind of you. Sit at the cone's origin; hunt outside it.

The cone is a prediction, not a guarantee. Thermals in steep country, eddies behind ridges, and katabatic flows at dawn and dusk are not modelled — read the cone, then read the country.

Wind probes are spot readings for specific map points. The wind pill shows wind at your current position; a probe shows it where you tell it to. Useful for:

• Comparing a ridge top to a valley floor — terrain channels wind, and the difference can be 30-90° in direction.
• Reading thermals on south-facing slopes — drop probes at multiple elevations to see the gradient.
• Picking between two glassing positions — which one has scent advantage right now?

Probes are temporary by design — they live for the current session and clear when you reload. If a probe location matters across days, drop a regular waypoint there with wind notes in the notes field.

The Wind Forecast layer renders the wind field across your entire map view — not just one reading per panel, but a grid of arrows across hundreds of points. Each arrow shows direction (where it's coming from) and length scales with speed.

• Wind isn't uniform. In hill country, ridges, valleys, and basins all have different prevailing wind. The grid view shows you the whole pattern at once.
• Time slider — step through the next 12 hours to see how the wind will rotate or strengthen during your hunt. Critical for plans that involve a long walk-in.
• Layer over terrain — combine with 3D terrain to read wind-vs-topography in one view.

The grid skips below zoom 9 (continental view) to avoid pointless arrows at scales where wind detail isn't meaningful. Zoom in to your hunting block to populate the layer.

Unit preferences are per-account, synced across your devices when signed in. The setting controls every wind speed display in the app — wind pill, weather panel, wind probes, wind forecast layer legends.

• 10 km/h ≈ 6 mph ≈ 5 knots ≈ 2.8 m/s — a noticeable breeze.
• 20 km/h ≈ 12 mph ≈ 11 knots ≈ 5.5 m/s — fair wind, branches moving.
• 40 km/h ≈ 25 mph ≈ 22 knots ≈ 11 m/s — strong; mostly unhuntable for precision shooting.

Temperature, distance, and elevation units are also configurable from the same Settings screen.

GPS accuracy depends on three things:

• Sky view — clear sky = best. Heavy canopy or steep gully walls = worse.
• Phone hardware — modern phones with dual-frequency GNSS (most flagships from 2020 onward) reach sub-3m in open ground; older phones sit at 5-15m.
• Satellite constellation — varies by time of day. WildMap uses your device's native location service, which combines GPS (US), GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou where supported.

WildMap displays the current accuracy reading next to your GPS dot — a circle around the dot represents the 68% confidence radius. Smaller circle = better lock.

Cold start — first GPS lock after launching the app from an unknown location can take 30-60 seconds. Subsequent locks are typically under 5 seconds.

Heavy canopy and deep gullies degrade or temporarily drop the lock. Track recording handles short drop-outs gracefully — long drop-outs leave gaps that get straight-line-interpolated.

Battery Saver Mode is WildMap's own — separate from the OS-level battery saver. It kicks in when your battery drops below a threshold you set (default 30%).

• GPS polling slows from ~1 Hz to ~0.1-0.2 Hz (10-second intervals). Tracks still record, just with fewer points.
• Screen dims automatically.
• Non-essential animations pause — smoother but less responsive map.
• Weather / forecast refresh slows from auto to manual-only.

Tune the threshold from Settings → Battery. Some hunters set it high (60%) so savings start earlier on long trips; others leave it at 30% as a "last 90 minutes" safety net.

Battery Saver Mode automatically deactivates when you plug in to charge.

Saved areas are bounding-box regions you've pre-downloaded for offline use. Cached map tiles, terrain DEM, and all currently-loaded overlay layers (cadastral, hunting zones, fire history) get stored on your device.

• From Settings → Saved Areas (or the Trips sidebar on desktop), tap Save area.
• Frame the region with the bounding box. Estimate is shown in MB.
• Pick a zoom range. Zoom 12 covers "see a creek bend"; zoom 14 covers "see individual trees on satellite". Higher zoom = much larger download.
• Tap download. Tiles fetch in the background — keep the app open until the progress bar finishes.

Saved areas store as IndexedDB blobs on your device — they don't live in the cloud. If you wipe the app, you re-download. Plan ahead: do saves on home Wi-Fi, not on a metered plan parked at the trailhead.

The ruler measures distance and bearing along a path you tap out. Tap to add a point, tap again for the next, and the HUD shows running totals: segment distance + bearing, total path distance, and elevation gain/loss if 3D is enabled.

• Finish — closes the ruler without saving. Useful for one-off "how far is that ridge" questions.
• Save as track — persists the path as a synthetic GPS track in Trips → Tracks. Lets you reuse it as a route plan or share it with a mate.
• Undo the last point with the back button on the HUD.

Ruler distances are great-circle (true straight-line over the curvature of the earth). For long paths in mountain country, the actual walking distance can be 2-3x the ruler reading once you account for elevation — use it as a minimum estimate, not a planning truth.

Line of Sight (LoS) answers the hunter question — "can I see that ridge from this knob?" — without walking it first. Pick two points; WildMap samples the elevation along the straight line between them and reports whether the terrain breaks the view.

Use it for:

• Picking glassing positions — confirm a knob actually sees the basin you think it does.
• Stand placement — know if a feed trail is visible from your seat or if a rise blocks it.
• Recovery planning — can you mark a kill from the road, or do you need to skyline first?

The visualisation pitches the map into 3D and runs the line as a coloured cord — green where terrain is below the cord (clear LoS), red where it cuts through (blocked). The colour breaks tell you where the obstacle is.

Works best on 3D terrain at a high zoom — Try It zooms in and tilts the map for you.

Compass Mode rotates the map so that your direction of travel (or device heading, when stationary) is always up. North stays in front of you. The same orientation you'd get from a paper map held to face the country you're looking at.

• Stalking and still-hunting — you're constantly looking up to read the country and back at the map. Compass Mode means the map orientation matches what you see when you look up.
• Following a bearing — pair with Navigate for "walk straight to that pin" navigation.
• Bush navigation — fewer mental rotations needed to translate "what the map says" into "where to step."

Weapon Mode sub-setting toggles between bow and firearm interpretations of bearing — relevant for the bearing arrow's expected effective range marker.

Compass Mode plays nicely with 3D terrain — the map tilts and rotates in one motion as you walk.

Draw polygons to outline a hunting block, a clearing, a sector you've covered, or a no-go zone you want to remember. WildMap computes area in hectares.

• Tap to drop the first vertex.
• Tap each subsequent vertex to extend the polygon.
• Tap the first vertex again, or hit Finish, to close.
• Save persists the polygon (with a name and optional notes) to Trips → Polygons. Clear discards.
• Undo the last vertex from the HUD if you tap-fumble.

Polygons are stored as GeoJSON internally — exportable to GPX or to other GIS tools if needed (Settings → Export). Useful for sharing a permission boundary or a planned drive sector with hunting party members.

Live party mode is the real-time shared map for a hunting party. Invite mates via a link (or QR for in-person setup), accept on their phone, and everyone in the party sees each others' GPS positions on the map, updated in real time.

• Coordinating a drive — see every shooter in position, watch the drive close in, communicate without radio chatter.
• Splitting up — track everyone individually if the party fans out across country.
• Search and recovery — if someone hasn't checked in by a deadline, you see exactly where their phone last reported.
• Pin chats — drop a pin on the shared map with a text message attached; the rest of the party sees both the pin and the chat in real time.

Live party needs a data connection on every device. Position updates pause when a party member loses signal and resume when they're back in coverage; their last-known pin stays on the map with a stale-data indicator.

Party sessions are private — only the invited members can see positions. End the party from the panel to drop everyone.

Track sharing creates a public read-only link to a single track. Recipients open the link in any browser — no WildMap account required — and see the track rendered on a map viewer with stats (distance, elevation, duration).

• Useful for showing a mate the route to a hunting spot before a trip.
• Useful for posting a "where I went" log to a hunting forum.
• Useful for sharing a planned route as a download — the viewer page offers a GPX export.

Sharing is opt-in per track — you actively pick the track and generate the link. Links can be revoked any time from your Trips library; once revoked, the link 404s.

Same model as track sharing, but for a single waypoint. The recipient sees coordinates, name, icon, and any notes you've added — rendered on a small map viewer. Tap "Open in WildMap" on a phone with WildMap installed and the pin opens directly in the app.

Useful for:

• "Meet me here" — pre-arranged meet-ups at unsigned bush tracks.
• "This is where the gate is" — sending an access point to a new permission.
• "This is the kill site" — coordinating retrieval with a vehicle driver.

Waypoint links can be revoked from the waypoint detail sheet at any time.

Collaborative trips are persistent shared workspaces — the long-form, planned-trip equivalent of live party mode.

• Pin chats — every party member can drop pins with chat threads attached. Threads stay alive across days, so planning conversations stay anchored to the country they're about.
• Shared waypoints — drop a pin once, everyone sees it. Edit it, everyone gets the update.
• Shared tracks — both planned routes and recorded tracks. Useful for "here's where I drove yesterday" trip logs.
• Member roles — owner, editor, viewer. Viewers see but don't edit.

Collab trips persist between hunting weekends — perfect for a syndicate or a regular hunting party that returns to the same country across a season.

The in-app KB stays scannable — bodies are short, screenshots removed entirely to keep the bundle lean and the app responsive on older phones. The web edition is the deep-dive: paragraphs, lists, optional screenshots, and reference-grade detail for the technical sections (cadastral, hunting zones, fire history).

Same content tree, two render targets. You're reading the web edition right now — the in-app version of this chapter is shorter and tighter.

The walkthrough system uses the same spotlight + scripted-state mechanism as the first-launch tutorial (Phase 174). Where the tutorial sequences five steps, KB walk-throughs are one-shot: tap, see, return.

• Spotlight walk-throughs — close the KB, highlight the relevant button or panel in the rail, leave you to explore. Used for layer toggles, sidebar tabs, and feature buttons.
• Scripted-state walk-throughs — close the KB, inject mock state (a wind probe, a scent cone, a compass heading), let you see the tool fully wired-up without affecting any real GPS or waypoint data. Auto-clears after a few seconds.