Knowledge base

The emergency button sits in the bottom corner of the map, always within reach, and is hold-to-activate so you can't fire it by accident walking through scrub. Hold for about a second and a half and the emergency screen rises. It gives you:

• Your GPS coordinates: shown only if GPS has a fix. If the fields are blank, enable GPS.
• A pre-filled distress SMS to a saved contact, with your coordinates baked into the message; it works when a call won't connect but a text still squeezes through.
• A one-tap 000 dial.
• Drop an emergency waypoint: one tap saves your current position, so the spot is marked even if you have to move, ready to navigate back to or share.

Nothing here calls 000 automatically. WildMap is a coords-and-SMS helper, not a PLB. If you're hunting deep country, carry a real emergency beacon (PLB or InReach).

Retrace to Start lives on the emergency screen. Tap it and WildMap guides you back along the exact path you recorded (not a straight line through a gully) with a live distance and bearing to your start, the same readout as normal navigation. It only works if a recording is running, because that's what lays the trail, so start a recording whenever you head out. Your way home if you get turned around or caught out after dark.

When GPS is on and you're within about 20km of an active bush-fire warning, a red banner drops in at the top of the map automatically. Tap it for the official incident detail and advice level. This is the live emergency feed (data.emergency.vic.gov.au), separate from the historical Fire History layer, which shows old burn scars for hunting context, not active danger.

You start navigation from a saved pin: tap a waypoint to open its detail card and hit Navigate, or choose Navigate from the Waypoints list. The readout then appears up top and shows the bearing to your target (the compass direction, worked out from your GPS as you move; turn until your heading matches it), the distance (straight-line, or snapped-to-tracks), and an ETA at your current pace. It updates every step. Distance ignores terrain, so read the country between you and the pin. Drift more than ~50m sideways of the line and the card flips to "Off course" so you correct early.

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, the Waypoints list 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. WildMap asks you to confirm first so a fat-fingered tap never loses a kill site.

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 → Display & field): 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.

GPX import is how your data moves in from the outside world:

• From another app: Gaia GPS, onX Hunt, CalTopo, Garmin BaseCamp and most GPS apps export standard .gpx files. Import that file into WildMap and your waypoints + tracks land where they belong.
• From a mate: share a hunting block or walk-in route as a .gpx file over AirDrop, WhatsApp, email. Tap Import, pick the file, confirm.
• From a dedicated GPS unit: Garmin, Magellan and similar devices write .gpx files to their internal storage. Copy to your phone and import.
• Formats supported: .gpx (GPS Exchange, most common), .kml / .kmz (Google Earth), .geojson. WildMap reads waypoints, tracks, and planned routes from all three.

Before anything is added, WildMap shows you a summary screen: how many waypoints, tracks and routes are in the file, a map preview of where they land, and a conflict check if a waypoint is a near-duplicate of one you already have. You choose to keep your existing pin, replace it, or skip the duplicate. Nothing changes in your library until you confirm.

On mobile, the Import button is in your Waypoints list header and your Tracks list header. On desktop, Import appears in the Atlas panel bar on the right edge.

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. Victoria is the most complete: Vicmap Property parcels with tenure, lot/plan, area, and owner where the data permits. New South Wales (NSW Land Tenure: Crown vs private) and Tasmania (Land Tenure classes plus a cadastral parcel overlay from theLIST) are live in their own state layer groups. New Zealand cadastral is not yet switched on. Where data is thin you'll see boundaries but limited owner detail.

Hunting zones in WildMap come from the official state regulators; these are the legal binding overlays, not user-curated. The same hunting-zone overlays and tap-to-inspect work across Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania.

Victoria GMA species:

• Sambar Deer: year-round on most public hunting land. Sambar Hound season: 1 April to 30 November, closed during Easter weekend. (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 to 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.

New South Wales:

• NSW Hunting Zones: the Cat 1–4 public-land hunting classes (State forests and Crown land open under the R-Licence booking schedule), colour-coded by category.
• NSW Hunting Exclusions: live Forestry Corporation of NSW closures, refreshed quarterly: red excluded, amber temporary, green huntable. Exclusion zones change every quarter; always confirm against the FCNSW/DPIRD maps before you go.
• NSW Land Tenure: Crown vs private, for reading access at a glance.

Tasmania:

• Game Reserves: each carrying its species, season, and permit requirement.
• Huntable Reserves: the conservation-area and hydro land where duck hunting is permitted by permit.
• Land Tenure and a cadastral overlay round out the Tasmanian group.

New Zealand hunting is covered by the NZ Hunting Blocks layer (DOC Recreational Hunting Areas); see its own section below.

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.

Three fire-history layers cover the states where the data is reliable, one per state (Victoria, New South Wales and Tasmania):

• VIC bushfire history: DEECA-published polygons of every recorded burn since the 1930s, colour-coded by recency.
• NSW fire history: NPWS-sourced burn polygons for New South Wales, colour-coded by burn age on the same scale.
• TAS fire history: Tasmania's equivalent, going back further in some areas.

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.

Two live/seasonal Victoria layers, separate from the historical fire-history:

• Active fire incidents plots the live VIC Emergency feed: current fires and their status. This is what's burning now, for staying out of trouble.
• Road closures shows roads shut by fire, flood, or works. Tap the arrow on the Road Closures row to open the full closures list (grouped into closed now, closing soon, and seasonal) and tap any closure to fly straight to it and see which road is shut and why. Check before you commit to a forest track that might be gated.

Camping grounds: formal campsites and known informal ones across the public land you hunt. Tap a marker for the site detail; zoom out and nearby sites cluster with a count, so it stays readable at any scale.

Coverage is thin in places, especially informal sites. If you know the ground, tap Suggest Edit on a campground's detail sheet to add a missing site or fix the details; it helps every hunter who comes after you.

Note: WildMap shows campsites for navigation context; it does not handle bookings or permit allocation. For Parks Victoria campsite bookings use the Parks Vic site directly.

The Alpine Huts layer (Victoria, public huts only; private shelters aren't included) drops hut markers across the high country: emergency shelter, a planned overnight, or a landmark to navigate by. Tap any hut marker for its detail sheet: capacity, water source, and community photos where we have them. Good intel before you bank on a roof for the night. Standard+ members can add a photo from a hut's detail sheet to help the next hunter: current condition, the water tank, the access track.

The Waterways layer (Victoria) adds coloured name overlays for the state's rivers and creeks. Its value is reading river and creek names at hunting zoom, without zooming all the way in to where the basemap normally starts labelling them, handy for water sources, the drainage lines deer follow, and naming where you are. Victoria-only for now; NSW and TAS are coming.

The Topo/Satellite pill flips the whole map between a topographic style (contours, named features, shaded relief) and satellite imagery. Topo for reading terrain and boundaries; satellite for canopy, clearings, and water you can actually see.

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 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. (10m high-resolution slope is a Premium step up; the standard shading is 30m.)

Aspect shading colours the terrain by the compass direction each slope faces: read at a glance which faces catch morning sun, which stay in shadow, and where a wind hits a face head-on. Available at 10m in Victoria and Tasmania, 30m in New South Wales.

Elevation Band highlights a chosen height range across the map, handy for working the alpine band sambar hold to at a given time of year, or picking a contour to still-hunt along.

Slope, Aspect, and the terrain-shading tools are part of WildMap Standard. 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.

Tap the search bar and type a town, peak, river, or paste a coordinate pair; WildMap flies you straight there. It searches a fast local Victorian index first (offline-friendly) then the wider map. The wider geocoder needs a data connection.

Switch on NZ Hunting Blocks (New Zealand) to overlay DOC Recreational Hunting Areas, the blocks you book or ballot to hunt across NZ public conservation land. Arm the inspector and tap any block to read its status: green Permitted (open), amber Restricted (permit or ballot required), red Prohibited (closed), plus its name and a link to the DOC page. Always confirm on the linked DOC page before you go.

Stubble Quail is open only inside declared permitted areas, and only in season (typically autumn). Inspect a parcel that falls inside one and WildMap flags the quail permission in the inspector readout, so you know the season applies there. Outside those areas there's no quail season at all. Niche, but it keeps you legal.

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 → Map & 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 updates as you pan and zoom; zoom into a specific area for a more representative reading for that ground.

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 Solunar Theory was developed by American outdoorsman John Alden Knight (1890–1966). In 1926, while fishing in Florida, Knight started investigating why some days produced exceptional catches regardless of weather. He compiled a list of 33 factors that could influence fish and game activity; after testing, all but three were eliminated: solar position, lunar position, and moon phase. He spent the next decade refining the model, publishing his first Solunar Tables in 1936. His 1942 book Moon Up, Moon Down told the full story of the theory's development.

The four windows per day. Knight identified four activity windows in each 24-hour period, driven by the geometry of the moon's path:

• Major period 1 (moon overhead): When the moon reaches its upper transit (highest point above the horizon for that location), gravitational pull is at its strongest for that cycle. Knight observed approximately 2-hour windows of elevated activity.
• Major period 2 (moon underfoot): The antipodal transit, when the moon is directly beneath your feet on the other side of the Earth. Equal in effect to the overhead transit per Knight's model.
• Minor period 1 (moonrise): As the moon crosses the horizon, activity picks up for roughly one hour.
• Minor period 2 (moonset): As the moon disappears below the horizon. Similar duration and intensity to moonrise.

These four periods occur once per lunar day (~24h 50min), which is slightly longer than a solar day, so they drift roughly 50 minutes later each calendar day.

Phase strength. Knight's research found that activity was highest at a full moon or new moon, and lowest near quarter moons. The intuition: at new and full moons the sun, Earth, and moon are roughly aligned (syzygy), so their combined gravitational effects are strongest. At quarter phases, the sun and moon pull at roughly 90° to each other, partially cancelling out.

What WildMap uses. WildMap's day rating (the star score) is based entirely on moon phase, specifically how close today is to a new or full moon. It doesn't include weather, wind, or terrain factors in the rating calculation. That's a deliberate choice: it keeps the number honest and easy to understand. The rating uses the distance from the moon's current phase to the nearest extreme (0 = new moon, 0.5 = full moon): less than 5% away earns 5 stars; more than 20% away earns 2 stars. The prime windows shown on the Solunar tab are centred on civil dawn and dusk, solar noon, and moonrise and moonset, and are filtered out when wind speed or pressure conditions aren't favourable for a productive sit. If conditions are rough, the windows disappear entirely rather than showing misleading times. The activity curve across the top of the tab visualises the same data: each anchor event creates a ~90-minute Gaussian bump; overlapping bumps (e.g. dawn coinciding closely with moonrise) produce a higher peak.

The science is contested. Field studies on the Solunar Theory have produced mixed results. Some peer-reviewed analyses find statistically significant correlations with solunar periods. Others find no effect beyond random variation. No mechanism has been confirmed at a biological level; gravitational tidal forces on small organisms are orders of magnitude weaker than the mechanical effects of weather and temperature. Plenty of experienced 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.

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.

Follow mode: tap the follow button (the arrow icon, above the GPS button) to lock the map to your position; it pans with you as you walk. Tap once more for heading-lock mode, which also rotates the map to match your direction of travel. Drag the map any time to peek ahead; WildMap snaps back to centre on you automatically.

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 → Display & field. 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 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.

• Zoom into the area you want; WildMap saves your current map view, so frame it before you start. The cloud/download Save area button appears on the left rail once you're zoomed in far enough.
• Tap it to open the offline-save sheet, then pick a zoom range (quality) and the map style. Zoom 12 covers "see a creek bend"; zoom 14 covers "see individual trees on satellite". Higher zoom = much larger download; the size estimate is shown before you commit.
• Tap download. Tiles fetch in the background; keep the app open until the progress bar finishes.
• Find your saved areas later by long-pressing that Save button (it turns green when you're inside a saved area), or via the Offline Maps row in the Map Layers panel, where you can re-download, rename, or delete them.

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.

Three things for after the walk:

• Look-ahead: while you're following your position, drag the map to peek ahead up the ridge. WildMap holds there for a moment, then snaps back to centre on you so you don't lose your dot. Handy for scouting the next leg without stopping.
• Saved tracks: when you stop a recording it's saved to your Tracks list. Open it to see every walk you've recorded; tap any one to fly the map to it and open its detail.
• Track detail: open a track for its elevation profile (the climb and drop plotted along the route) and a stat grid: distance, moving time, elevation gain, descent, average pace, and top speed. The after-action read on your walk.

Even without saving an area, anywhere you've already looked at stays cached on your phone: the app shell and the map tiles you've panned over load with no signal. "Save area" is the deliberate version: it grabs a whole region at high zoom ahead of time so the detail's there before you lose data. Passive caching covers where you've been; Save area covers where you're going.

Open the ruler from the Tools button (long-press or swipe to fan the tools, then tap Ruler). It 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. Open it from the Tools button, then 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. From the readout you can Mark the target as a waypoint, or Navigate to it for turn-by-turn bearing guidance. Works best on 3D terrain at high zoom. Line of Sight is part of WildMap Standard.

Open the polygon tool from the Tools button, then draw 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.
• With three or more corners down, the Finish button appears; hit it, or tap the first vertex again, 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; a saved area exports to GPX, KML, or GeoJSON straight from its detail sheet, handed to your phone's share sheet. Useful for sharing a permission boundary or a planned drive sector with hunting party members, or dropping the shape into another GIS tool.

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. Long-press the compass button to engage it.

• 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; it changes the expected effective-range marker on the bearing arrow to match what you're carrying. Compass Mode plays nicely with 3D terrain: the map tilts and rotates in one motion as you walk, and the zoom and range ring adapt as you move so the country ahead stays in frame.

Live party mode is the real-time shared map for a hunting party. Invite mates via a link (or QR for in-person setup) or a short party code, 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. There's also a party chat so you can message everyone without leaving the map.

Each mate's entry shows their distance and bearing from you and their battery level, so you can see who's where, and who's running low before they go dark. Each phone shares its position on a set interval: a shorter interval keeps everyone's dots fresh; a longer one saves battery but refreshes less often. You can also mark any of your own pins "share with party" so the whole party sees it.

Live party needs a data connection on every device; your own GPS dot and map keep working offline, but sharing positions has to travel over data to reach the others. Position updates pause when a member loses signal and resume when they're back in coverage; their last-known pin stays on the map, dimmed and tagged with how long since their last update. Party sessions are private: only invited members see positions. End the party from the panel to drop everyone.

Open Trips → Tracks, pick a saved track, and Share it. WildMap writes the track to a GPX file and passes it to your phone's native share sheet; send it over text, email, or AirDrop, and your mate opens it in WildMap or any GPS app that reads GPX. To send several at once, use Select in the Tracks list and export them as one GPX.

• Hand a mate the route to a hunting spot before a trip.
• Back up a season's walks off-device as GPX files.
• Load a recorded route onto a handheld Garmin or into another mapping app.

You can also share a track as an image card: a rendered snapshot of the route and its stats (distance, elevation, time) sized for socials or a group chat, handed to the same share sheet. It's a file (or an image), not a live web link; nothing is published and there's nothing to revoke.

Open any waypoint and tap Share. WildMap writes the pin to a GPX file and hands it to your phone's native share sheet: text it, email it, AirDrop it, or open it in another GPS app. The recipient imports the GPX into WildMap (or anything that reads GPX) and the pin lands with its coordinates, name, icon, and notes intact.

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.

It's a file, not a live web link; nothing is published and there's nothing to revoke. To send several pins at once, use Select in the Waypoints list and export them as a single GPX.

Everything that tunes WildMap lives here, in five sections:

• Profile: your names, contact, licence details.
• Map & units: metric vs imperial, km/h vs mph, projection, thresholds.
• Display & field: night mode, field mode, battery-saver threshold, text size.
• Account: sign-in, subscription, and storage.
• About: version, help, legal, and this Knowledge Base.

Tap any section to drill in; the back arrow returns you here. Most hunters set their units once in Map & units and their battery threshold in Display & field, then rarely touch the rest.

Your current tier shows in Account (Free, Standard, Premium, or Founder) with your renewal date. Tap Manage to change plan, update payment, or restore a purchase. Founder perks are locked in for life.

• Free covers the core map, cadastral, hunting zones, GPS, and waypoints.
• Standard adds slope/aspect shading, community hut photos, NZ detail, and more.
• Premium adds 10m high-res slope and the heaviest layers.

When you tap a feature your tier doesn't include, WildMap shows a lock and a short explainer instead of blocking you cold, so you always know what Standard or Premium would give you, and nothing is hidden.