Hunting with OnX

The crew here at HoundsmanXP are avid users of OnX. I personally use it almost daily between hunting and work. You will hear some of those stories in this episode. Heath talks with Ben Brettingen, regional manager for Onx. Ben is a dog advocate, chasing birds all over the midwest. The two touch on: 

• All the ways Heath uses it 
• How to add layers
• New range finder
• 3D map
• Tree overlay
• New features coming

This is one of the best hunting apps on the market. There are so many applications for OnX you have to listen in. If you want the most out of your journey get OnX and know where you stand. 

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[00:00:00]

Welcome to the journey. Where we are going to talk about a lifestyle with dogs and throw in a few life lessons along the way. Whether you're a hound hunter, a bird dog enthusiast running setters, pointers, retrievers, or a flat out running dog junkie, this podcast is for you. I am your host, Heath Hyatt. A certified law enforcement canine trainer with over three decades of personal and professional training and handling experience.

It's time for me to pay it forward. So grab your leads, lace up those boots, and come and join me on this lifelong process of teaching, training, and learning. called The Journey.

Do you like to be outdoors like I do? Hunting, fishing, hiking? If so, Onyx is the app for you. I've been a loyal Onyx [00:01:00] user since 2013. It's the one app I can honestly say I use daily. While hunting, I know where I'm at. at all times. I mark trails, feeding, bedding areas, and the list goes on. When I'm traveling, I use it to pre scout all the new places that I'm blessed to hunt.

While out west hiking Yellowstone, I knew exactly where every trail went and the difficulty of each one. And here's a secret. I even use it to mark my favorite fishing spots. It's been a game changer at work. I've used it numerous times to get in touch with property owners. I even landed MedFlight one time in the middle of nowhere using the GPS coordinates.

On X has so many great features and tools. You can literally use it for everything. It is by far the best mapping app on the market. And Hey, it's Houndsman XP approved. So get started with on X [00:02:00] today using H XP 20 and know where you stand.

mAn, we'll just get right into it. So I, like I said, I know you're busy and I know I have been bugging you today.

Oh, we're good. I got, I apologize. It's just like I say. Oh. So thank you for being patient with me. . No, I,

no, like I said, I think this is this is good. Like I said, I'm . The last time you and I talked, we talked about OnX and it just reiterates that I am, I use it daily, daily in my personal life, professional life. It don't matter. I've got that app open at all times. Yeah. So we'll just get started. So you guys know that Housman XP is a big proponent of on X. I Have been using Onyx since 2013 Onyx come out in 2009, and it was actually the first card [00:03:00] that I put into my handheld, my Alpha 100 back in 13 or 14.

That was the map that I put in so I could see an overview on my Garmin. So yeah, I've been using it a long time. So today we have got. One of Onyx's ONLY on here with us. Ben Bredingen. I think I said that right? Close enough. Breading Jen. Breading Jen.

Yeah, it's a tough one. It's a mouthful.

So Ben, just give us a little rundown about who you are, what you do, and we'll get into this thing.

Yeah.

Like you said I work for Onyx and my role within the company is I focus primarily on everything that pertains to birds and dogs. So two things that I really like. So whether. Upland, Waterfall, and then Sporting Dogs across the board is my role, a lot of marketing, working with podcasts such as [00:04:00] yours Conservation Organizations, Delta, Ducks Unlimited, Pheasants Forever, as well as just representing our customers within the app, so making sure that they have the tools that they need to be successful in their pursuit of, This XYZ species.

That's my role in a nutshell, which I can't say I absolutely love it. So it's a great job I get to get out at this time of year and hunt a fair amount. No complaints coming from me.

I'd say not. Like I said I'm always looking for a retirement gig. Me too. Four years and 10 months and I'm busting this popsicle stand wide open.

See, I bet we could switch jobs and you'd be way better at mine than I'd be at yours. I

don't know. I don't know. So Ben, I know you're an avid bird hunter. Like I said, I can see the stuff in the background, the guns, the tail fans. Just tell us a little bit of your [00:05:00] I guess that would be a passion for you and I know you and I have talked a little bit about dogs before.

So tell us about your hunting background and then let's get into the dogs what kind of dogs you have, how you got in your love of dogs and run down that route.

Sure. Yeah. My, my, I guess my story is pretty, pretty typical for at least it's, it was more typical than it is now in terms of how I got into hunting.

My grandpa, dad, kind of everyone hunted, it was just a culture that I was brought up in. I didn't know any differently. It was just something you did. But I had a, a. tendency to overdo it. I love to hunt. Like I had a younger brother and he took to it. But for me at a young age, it was like, this is what I'm going to do.

Naturally I just I just followed that throughout my whole career. It's something I've always loved to do. And, um, we got our first dog when I was six years. iT was one of my, I think actually my dad's first bird dog as [00:06:00] well. It was a German short hair pointer and he was a, just a hell of a bird dog.

He was a terrible canine citizen, but an awesome bird dog. He was just a typical short hair, just a menace to society. Ripping off siding, just so much energy, bad shit, crazy. Yeah. But man, for in terms of a bird dog, he was great. So as a six year old kid, I jump on my bike. I had a. I had a old gunstock my dad took off.

I don't know where he got it from, but like some Sylvia Arras KS or something like that and had the wooden stock. And then I did tape conduit barrels to make a shotgun and a makeshift shotgun and go take the dog on my bike. And at the time we had ample pheasant cover within a bike ride from my house.

So I'd go out and we'd go find birds and. That's how it started. And as it's progressed, now I have, personally, I have five [00:07:00] dogs right now. beTween, I've got some versatile dogs. I've got two Deutsch Drahthaars which I've ran through the whole JGHV testing system. And now I've moved on to I still have the Drahts, but I have an English Pointer, a Setter, and then also a Catahoula.

As well. And she's now that Catahoula, she's 14 years old. She's old, but pretty much all bird dogs at this point.

So did, what did you use the Catahoula for?

So she was nothing really. Yeah. Okay. She did a little bit of hunting, but she was my wife's dog.

It's funny because one of the first dogs that I actually.

I had went to plot days down in York, South Carolina, and this guy had a litter of pups. And of course I was green, had been in it maybe a year and a half, two years, maybe, and I ended up buying a half plot, half Catahoula. And of course mine took more after the Catahoula part. He was [00:08:00] really gamey.

If he could get his mouth on something, he was going to do that. But as far as the other part of it mediocre at best. Yeah, so I've had a Catahoula mix and some of the stuff that I hunt.

Oh man, that's something that I know if I would get into, it would just be like, I've got a very addictive personality where it's and I don't, it's not like one foot in type deal.

It's if I'm going to do it, like nobody needs five bird dogs necessarily, but here I am. What would that, now I'd have if I got into that side, I'd have 15 kunowns.

I'm knocking on 14, and... I keep telling myself, I don't like to have that many dogs. I've got 14 and I've got four puppies.

So I've got 18 total, if you count the puppies and I literally need to downsize. And every day that I look at my dog, pens, I'm like, but man, like that young dog is doing so good. And that young dog is doing [00:09:00] so good. And so if I sell two of my dogs and something will happen to another one, and then I'm going to need them dogs back and.

I just keep running in a circle. I'm like, Oh, I don't,

put my fingers in my ears. Cause it's Oh, this is a great opportunity to get. Yeah.

So when you were, so when y'all hunted before the dot, what got you what led you to the GSP and down the bird dog route, was it because of the cover and stuff that you had, the opportunities or?

Yeah, so we, we had done a lot of growing up, did a lot of pheasant hunting. There's ample opportunity to hunt pheasants all around where I am, which is in Minnesota. I'm just outside of the twin cities, on the suburbs, rural boundary, a lot of pheasant opportunity for pheasants and a short hair is just a great all around pheasant dog.

They're got a great nose as well as they're the tendency to work a little bit tighter than say a pointer or a setter is there. So they just make for absolutely fantastic. [00:10:00] Pheasant dogs, grouse dogs so that's and that's just, it's probably the, I think it is, I don't know, I think it is one of the most popular, it is one of the most popular bird dogs.

It might even be, I can't remember, it's right up there with the lab now, for sure if you're talking pointing dogs, it's the most popular. But then when I got in, when I went to Drodhar's in lieu of Setter, or in lieu of Shorthairs the draw out hires are just they keep a little bit of that original line in terms of being able to be serviceable on fur and that kind of thing, which is a whole different game, but they're what I consider a more truly versatile dog, whether it's for feathers blood tracking.

All of that. That's why I got into it when I lived in Mississippi at the time, I did a lot of waterfalling, a lot of deer hunting as well as would come up and hunt. Birds in the Midwest. It just fit the bill. It's not, that dog is not great at any one thing, but it's [00:11:00] good at just about everything.

Yeah. I run a canine training group. We've got, I've got 16 dogs that I oversee and in the last the last five years for sure. So I've got some four year old dogs, but seven of the dogs in my 16. Our pointers I'm running, we're running really. Yeah. In the police world, we went to the kind or gentler, appearance and a lot of the agencies, they're trying to stay away from the pointy ear dogs because of appearance.

But, every time they, a new dog company, they want me to go help them find a dog. I'm like, you're really limiting yourself when you're saying I only want a floppy ear dog, which is a lab or a pointer. So it's tough and it is what it is. And I'm seeing too, that I've interviewed Jason Carter who does NAVDA.

Jeremy Moore, I think, Jeremy Tyler Smith, and went over to the lab world and I've interviewed Jen Romquist, he works for [00:12:00] Drake.

Drake now.

Yeah. So I've interviewed a lot of the. The bird retriever and the pointing dog guys. And I've learned a lot to help me train my guys better.

But one of the things where we've made a mistake and moving forward, we will not do this is I do not like the pointers that we have in our group that are out of the competition bloodline. Hard head up.

Yeah. That's what they're bred to do, right? They're bred to be. Yeah. They're not attracted.

They don't have a tracking. They shouldn't have a tracking bone in their body. It should be a true scent dog head up. That's how we want them to

run. And they do. And when we go into tracking and because we use them for detection work and tracking new handlers, they struggle so much trying to read their behavior because they're constantly in the air.

And they'll chase odor to the fringe. And when they hit that fringe, then they'll work theirself back into odor. And then they'll chase herself back out of odor to the fringes. And for [00:13:00] new handlers, that's really hard for them to understand because they don't know the bloodline. They've never hunted behind that dog or seen it in action.

So yeah, it's it's tough and we've got a couple of pointers that. Jason explained it to me. I've got two bigger pointers. They're the 60, 70 pounds. One of them's a wire haired. The other one's just a normal, but so when you're

saying pointers, you're saying pointers as a group, not like the breed pointer, like an English pointer.

Correct? No,

They're GSPs. Okay. GSP is gotcha. But the two that are tracking machines. Operate completely different like they're nowhere near what the other dogs and the other dogs are a little bit smaller more hyper Jacked up like what you're saying Compared to the other two and I really like as far as detection goes.

There's no difference The two bigger dogs work a little slower and methodical. The smaller dogs are like rats on acid, man. They're gone. They're [00:14:00] searching the car they, but as far as detection work, there's no big difference, but in a tracking world, it's a huge difference. So what you're saying is completely a

hundred percent.

Yeah. Even cause I, I did a lot with like I mentioned with the JGHV testing system. I don't know if you're familiar at all with, but yeah, like when you look at the last test of the, of that system is, it's called the VGP, which is like 30 some subjects in rapid succession. So they could go from, doing a they call it search behind the live doc where they're swimming.

They're tracking this doc. They have to be, you pretty much want to give them all. like a bump of cocaine or something before they start just so they're amped up and then they could go into an 800 or a 400 meter blood track, which is That is a totally, you want that dog, probably similar to what you're doing, Heath, is you want them focused, you want a nice, calm, sound mind and focusing on that track yeah a lot of those versatile dogs they have that [00:15:00] off, on off switch where I can't even get my English pointer, my pointer to Like dude, we're trying to find a dead bird over here and he's just nope, we gotta go find more birds.

I don't care about this, we gotta go find more birds. It's one track mind, yeah, I can see how that, that could pose problems for what you're trying to

do. But you're talking about the the drots on the, yeah yep. Chad Reynolds is another one of our team members and that's what Chad runs.

He's got some drots and that's, he does the same testing you're doing. Yep. Sure. So good. Dogs are, they're a part of our life. Like I said I taught a class Last week and I get a lot of questions and it's a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle for me and I can tell, but just talking to you, it's the same thing with you.

I don't know what I'd do without a dog I'd probably go

crazy. You'd, so I always tell people that I honestly might not truly, but I'd probably be retired and have a lot more money, but I don't know what else I'd do with myself. Like you just [00:16:00] get so. it's just your life.

Like it's not a, it's not a rifle or a bow or a shotgun where you can set it up on the shelf at the end of the day and be like no, I'm fishing full time. It's no, it's it takes your life, especially, and granted, I don't have that many, but with five or 15 dogs, like there's always something you need to be working on.

A dog sitting idle is regressing. You're not, Advancing. So yeah, it is a hundred percent a

lifestyle. And I tell, I just catch up on that and then we'll move into the next stuff. Cause we can talk dogs all day, but I tell my, the new, the agencies that come to me for to put on schools for their dogs, I put on detection, tracking or apprehension, explosives, whatever they need, and then they're like so we do maintenance training.

So it's like we do 16 hours a month. So every other Monday. We, we train as a group and a lot of the agencies that are short staffed and stuff's what does he really need to [00:17:00] train that much? And I'm like, would, would you allow your kids to play football, basketball, baseball, volleyball, if they didn't practice?

That's the same thing. If you just get the dog certified up and running and then you put him in a kennel or you put him in a car and drive him around for a month or two, that dog's not where he needs to be. So I try to explain that in the exact same terms you're saying that, an idle dog is stale and they're not at the top of their game.

And it's the same thing with hunting. You talk, so I've got a litter of pups right now that are 12 and a half weeks old and. Every morning when they come out of their pen, they have to track to their food. I'm teaching them how to trail. So I want them to use their nose to follow scent.

That's it. I'm not trying to accomplish beat the world down, but this morning, uh, I laid a track at 10 o'clock yesterday, last night before I went to bed. And this morning I brought them out. It was seven. It was a little over eight hours and those 12 and a half week old pups [00:18:00] they found their food, they were able to use their nose and I posted it on my story this morning.

I didn't tell people how the track was, I'm constantly giving them some little exercise or something to do to work their brains.

And that's the biggest thing. Yeah. A hundred percent is. Like physical, there's, yeah, you got to work that out, but it's those little things that make a big difference.

Like I, most people can't go and whether it's hunt or. Every single day, right? That's just not feasible, but I've been getting into a lot recently of it's a, it's a whole training method, but really more so it's everything that you do in the yard is going to manifest itself into the field, right?

So like for us, a big thing is handling, right? As a bird dog guy. So it's. It handling and standing still really. So like we've built these, like it's a pretty much an agility course and you're running through these dogs on a lead. And [00:19:00] everything a dog does wrong in the yard is going to manifest itself in the field.

So whether it's, you're going through weave poles and these slight, uh, you're giving slight essentially point of contact with a, like a command lead or a wonder lead. And you're trying to get that very light touch and they're supposed to go through weave pulls or going up on top of obstacles, crossing planks and whether it's they lack confidence or they're unsure, all that stuff in.

The yard is going to manifest itself in the field, whether that's the dog isn't handling. If he's not going to handle on the course, he's not going to handle when you let them go 200 yards away. I put a lot of stock into that. Yeah, I don't have time. I've got a young child and a family and a job.

So it's I can't be out training all the time, but just to even get them out in that little mental stimulation every single day, like you were saying, it cannot be. overstated.

Yeah, I've said it [00:20:00] before five minutes a day works wonders. And five minutes is during a feeding time. Like I can use that feeding time to teach the dog patients like what you're doing.

I've got these pups like when I've. When I don't do a track or I'm not trying to teach them to load or lead or whatever they have to be patient. They have to sit quietly and make eye contact with me, which is my canine stuff coming out. And once I see that they're paying attention to me, then I lower the food down.

When the food sets, they maintain eye contact and then I'm like, yes, and then you can go eat. So yeah, five minutes, five minutes a day. It's all it takes.

The best quote I've heard. I can't remember if it was a Rick Smith quote or whatnot, but the dog, a dog is always learning something regardless if you're teaching it or

not.

That's right. That's exactly right. He is going to self satisfy his self. That's right. Yeah. All right, Ben, let's get into some own acts. Sure. I, on my advertisement, I say it, I literally have this app open daily and I've used it so [00:21:00] much that it's I forget about it.

I don't mean forget it. Like I'm, I've got it open so much that I don't even realize I'm doing it that much. I know you guys have kicked out some new stuff. Want to touch on that? We want to talk, touch on the overlay of the food sources. And I'm going to tell you guys a couple of stories from my work that I've actually used on eggs and, I can tell you a lot of hunting stories where I've used it.

buT man, I've got some pretty cool stuff that I've done at work with it. I know you guys just rolled out the Linking it to your camp, the trail

cams. Yeah. Yeah, if there's somebody out there that is listening, that doesn't know what Onyx is I'm, you should probably lift up the rock that you might be living under, but man, it is just such a powerful tool.

So what it is we'll just, I always like to make sure, cause we take it for granted cause we use it all the time and it's like you said, it's ingrained into your daily routine, but if you don't know what it is, it's a, it's an. application on your phone. GPS based [00:22:00] mapping app. So essentially it would be like a google maps, but with a lot more Features dedicated towards hunters.

That you at the crux of it is private land and public land overlays. You can see who owns dang near everything. If you're a public land hunter, you can see you're on public land or that you were on private land and like you were getting into Heath, there is a slew of other layers and tools that you can use to help you be more successful, whether you're out hunting or a lot of other things like I'm sure Heath that you use To make your job every day easier.

So while we're talking about land overlays and I know that you and I had talked about this before, but just for our listeners, it is very common when I'm using this app in certain locations, different counties, that when I click on, a parcel and it gives me so and so owned this land, and I know that land was sold because that's my home area, and it still shows the original owner what is, and I, [00:23:00] Explain to the listeners why the updates sometimes take longer than normal.

Yeah, a hundred percent. We are on what, what's called continuous delivery for a lot of the counties. What I tell people is the information we get is only as good as the county provides. A lot of the times one county, they might update every other week and some counties might not update their information online for years.

So there's a huge discrepancy in land ownership data for a lot of these places where there's some counties in, rural parts of the country that it's just not a priority for them, right? That's where you'll see a lot of this outdated, but a lot of the stuff most of the country is updated about twice a year.

There's places like in Montana that are monthly. It just really depends where you're at.

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Yeah. And that's, like I said, I've run into that. And then when I asked you the last time, it was like, Oh yeah. So the light bulb went off. This county here is probably not doing it once a year, if that, so that makes complete sense. And that kind of gives the listeners an understanding when you click on that land and you can't get ahold of that [00:25:00] landowner for whatever reason.

That may be the issue that it's not been updated because the county hasn't taken the time to, to do that.

YEp, exactly.

Yeah, explain to us what ONIX is and it's funny, I was teaching a class up in northern Virginia, I teach a tactical tracking class, and I was teaching, I had a class up in Northern Virginia last week, and we went into this big farm that we were allowed to go in and do the tracks on, so I break out my phone, and I'm like, okay, we'll go here and go there, and the guy that literally, his family owned that farm, he goes, how do you know where this stuff's at, and I'm like I use OnX, and he's what do you mean, and I'm like, We use onyx for everything like I can tell you everything and then as the we were in there two different two days and I was even we I want to talk about the feature with the rangefinder because again, we talked about that before a lot of people didn't know that [00:26:00] and we had The canine team had tracked up into this drawl and there was a pond that set up in the end of this drawl.

So I clicked at my rangefinder and okay, 380 yards to push past this pond. And they're all looking at me like, how do you know this? And I'm like, on X. So I guarantee you that when I left there last week, you had some new subscribers because they were amazed how much we used it. thEy were amazed that I could, I knew, and I'm like, guys, we use it for everything.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that. So we've always had what is called compass mode. Yep. We're essentially in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. There is a crosshairs. If you tap on that once, it'll take you to your current location. Then if you tap on it again, you will get this blue angle out in front of you.

So as you hold your phone in front of your face, playing [00:27:00] a parallel to the ground, whatever way you're facing with the phone, the map is orienting itself. Like I would call it in a course up orientation. So if you're like saying, Hey, I got to get back to the truck. Okay. The truck is this way. And so I use it all the time when I'm in the gross woods or in the forest, especially, and I've been either following a dog. It's okay, I got, where is the truck from here? And I can easily go and point that and figure out where something is. And then the cool thing, like you were talking about Heath is we recently added out of the range finder feature, which essentially sends a line out from your location along that same blue radius.

that will give you hash marks, right? Now you can see, like you said, okay, how far is this objective from me? And as you zoom out, the range changes. So it's man, if you got a long way, it's okay, this is three miles from here, or Man, this this tree line here [00:28:00] is 200 yards from my location. So many different uses and it's fun to talk to, people like you who are using it for work, something way different application than I would use it for as a bird hunter and just see how people adapt those tools to fit their needs and how well they.

Yeah. I, like I said, I use it at work a lot. One of the main things I use it for is for property owners. And I explained to you, like we have certain tools that we can find who people find out who people are pretty quick. But I've got to know who I'm looking for and then I can TLO them or whatever and find out.

What would he before, like before you've incorporated onyx in your workflow, like you get a call at some random spot or you see something like, how did you do it before? Did you have to call in and say, here's the address and they could pull it like the dispatcher can pull it up? Or how did that work?[00:29:00]

Yeah, a lot of it was, try. Yeah. Sometimes we just didn't find out what we needed to know. Yeah, the property owner, we would put in the address would come back and it just took a longer process. OnX has really shortcut that for me and that's why I use it so much.

I Had a I had a call a while back where work an employer had come to check on his employee and couldn't make contact with her. So I showed up, we started beating on the windows and stuff. We can hear her inside mumbling. She could contact us. So I really didn't want to kick the door in property owners do not like that.

So anyway, I literally go back to my car, hit my phone on X. Okay. This is who it belongs to a heart dispatch and say, can you TLO this person? They TLO them, which means they can look them up. Got a phone number, call them. And dispatch ha says, Hey, that's the property [00:30:00] owner.

He leases it to a rental company. You need to contact, for the key, this process took less than seven, eight minutes. And the property the rental company brought a key out. We made entry. Did not tear up his property, which he was happy about. The rental company's happy about it too, 'cause they don't have to pay their maintenance guys to come in and fix it, right?

And everything worked out, but the whole process took less than 15 minutes. Wow. Yeah. Another my kind of something. And I explained this to the guys last week because they have some resources and assets that we don't have down here. So Southern Virginia they've got helicopters like at the click of a finger, man, boom, here they go.

We had Homeland security and border patrol come up with their helicopter and done some track. They done some tracking with us and helped us with What they needed from us and vice versa, but long story short Back May of three years four years ago. We had a call [00:31:00] out Sus subject had abducted his own child.

He had there was a straining order, which means he can't see the kid He had went and taken the kid dropped it off at his parents house, and then he took off They got in a pursuit. He bails out and takes off in into this farmland and long story short we we track him like a mile and a half and we ended up finding him in a edge of a timber cut and he had self inflicted stab wounds.

Okay. So we're a mile and a half from where anywhere we're close to anything. So anyway, we, we start rendering while the team is rendering first aid to him. I pull up on X, I get on there, I get my GPS coordinates. I holler back at the command post and said, Hey when med flight comes, this is where we're at.

Mad flight literally landed the bird within a hundred yards or where we were standing. And that was all done through, through the, through on X.

[00:32:00] Wow. So yeah, that's yeah, just stuff that I would never think about.

Yeah. We use it in the hunting. Like I said I do use it in hunting a lot.

I've marked paths and trails and I've mapped out how far I've walked. I use it all the time, but yeah, I'm using it for a lot more applications than just hunting.

Yeah. Yeah. It just, again, just love to hear all those different use cases just because it's so outside of my normal realm of how I use

it.

Yep. And when we talked to the guys running the helicopter last week we, it's such a different view, they're a thousand foot up in the air and they can see miles and we're. Down on the ground and can't see a hundred foot in front of us. And, we talked about the GPS coordinates and how we could get it to them.

And they were yeah, why have we not been doing this? And I'm like, I don't know, I don't know, but here you go. So like I said after last week, y'all should have had some, several more subscriptions. Cause all the guys up there were [00:33:00] like, yeah, we've got to get that. We've got to get that.

And they're not hunters either. So most of them are not hunters. So it didn't like, it didn't register to them.

Yeah. Yeah. It wouldn't be on their

radar. Yeah. All right. So let's talk about how do we link, cause this is new for me too. How do we link up our OnX to our trail cameras and the way that I understood it from reading it, it will literally pop up the picture in that little space.

Where the picture was taken.

Correct. Yeah. This has just been launched and it's in, it's early in the process. As we keep iterating on it and building this out, it's going to get way cooler, there's going to be a lot of other things you'll be able to do, but right now we have.

three trail camera providers essentially that we work and this is specifically for cell cameras. We work with covert Bushnell and exodus and each workflow is a little different with Depending on which [00:34:00] camera you're going to use, but essentially you're, yeah, you're able to link it up, uh, with that cell camera.

So now I can one stop shop I can, if the camera has GPS, it will automatically place it on its location and you're able to just view your photos inside the app. And as we continue to build this out there'll be a lot more analytics involved. Being that we are, we hang our hat on mapping and in kind of a spatial environment we'll probably, we'll be able to help you understand specifically for deer movement based on your camera, knowing, we've got a lot of inputs, whether it's.

You touched on it before, but we've got our tree layers, our crop layers. We've got weather. So instead of going to four or five different places to, to get this information, we have it all in our app. We're working on some pretty cool insights. You'll be able to glean from your trail camera.

Locations, pictures, et cetera. That should hopefully increase [00:35:00] your success. We're all busy increase, increase your success on a, your limited days that you have to be able to get out and hunt. Yeah.

And, moving into the, to the cover, I have added the layer of the acorn producing oaks to mine because white oaks and red oaks are huge.

I prefer white oaks. That's where the game is going to migrate first. So I really use that overlay and come to find out. I took a hike last a bear season a pretty good hike around, around the mountain and I actually marked where I was finding food and then I went back and added a layer and it's very, it's pretty accurate.

It's not it's not way off.

Yeah it's surprisingly accurate and that's, it's all done through, through LIDAR technology. So and I am no, I am not an expert in this field by any means, but essentially it's, I think it's reflectivity of the different canopies and in each [00:36:00] species we'll have a different reflectivity rate.

And then it's sampled on a 30 by 30 meter area. So you could turn on your deciduous tree layer. And it'll, we've got, I think, one, two, like probably seven different tree species. Yeah. Whether it's oak hickory, cypress maple, elm, aspen, whatever. And so it'll show on the map. Yeah, this is based on these reflectivity rates.

This is most likely going to be. X tree species. And so we've got that for deciduous, we've got that for coniferous you can turn on, we've got, it's deciduous. Versus coniferous. So they will show up different colors and that, just very handy for quickly analyzing a property and saying, okay based on your inherent knowledge of whether it's deer hunting or Turkey hunting or whatever those edges are really important.

You'll be able to quickly deduce by looking at a map [00:37:00] where likely spots are without having to step foot out there. You can do it from the comfort of your own home.

Yeah, I, yeah. It's red, green, and orange is the colors that come up on my red and green are the ones that are my main colors for mine.

And another thing, and I really wished I could get this into my my Garmin without box. Since I buy the app, I wished I could put it into my handheld without having to buy a card. Because the trails, the trail mapping system. Anywhere that I have been, and that means from Yellowstone to the Tetons down east, North Carolina, West Virginia, Tennessee, those trail systems are very accurate.

And that's one thing we don't get in our hunting stuff is we don't get the accuracy of the trails with the other mapping stuff. Sure.

Yeah. And years ago we did have a [00:38:00] map chip, we, it's just, it's been discontinued for Garmin now with the with their latest eye models. So we're no longer able to use the chip.

You were able to use it in the 100, but yeah, now it's, you lose that component, especially if you're using a, an Astro or an Alpha system.

And I seen a an ad for. A car map, like for people to bring it up in a car. So talk to us about that.

Yeah. So if you've got a vehicle that's got in dash capabilities, so essentially you can use it's Apple CarPlay or Android auto Android auto isn't quite done yet.

That's been a, that's been a process just in terms of how Android approves. Or Google Play Store approves our mapping system for N DASH. But right now if you've got an Apple device and you've got a screen on your truck that you can plug it into, you can see the same map that you would see on your phone or on your computer with land ownership.

You can see your [00:39:00] waypoints all of that now on a larger screen. So instead of using your knee to be driving around and... And looking at your phone and, just pretty much hopping from rumble strip to rumble strip. Now you can just look at it in your dash and easily see all the same information just on a larger form factor.

Makes it easy as you're driving down the road to see Oh, who owns this? Or, Oh, I didn't know this place was public. I've found a number of spots just by honestly having that up and driving past it.

So That brings me to a question and hopefully I'm not throwing you out to the wolves, but so on our Garmin, on our 200, our 300, they have the Garmin Explorer.

So I have my iPad mounted in my truck. I don't know if you've seen it hooked up like that. I have the iPad mounted to my truck. And I have Garmin Explorer downloaded and then I can go in and download maps whether it be a topo or a satellite imagery or whatever. Is [00:40:00] there, would there, is there a way to put the OnX map up that would hit on my iPad?

Yeah. Yep. So it's the same app. You can go and you can download the Hun app on your iPad as well. And I don't know if you have your, if it's, if it's a cell enabled iPad or if it's just,

So it Bluetooth to my handheld. Gotcha. But it comes up in Garmin Explorer. That's what I'm asking.

Would it come up on, on X?

If, what would, what come up on, on X, your location

or the location of my dogs.

No no, that won't, cause we have no way of that, the Garmin collar being able to work with Onyx. You wouldn't be able to see it on Onyx. I wish that was you should talk to your friends over at Garmin.

Cause I would love to see it. Because it would be, that would solve a big problem for a lot of people.

Yes. Yes. So I might have to pitch it.

[00:41:00] Garmin's listening. Hey would love to talk about it because I think it'd be a win for a lot of people.

Yeah. And it would not only help me hunting, but work a lot.

Like I said, we, anytime we're out on a track. And we get called out a lot for tracks, one of the, one of the guys on our team or they're looking at, they're looking at on X to figure out where we need to set perimeters up, what low, is there any route to travel that would be best suited for somebody running, like we're using that stuff all the time, so that would help in the work side of it too.

Yeah. And, I've done it before. So I had a, we were at a field trial and one of the handlers, she lost her. She had her dog had essentially ran away. She called for the tracker and was following this dog who had got on the other side of a swamp and just the big running dog. And essentially she finally got to her dog and was grabbed, grabbed it by the collar, leashed it up.

And she had left her handheld there and got [00:42:00] back to the truck is Oh shoot. I just lost a thousand dollar track, GPS tracker. What we were able to do is we were going, I think, I don't know if it's a garment Explorer app or whatever, but essentially we were able to hook up the collar, which, which retains all of that.

That location data. That's right. And then I was able to export it as like a folder of GPX. Yep, GPX. That's right. And because like I had, I was on my computer doing this. I didn't, I wasn't able to do this on my phone, so I exported it. And then I, you're able to import that into Onyx. Nice. So then she was able to go out the next day.

And essentially what it looks like is it looks like you can see where the dog covered, right? It's manual process. It's not like automatically doing which. I would love to see that happen. I was able to see the track of the entire dog. And then these are pointing dogs. So every time it, the dog stops it for more than whatever, two and a half seconds or five seconds or whatever it is, it dropped a way [00:43:00] point, uh, on the map.

So we were able to go in there and say, okay this is where we started. Alright, here is about, it looks like right here is where we stopped and then you got the dog and went back over the swamp and went to your truck, so she was actually able to go and find that last location that she stopped, took, set the collar, set the hand held down, leashed up the dog, she was able to go back in there and find that remote, so that was a kind of a funny, A fun use case.

Yeah. So how did you, can I ask how did you over, I know, and I know how you're pulling the data from the collar. Yeah. How did you overlay that to your OnX?

So it, it was a bit of a process. I, so it's the, is it's the Garmin, is it Basecamp? Is that what Yep. .

So I, okay. I already know what you're wanting to say now.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I went into base camp. Got that. And then you can export that file set. . Do gpx and then an [00:44:00] onyx you can import that so I exported it on my computer Imported it because I don't know. I don't know base camp syncs But anyways, like using onyx in the field is much easier. So then I was able to import it into onyx So then she had it then she wasn't, you know walking around with a computer out there She actually had her location dot she could go to Those different way points and see it on the map.

So once you imported it on your computer and got your stuff on all next, did you just give her the way points to log into her phone so she could just track her phone back?

So then what I did is then I we have got the folder system. What I was able to do is I went in and clicked on my content and created it there.

I selected all, you can, there's a button that can select all content on screen because, at this point, this dog had probably stopped 20 different times along, not only the trial. But also the also like just when [00:45:00] it was running around crazy. I selected all that content added to a folder and then all I did was hit.

I was able to share that folder directly with her. She was able to click on that link and then all of that populated on her Onyx account.

Yeah I'm, I just pulled it up and it, that's what it says, add folder, import, and then select.

And then I think if you can, you hit select, then it gives you the option to.

Select all on screen. So essentially I had that, that area on my screen. So I didn't have to go and individually click each way point. I could just, it would highlight them all import them. So it was, it took us like the whole process took us maybe 10, 15 minutes. So not terrible to save you a thousand dollars.

No. And I'm like, I've got 72 way points. I'm not really sure. Golly, geez. hOw many way points are we allowed? A thousand.

I have 5,611 right now. Ooh,

wow. I'm in good

shape, . Yeah, [00:46:00] you're all right. Still.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty cool to know that now that you're telling me that I figure I can, I could figure that out pretty easily, but yeah, you've gotta have a laptop to be able to import all that.

Yes,

exactly. So again, would love to just see it. Automagically. Do that. ,

I will definitely try to put some fillers out. I may like I said, I, yeah the mapping stuff that comes with Garmin is not, it's like the handhelds, the 200 i or the 200, the map that comes, it has nothing. It has no roads, no creeks, no trail, no, it has nothing.

You have to add a card. And then 300, I don't have it yet, but they said the mapping was a little better, but it's still probably not good.

Regardless of the quality of it, like how many times a day you ever, it's scary to look at like your phone usage, like when Apple pops up and says here's your summary for the week.

It's Oh my God, I'm addicted to this thing. So what I [00:47:00] tell people is yeah, the handheld is great. I use it as a redundancy, but I use this phone in my hand. A scary amount, three hours, four hours a day. So it's I am so used to this. So to be able to go in and navigate on this is way easier than navigating on a GPS handheld unit.

This is the way of the world. This is where it's going. This is where it is. I just like to, I know this inside and out. So it's easier for me than to look on a map on a handheld. But you're missing that important data of knowing where your dog is. Yeah,

Ben, is there any cool things coming up?

Anything that you want to, like I said, there's so many features, so many tools. I use it for, if I like to musky fish. If I raise a fish, I'll mark that location so I can come back and fish that area, especially if I'm fishing somewhere I'm not familiar, like I. I Use it for work.

I use it for hunting. I use it for fishing. I use it for hiking. I've [00:48:00] really enjoyed the 3D part on the hikes because I can get more of a visual of what I'm getting myself into.

Yeah. And with that too, there's also another feature that's available on WebMap. So if you're using a computer it's called TrainX.

And that is a great, especially for, for me here in the Midwest, like less applicable because we don't have much for train. So it's hard, but this train acts as if you're if you're going to plan a hunt or plant. Plan a hike. You can see a lot of different cool things. So it'll give you slope angle.

So you say, Hey, I want to stay, I want to highlight areas with this slope angle. You're able to go and move the sliders and say, okay, here's everything from 10 to 40%. And then you can say, all right, I want to highlight everything within this elevation and it'll highlight that [00:49:00] as well as we've got something called view shed.

Say you're out glassing in the mountains and you want to see Hey, this looks like a good glassing knob. I can take essentially a little way point and click on the map and it will show me everything I'm able to see from that location. Nice. If you're trying to find the perfect spot to glass, you can go move this thing and I'm doing it right now and I can see essentially everything that's illuminated in there is what I would be able to see from that location.

Great for planning your hunt. The other thing in the app too, for hiking or trying to get to an area is you can use, it's a layer in there that's going to give you slope angle. So it's a pretty much a color coded map of the different slopes. And, so it's okay, I gotta get from point A to point B.

Yeah, the fast, they're like, as a crow flies, the fastest road is this way, but you're looking at a 60 percent grade, right? That's not, you're not gonna have fun going up that. But, oh, here's a [00:50:00] little cut right here. And it might be a little bit longer distance wise, but it's actually going to be feasible without using ropes.

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I'm the West guys probably love that.

Yeah. A number of other things some. Really cool things that I've used a lot this year is our recent imagery. What that is essentially it's going to be a, it's going to be lower resolution. So you're not going to get quite as high resolution as you do with our maps now, our satellite mapping, but now you're going to be able to see a picture of the landscape less than two weeks old.

So think about if crop fields are harvested. If there's the snow line water levels Hey, is this slew dried up or does this still have water in it? I've used it. I just use it a lot in South Dakota. Actually, I was out there pheasant hunting and I was going in and looking at different areas to see what the crop harvest look like at, uh, [00:51:00] surrounding pieces that are surrounding public land.

So it's okay, this crop fields out. I should maybe go hunt this one. So there's a ton of uses for that recent imagery feature. How do I

get to that? I don't know that I've seen it.

Yeah. So if essentially if in the bottom right corner of your app, you will see your your base map selection, which it's a, their satellite hybrid or topple or topo if you click that, you'll see your three different options, your 3d, as well as down at the bottom, I

see it.

Yeah. And so that's a cool feature. And then to go with that as well, we have we're working on what we call leaf off imagery. So that is going to, you're, you'll be able to see the forest without the trees, right? You'll be able to see. Everything without leaves. So it'll give you a lot of people like that for a more accurate description of what you're seeing, especially this time of year.

That's all high resolution. We have it in 11 States right now, and we continue to add more. Pennsylvania, North [00:52:00] Carolina, Arkansas, Virginia. Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Ohio, New York, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Kansas, and we'll have Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, and West Virginia coming soon.

So that's another, just another look to just give you a better. Perspective of what you're seeing on the landscape.

And it even gives you the dates too, like what you said, the 15th through the 29th, what it pulled up when I hit that. Yeah. For

recent imagery. Yeah. So like in my area, I'm looking 16th through 30th.

Yeah, it's it's it's a, just a wildly handy tool. And, I'd be interested for a guy like you, Heath, like I use it one way and I'd be curious because you are such an avid user and you use it for different. I'd love to have this conversation in a couple of months and say, Oh, I use it for X, Y, and Z all the time.

It's Oh, I've never thought of that. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. anYthing that our listeners, our on X guys I definitely want to put this out there. If you're a listener and you don't have on [00:53:00] X go on X and. Get under HXP20. That's our discount code. We want you guys to have that and use it.

I've been blessed because I got upgraded to the, I think it's the let me see, the Elite. Yeah, I've got the Elite so I'm tickled to death with that. So I'm happy, but yeah, you guys, if you're listening, go to on X and when you do your subscription, put HXP 20 on there. And that lets you know that you're a, that you're a HSP listener and it helps everybody out.

Help

support the podcast. And the thing is what I tell people is a premium membership is 30. We've got two state now, which I think is like 49 or something like that. And then elite, which is a hundred dollars, but you can save 20 percent off. So really 80. And the thing is about it is this will say, I promise you, this will save you a tank of gas.

If you hunt at all, because how many times that I've went in and looked and [00:54:00] like we were talking about I think we had talked about this before, but we've got a layer, for example, that's called historic and active wildfire layers. Yep. So I was down in Kansas quail hunting and I had marked a bunch of just great looking spots.

That I was like, okay, I've got to go check these out and I neglected to turn on that historic wildfire layer. And when I got to the spot, it was burnt to a crisp. They had a absolutely massive grass fire that extended. I'd be curious now to turn it on and see what it, how big it was. But essentially, all of these spots over like a 30 40 mile radius had been burnt.

And so I drove around and all of this work driving around, uh, was all for not because it was all the cover was all burnt. Instances like that where you don't have to go out and actually physically ground through with it and drive around. It'll cover a tank of [00:55:00] gas in a year. I promise you.

Yeah, there's no doubt. Like I said, it's saved us a lot of driving and footwork. Actually, like I said, I, I get to hunt a lot of different places and it just, it saves so much time.

Yeah and you get a free seven day trial so you can see what it's all about and there's also monthly products.

If you say, Hey, I'm only going to use this during the fall. I think a lead is like 13. 99 a month. So if you're only going to use it for a couple months throughout the year, you can buy it monthly and then cancel. So you're not charged for the whole year. So a lot of different options to be able to get in the product.

And what I'll tell you is when you get in and use it I use it year round, I use it when I'm walking my daughter in the neighborhood and I see somebody walking at me. It's Oh, I know where you live. I, we've met each other, but I can't remember your name. I'll get on my phone really quick and be like, Oh, that's Aaron.

Okay. Got it. Hey, Aaron, how's it going? So the use cases for it are endless.

That's right. You[00:56:00]

good?

Yep. I'm good. Now, I don't know if I hit a button or if I was, my flailing was, you got

excited. Yeah. All right, Ben, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule. Like I said, I know I've bugged you to death. And like I said, I'm, I've been using this thing since 2013. I Preach it to everybody.

I'm honored to be a part of the Onyx team and. You guys keep doing what you're doing and helping us teach, train and learn about on

X. Yeah. Again, I, and I'm honored. I appreciate you having me on and hopefully some people have learned something. I learned something new almost every day about on X and, I appreciate your support and your audience support.

I hope everyone has a safe and successful rest of your

fall and winter. Yeah, our deer season is getting ready to kick off, so this is perfect

timing. [00:57:00] Very nice. Good luck to all the deer hunters in the woods.

Alright. Thank you, Ben. Thanks, Eden. I've been a member and supporter of Go Wild for over a year now.

Man, how time flies. Their social media platform is For Hunters By Hunters. And if you've followed me for any length of time, you know that I'm in the woods or on the water if I'm not working. And yes, some ask, do you work? Unfortunately, I do. It's a place that I post all of my trophies, no matter how big or small.

Mine, mostly small. I get tips, tricks, tactics, and advice from people who eat, breathe, and sleep the outdoors. I log all of my outdoor adventures, including... The time spent listening to the best podcast in the land, the journey hosted by no other than yours truly. So when I need anything [00:58:00] outdoors, I just log on to the go wild store, pick out what I need.

And that's anything from hunting, fishing, camping, optics, outdoor wear, and yes, hound supplies. I'm proud to partner up with the go wild team. So let's get your journey started today. Here, on Go Wild.

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