HuntFix: Mark & Recover

You spot an animal on a distant ridge. You range it, take the shot, and it drops. Then you stand up — and everything changes. By the time you have dropped into the valley, crossed the creek and climbed the far face, the ridge you were looking at across open air is a slope of tussock that all looks the same, and the spot you were sure of is gone. HuntFix fixes the position while you can still see it. HOW IT WORKS Point the phone at the animal through the camera and lock the bearing and elevation angle. Type in the range your rangefinder gave you. HuntFix works out the animal's estimated latitude, longitude and elevation, holds it as a waypoint, and navigates you to it. Position + bearing + angle + range = target. That is the whole app. WORKS WITH THE RANGEFINDER YOU ALREADY OWN Any laser rangefinder, any brand. You read the number and type it in. Nothing to pair, nothing to buy. Metres or yards, and a switch for a rangefinder that already corrects for angle, so it is never applied twice. BUILT FOR THE WALK, NOT THE SHOT • A big arrow and a big distance, readable at arm's length • Direction from your movement when walking, from the compass when you stop • Near-target mode inside 100 m, showing the zone you should be searching • Breadcrumb trail of the route you walked, for the way back out • Haptics at 100, 50 and 20 m that you can feel through a glove • The shot position saved as its own waypoint IT TELLS YOU WHAT IT DOES NOT KNOW One rule sits above every other in this app: never imply precision that was not measured. Every target carries its own uncertainty, drawn as a zone to search rather than a pin to trust — wider across your line of sight than along it, because that is the shape a bearing error makes. A value the phone could not read shows as a dash, never a zero, and a compass with low confidence gets a coarsened bearing rather than a degree it has not got. BACKED UP TO YOUR ICLOUD, AND NOWHERE ELSE No account. No sign-up. No server of mine. Your targets, photographs and trails go to the private storage of the Apple Account already on your phone, so a lost phone does not lose your record — and I cannot read any of it. Switch it off in Settings, or delete the iCloud copy outright. Nothing waits for it: sighting, marking and navigating need no reception at all. Sight pictures stay with the target and never reach your Photos library. A RECORD OF WHAT YOU HAVE RECOVERED Every animal you mark Recovered counts, with a badge at 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50 and 100 — First Fix through to Hundred Faces. Your record, not a verified one: the app knows only that you tapped the button, and says so. TWO FREE RECOVERIES, THEN BUY IT ONCE Two full recoveries, free. After that one payment unlocks it for good on your Apple Account. No subscription. An animal already on the ground is never held to ransom. Navigating to a target that already exists works forever, bought or not, and nothing is ever deleted or hidden if you do not buy. Some things cost money to keep running — premium topographic maps, terrain elevation data, or sharing targets with your party. If those are ever built they will be offered separately, and will never take away anything you have already bought. iCloud backup is not one of them: it runs on your own iCloud and is part of the app for everyone. HONESTLY, WHERE THIS IS UP TO HuntFix has been tested hard as maths and as software, and used on real hunts in the South Island. What you will not find is an accuracy figure: that needs measuring against known positions, not a count of the hunts that went well. When it is done the results go on huntfix.app, whatever they show. Meanwhile the app tells you, target by target, how much to trust that one. Made in the South Island by a hunter who got tired of the search. HuntFix is a navigation aid. Identify your target beyond all doubt before you shoot, carry a map and compass, and hunt lawfully and safely.