Hi all,

New to this forum and will admit up front that I am not hunter but instead a giant computer nerd. I'm wondering if hunters would find a phone app useful that could detect wild game or dangerous animals either up close or far away. The phone would vibrate or make some kind of alert whenever it detects whatever animal it's looking for. Something like the pic below kind of gives the idea of what the phone can do. Any help appreciated.




Best,
Eric

I don’t see it being all that useful, and I wouldn’t have any interest in it if it were. Technology has taken enough hunting out of the hunt as it is, as far as I’m concerned.

yep, that would be cool but wouldn't a person need to have their phone up pointing outside all the time?

Not for me.

I’m guessing something similar to a motion detector like people put in their driveways to know when a car pulls in? I don’t know that I’d use one, but I have thought about this concept. Put the motion detector at the feeder kick back take a nap and then boom phone vibrates when they show up 😂

So basically an alarm plug in for the one Stealthcam has mentioned, that could skim hundreds of photos and compose files for certain animals?




But to answer your question is if it could target specific individual animals yes. With cellular technology you could have it set a phone pop up when a target animal appears. Example a specific buck

More fun to take a pic and then research what it is or post it on here.

Or shoot it

Half the places I hunt don't have cell coverage. I'm out.

For me, personally, it would cross the line of being fair chase. If I were hunting to survive, definitely, but it would reduce what I would get out of hunting.

Keep thinking though, there are plenty of electronic improvements out there that are still to be made in the hunting industry.

Welcome to the forum. Stay a while and get a feeliing for what we are about. Who knows, you may decide to give hunting a go.

I've seen the premise that we have too many deer used here to support many things. Makes you wonder if that same point will one day be used to support online hunting in which this technology could be critical. Set an alarm on your phone that alerts you when a deer walks up to your feeder and use the app to aim and fire a shot. Nothing from a technology perspective that makes that unachievable today. All that's needed is more people preaching to elected officials to change current regulations. After all, everyone knows we have way to many deer and this could be a way to reduce their numbers to "carrying capacity".

I almost forgot. Look for the invoice in your email in-box for that nice buck that just walked up to a feeder on the owners two-acre tract nestled somewhere in the Texas Hill Country.

It would be illegal in some states.

Cellular cameras are now being used to trap hogs in catch pens. As far as I know, it's legal for someone to put a cell camera at a feeder within shooting distance of their residence so they can be alerted that it's a good time to shoot one from their back porch.

Don't take me wrong, I'm not condoning such an easy way to kill a deer. I'm only drawing attention to talking points that could describe the future for an activity that was once considered pure sport.

How is this any different than cellular game cameras?

I figure fair chase went out the window long ago with the creation of firearms.

If it could ID species, that would be great. I run a motion sensor at night so I can kill hogs when they come in, while I'm asleep. Coons, deer, and other critters wake me too though. Let me know when it can only alert me to hogs, and leave me alone when others are present.

Fair chase according to Boone and Crocket for myself, although I mostly hunt with a bow. Fair chase is a personal decision. Nothing wrong with night vision for predators and hogs in my book and probably nothing wrong with this idea for those as well. But not for game animals, which is what I was originally thinking.

IMHO, the issue isn't so much about fair chase but with what level of ease new and emerging technologies will allow people to shoot and kill wild game. Fair chase has long since been replaced with wait to see what shows up once the feeder goes off.

To the OP, that technology already exists with cellular game cams.

Could be wrong but I believe the OP was referring to technology that can not only detect movement but can also recognize what animal appears in the captured images or video. It's basically the same thing as facial recognition but designed to recognize the visual characteristics of a specific animals. All that's needed is for someone to write the code so that a camera could inform you what animal just came within view of the camera. In fact, it's my understanding there are now security cameras that don't have a motion sensor but instead look for changes in the digital image being captured to start recording.

Not aware of any game cameras that offer this capability, at least not yet.

make the first app specific for pigs

So would it be fair chase if you had a contraption that mechanically held your gun, made the correct rise and windage corrections based on your inputs, and you pushed a button to fire the gun? I guess the question becomes where does fair chase end and where does too much technology begin? Is a 15x scope fair chase? WhT about a 60x spotting scope? What about thermal scanning for a downed deer? What about using a scent dog to find your downed deer? Is anything other than a rifle with iron sights “free chase” ? Serious question

Not legal in Wyoming, cell game cams are also not legal in Wyoming.
For hogs , yes sounds good but it would get abused by some. Thermal is not legal up here anymore for almost anything now.

People abuse just about everything.

Notice the bounding box in the OP’s pic. He’s talking about building an AI model to ID what the camera sees, vs just taking a pic. Interesting idea but I don’t know that hunters (maybe researchers looking at 100’s of pics at a time) would have any real use for that given the fairly limited number of different animals we’re seeing pictures of. We can do detection with a $50 driveway alarm and of course pics with the cameras.

Charlie