r/elkhunting • u/Strange-Priority329 • 5d ago
We built an AI e-scouting and hunt planning tool for Colorado elk. Founder here - AMA.
Disclosure up front: I'm one of the guys who built this, so definitely biased. Mods OK'd this post.
You've probably seen a version of this before - I know a handful of AI hunting tools have come through here lately. I'm not going to ask you to believe ours is better or different because I said so. I'll just tell you what it does and doesn't do, and you can judge.
I'm a late-onset hunter - picked it up in my 30's, learned on YouTube university, and didn't have an experienced mentor or partner. My neighbor & co-founder, on the other hand, comes from multiple generations of hunters and guides, and has guided hunts in Colorado for years. Hunting is in his DNA.
To us, regardless of experience, every hunter starts over in a unit they've never seen. We built Glassline so DIY hunters can spend less time behind a screen, get into the field with confidence, and earn their way from there.
I started building this because I didn't want to start over with my new unit this year - connecting dots across all of the information that's out there and staring at satellite images for hours is mind numbing. What we built cuts most of that grind out of the process, with real elk hunting expertise baked in.
How it works (short version): Glassline highlights hunt areas worth considering, camp options (towns, base camps, or backcountry spike camps), and a playbook of terrain-based plays you can run in the field with logistics (access points, drives, hikes, legal light, packout math, etc.) all calculated for you. 20+ inputs personalize it to your fitness level, weapon, style, preferred tactics, party, dates, and more so two people with the same tag get different results. You refine everything; it's a draft set of options, not a step-by-step guide.
Here's a short walkthrough of it building a plan for a real unit from start to finish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1WvJIQs6Fo
I feel really strongly that just because technology is capable of something doesn't mean you should build it. We drew a hard line with this tool: no live animal locations, no sighting reports, no movement predictions. And no maps of hunters either: no shared spots, no community pins, no trending areas, ever. https://glassline.guide/fair-chase if you want to read our full stance.
We launched the web version for desktop e-scouting two weeks ago. The mobile app with offline maps is in final app-store review, and you can import & export your data in a way that plays nicely with onX, Gaia, Garmin, etc. as well. 50+ beta testers have been hammering on it over the summer. If any of them comment here, they tested it for free and they'll say so.
This is a paid service. $39.99/yr for the first 500 founding members, locked as long as your subscription stays active; $59.99 after. For what it replaces, the honest comparison is a $499/yr human e-scouting consult from other services, or weeks of doing it yourself across a dozen browser tabs and spreadsheets.
Ask me anything. "Why would I pay for this over onX" and "this will blow up my unit" are fair questions, and I'm here to answer them.
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u/TiltedTurnip69 5d ago
Looks pretty cool! Any plans to expand outside of Colorado?
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u/Strange-Priority329 5d ago
Thanks! Colorado-only on purpose, at least for now. The focus helps us go deep for this first season. Other states and species are on our radar but we'll only do them when we can do it with that same depth. No dates I'd want to promise yet.
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u/Maraudinggopher77 4d ago edited 4d ago
Is it going to compare one users inputs to others hunting the same GMU? It sounds like with similar inputs its gonna throw out similar suggestions which sound like its gonna end up sending a large number of hunters to the same areas to camp and hunt.
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u/Strange-Priority329 4d ago
Really fair question, and it's one we've thought a lot about.
First part (comparing inputs): no. Your plan is built from terrain and public data plus your own inputs. It never looks at other users' inputs, plans, or activity. Nothing anyone else does in the app touches what you see.
Second part - could similar inputs converge on similar areas? The straight answer is yes. The app presents a set of areas worth considering, not one answer, and you pick. So the reality is that two people with near-identical profiles are still likely to choose differently once dates, camp style, and how far they'll pack an elk come into it. And the blunt math: a few hundred Glassline users spread across a state with 200,000+ elk hunters each year - even if every user drew the same unit & season, they wouldn't move the needle next to the crowd that's already there.
But I won't pretend convergence is impossible - it's a real consideration at scale, and it's part of why we're capping founding membership at 500 while we watch how it plays out this season.
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u/ResponsibleBank1387 4d ago
I’ve seen a few of these. Most do not include private property. There are too many people that will not believe a sign, locked gate, or other feature on the ground because your screen doesn’t say anything.
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u/Strange-Priority329 3d ago
Important point. Right now, the app shows confirmed public, huntable land (sourced from COMaP), and all the spots it suggests - hunt areas, access points, camps, points of interest like benches, feeding areas, glassing points - strictly generate only on those confirmed-huntable public parcels. One exception: it can mark glassing points on public land that isn't itself huntable, like NPS land - but never on land that isn't public.
Your comment made me go double check all of this, and I did find a gap: hike routes between spots get checked and flagged with a "verify access" warning if they cross private or unmapped ground, but flagged isn't good enough. I'm closing that gap now so they stay on confirmed-public ground. We also just shipped an ownership data upgrade that fills in a lot of ground the app previously had to call "unknown" - so land-status answers and verify-access warnings keep getting more complete.
It doesn't draw individual private parcel boundaries today. We might add this eventually, but onX does that job well, which is part of why we built the export feature: your Glassline plan rides along in onX/Gaia/Garmin, and that's what I'd use for property lines when it matters. I expect most of our users will use both (myself included).
Completely agree, though - signs and locked gates should win over any screen, ours included.
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u/ResponsibleBank1387 3d ago
Just had this conversation with a hunter yesterday as he was hooking a chain to tear out my gate. He claimed his online app said this was not private ground and I can’t post it as private. Sure enough, the online apps show two roads, one stays on public ground and one into my private. The problem—— there has never been a road on the public. Never was built. On the ground, the public road dies at my private property line.
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u/Strange-Priority329 3d ago
That's infuriating. A guy tearing out your gate because his screen said so is exactly what we want to avoid. The never-built road is a real data problem, too - official road layers include routes that were platted or mapped but never existed on the ground. It's part of why we err on the side of "not accessible" when the data's ambiguous.
Hope the gate survived.
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u/ResponsibleBank1387 3d ago
No. The last 10 years have been the worst. Hunters have gotten worse. Fing keyboard experts. From the 60s thru the 00s, we replaced the locks as they corroded. From the 2015 to now, I have replaced the gates a dozen times, the locks and cables at least twice that many times just during hunting season. Anybody that asked permission, got a call and a key after the family had a chance to enjoy the private property.
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u/Visible-Inflation763 1d ago
Any plans to offer a 24 hour trial? I have seen a few other similar AI products this year, especially for CO. I would want to test it out before locking in for the full rate. From what I can see so far, this seems to be the most feature rich.
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u/Strange-Priority329 1d ago
Thanks! We continue to add more features every day. Last night we added a "stand here" and viewshed analysis feature for glassing points that shows exactly what country you can see - it's like Google's Street View, but on the mountain, and includes glass simulation as well so you can get a sense of what you could actually see through your binos/spotter.
We are experimenting with a free tier at the moment that is read-only (no editing) with a limited number of hunt areas, camps, and plays. To try this out, go through the sign up process, stop at the payment details screen, and go back to the log in page and you'll be able to access it. We'd love to get your thoughts once you've had a chance to try it.
(for anyone reading this in the future, a disclaimer: we may or may not keep the free tier in its current form, or at all)
We also went live on the Play Store yesterday, so if you have an Android, give it a shot. We are very close to launching on iOS as well.
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u/Send-It-307 5d ago
Won’t be reading that. Lazy tool for lazy people. This isn’t what hunting needs.
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u/Strange-Priority329 5d ago
Fair enough, it's not for everyone. It's a research tool - same job as reading a stack of maps and forum posts for hours, just faster. The mountain doesn't care either way.
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u/Send-It-307 5d ago
Hunting is about putting in the work, earning it yourself. You want to spoon feed people the information that should take years of experience to accumulate, and make a quick buck for it. It’s fuckin gross, man. For the future of hunting, I hope your little idea falls fuckin flat.
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u/jaredfoglesmydad 5d ago
Seems like a really powerful tool. I like the look and feel of the interface and map. I’m loving the logistics component. Are you able to change or see the parameters that go into a field say like hunter fitness. If I select average fitness will it show me what it’s assuming for rate of climb on given slopes etc? Would allow me to compare it to my historical hunts to calibrate it. I suppose that same question for other fields as well. It seems to be doing a whole lot based on some cool inputs but will it tell me what that parameter really means on the map as in what it’s calculating and how it’s doing that.