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Missoula, Montana’s onX – Backcountry apps target winter recreationists with loads of features

November 27, 2022 /

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Bear Paw Development Corporation is a private non-profit organization created for the purpose of administering programs to help improve regional economic conditions in Hill, Blaine, Liberty, Chouteau and Phillips Counties and the Fort Belknap and Rocky Boy's Indian Reservations.

Montana has its own homegrown app developer of outdoor maps in onX. In a recent online presentation, the company’s Joe Risi and Charlie von Avis highlighted the capabilities of their app for backcountry snow recreationists.

For $39.99, the app can provide a variety of data, including: avalanche forecasts, current weather conditions, Snotel information on snow depth, topo and satellite views, public lands, and slope angle and aspect.

Brett French

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Missoula, Montana’s onX and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers- It’s Public Land. But the Public Can’t Reach It.

The app is called OnX. Its basic functionality is simple: OnX shows you where you are in real time, using a blue dot exactly the same as the one on Google Maps. The difference is that OnX is designed to show where you are in a forest, on a mountain or in a canyon. It has been around since 2009 and is popular with hunters and outdoor enthusiasts.

Backcountry Hunters & Anglers helped the Missouri hunters find lawyers, rallied its 35,000 members for support and started a GoFundMe page, which has raised more than $110,000 to pay the hunters’ legal bills.

Wild Sustenance: Innovative Course Introduces UM Students to Hunting – “This was the coolest and most practical class I have ever taken,” Hanson said, “and my freezer is the proof.”

“Almost all of us who are hunters learned from relatives and friends. We had opportunities,” said course instructor Joshua Millspaugh, UM’s Boone and Crockett Professor of Wildlife Conservation. “There is such an impediment to those who didn’t have that opportunity. The students that are here say, ‘I’ve always been interested in learning more, but I don’t know where to start.’

UM wild sustenance course teaches hunting and conservation through real-world experience

Students were taught about female engagement in the male dominated sport, how hunting and conservation go hand-in-hand and indigenous views on hunting. But the highlight of the class for most students was outside of the classroom.