APEX HUNT
BY FIELD ARMOR · FIELD-TESTED IN MICHIGAN
Apex reads the state and federal forest inventory (the cover type, the age, the canopy, the forester's own notes) for every stand of public land in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, with more states being added, and puts a number on each covert. Then it tells you which stand to walk first, and which way to walk it.
$4.99/month after the trial. Cancel any time. The map, your journal and the plant guide stay free, always.
WHERE THE NUMBERS COME FROM
A score is a rule about the woods, applied to public records: the same compartment reviews the foresters write. A 78 means strong habitat right now. It doesn't promise a bird; hunt a 78 ten times and you'll move more birds than on a 40.
WHAT IT DOES
Other apps put a dot where somebody once shot a bird. Apex scores the woods themselves, from the same compartment reviews the foresters write, so a good covert is a good covert whether or not anyone has told the internet about it.
OPEN IT
The Field screen is the brief. Your top covert for the conditions right now, in a sentence a hunter would write: “26-yr aspen maturing past peak stem density, thick alder/lowland for escape cover, oak/beech mast coming on, conifer close by.” Distance, acreage, the weather, how many coverts are near and how many are prime. Then your last entry, so the journal is one tap away.
HUNT IT
Open a covert and Apex draws every stand inside it over the satellite, coloured by what it is (young aspen, pole aspen, conifer), and numbers them in the order to hunt. ① is today's best. The red dot is where to park. The dashed line is the walk, along the shared edge between stands; the gold seam is the transition the guide tells you to work. Enter from the W, work into the E wind, 9 mph. It says so at the top.
The bright green isn't the stand's average. It's the thickets the LiDAR measured at bird height: cover inside the stand, where the birds actually are.
Tap a stand and you get the forester's record: canopy by species and percent, the understory, the size and density class, and the DNR's own notes, verbatim. Standing in it and it's been cut, flooded or grown shut? Say so in three taps and your map learns.
SCOUT IT
Scout mode re-ranks every covert for a season, a weather scenario and a time of day you choose (mid October, post-front, dawn), so you can plan a trip in August and know which coverts will be worth it when the leaves are down. Drag the wind and the entry plan turns with it. Save a scenario and jump back to it.
On the day, the conditions sheet does the same with the real forecast: the hour-by-hour strip, the best window (18:00–20:00), legal light, and what it means for the bird: last feed, then into roost cover; bluebird high, slow midday; dog scenting — prime.
LOG IT
Log a flush, a brood, drumming, or a blank, and Apex tunes its scores to your ground. The journal shows how far along that is (79%, tuned to your ground), your flushes, your hit rate, the spots you've dialed in. It runs on the phone. Nothing about where you hunt goes anywhere unless you send it.
A scouting report takes a minute: cover quality, birds flushed, the sign you found (droppings, dusting, a drumming log), the indicator plants, a note, a photo. The live conditions are captured for you. Saved coverts are sorted virtual, scouted, hunted, so you know which of your twenty you've actually walked.
YOUR SEASON
A list of pins isn't a journal. The Season page reads your log back to you: birds split grouse and woodcock, flushes, days out, birds a day, the share of days that produced birds, and the miles you walked to get them.
Then the part a list can't show you. Where the birds were: every flush matched to the cover it came out of. Cover that paid off: the share of your stops in each cover that moved a bird. And every day written out in a sentence: "Four flushes in Treed Bog, Aspen and more — two of them woodcock. One blank stop, too."
The scouting desk shows the same season on a big screen, down to the week, the day, or any days you pick, with the weather you hunted in.
READ IT
The plant guide is written for a grouse hunter, not a botanist. It shows what grows where you are (showing what grows in N. Lower) and what's ON NOW. Open American hazelnut and you get how to recognise it in September, what the site tells you (edges and upland thickets; clonal), what's on the plant this month (fruit, nuts), its value as escape, thermal and roosting cover, and the reason it matters: high-value catkins in late winter, nuts in good years, dense escape cover.
Every covert lists what you should find in it, by stand, so when the guide says hawthorn, you know which corner to check.
GET THERE
Apex carries its own roads and trails (county roads, forest roads, the two-tracks and snowmobile trails the DNR maps) and routes on them: on trails to your dropped point, turn left onto Curtis Road. Trails, straight-line or driving, with the distance and time for each. Or hand it to Apple Maps for the drive.
Long-press anywhere for a pin: flush, drumming heard, brood, bird sighting, no birds. Or a marker: the truck, a gate, a stand, a food plot, a trail cam, a blood trail. Copy the coordinates for anyone who needs them.
AND
APEX PRO
$4.99 a month for PICKS, the full stand inventory, the guide and Crew. Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are included, and more states are being added.
THROUGH FIELD ARMOR
30 days freethen $4.99/month
ON IPHONE
14 days freethen $4.99/month
One subscription is all you need, so don't buy both. A card is required to start the Field Armor trial; you're not charged until day 31.
START YOUR 30-DAY FREE TRIAL
No password. We email you a six-digit code. Then you'll finish checkout on fieldarmorusa.com.
✓ is your Apex account.
Use this same email at checkout. It's how your subscription finds your account. With a different address, the app won't know you've paid.
Then download Apex on your iPhone and choose Sign in with Field Armor with the same email.
Field Armor, the upland outfitter behind the Field Armor dog vests, at fieldarmorusa.com. Apex Hunt is our app, built and field-tested in Michigan.
Free, always: the map with roads, trails and public land, your pins and recorded tracks, the journal and the plant field guide. Pro adds PICKS (scored coverts on the map and ranked in Discover, with the guide for each), TIMBER (every stand in the state to browse and filter) and Crew.
Pro features lock. Nothing is deleted. Your journal, pins, tracks and saved coverts stay on your phone and keep working, and so do the map and the field guide. Subscribe again and Pro comes straight back.
If you subscribed on iPhone: Settings › your name › Subscriptions › Apex Pro. If you subscribed through Field Armor: sign in on fieldarmorusa.com and cancel under your subscriptions. Either way, Pro stays on until the end of the period you've paid for.
Because a password is one more thing to forget and one more thing to steal. Sign in with Apple, or with a one-time code we email you. Apex never asks for or stores a password.
Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota: state forest, national forest and state game and wildlife areas, with more states being added. One subscription covers them all.
Yes. Pro includes the scouting desk at api.apexhunt.app/app: the same coverts, scores and stand inventory in your browser, with your journal and crew, for planning at the kitchen table. Sign in with the same email.
Yes. The coverts, stands and scores are stored on your phone and ranked on your phone. Download the map for your area over Wi-Fi before you go and the imagery comes with you.
No, and nothing built from agency data is. Boundaries are generalised and can be wrong at the edges; ground shown as public may be private, leased or closed. What's posted on the ground controls; see §3 of the Terms.
On your phone. They leave it only if you share them with a crew or turn on backup. See the privacy policy for exactly what we keep.
FIELD-TESTED · MICHIGAN
Which of these ten thousand acres is worth a morning? Apex is the answer we wanted on our own phones: the forester's records, the laser's measurements and our own logs, in one place, working where the signal isn't.
