EP 567. Getting on the “X” with onX Hunt Maps–and Then Some

Ramsey Russell: Welcome back to MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast where today we’re getting on the X with Lake Pickle. Lake, how the heck are you man?

Lake Pickle: Man, I’m good. Glad to be on here again. Glad to see you. I feel like you and I talk a lot but we rarely cross paths.

Ramsey Russell: You’re as busy as I am. And look for anybody listening, we’re getting together before turkey season start because what I do in duck hunt, this man does in a turkey hunt. He gave me the heads up, said no, turkey season hits, there’s no telling where in the world I’m going to be.

Lake Pickle: Yeah, it turns into like a controlled and welcomed chaos is what turkey season is.

Ramsey Russell: I am eternally thankful that I don’t got the turkey bug like you and my son do. So Forrest has got it. Forrest got that turkey bug like nobody I’ve ever seen. I told somebody one time, I’m just not mad at those turkeys, to which he replied, because you ain’t met the right turkey yet. I’m trying not to meet that turkey.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What you been burning today, man? I come in, you got smoke and smut all over your clothes today. What you all been doing?

Lake Pickle: So my good buddy and I guess also business partner Jordan Blissett, him and I, there’s a property just 30 minutes east of here that Jordan’s been doing a lot of habitat work on. And we had about a – there’s more than this. But today we had about a 50-acre block of pine trees that needed a prescribed burn run through it, and –

Ramsey Russell: Nice, cool season burn.

Lake Pickle: Yes, sir. We finally got the weather. It’s still a little bit wet on the ground, but the humidity was low, had a fairly consistent wind, it was sunny, it was a good day to do it.

Ramsey Russell: What did you all, like, ring it, let it burn together real quick or just backfire or what?

Lake Pickle: So we were trying to be – again, just being extra cautious. So we lit a backing fire, and we had a north wind today, and to the north of the property or to the north of the block we were trying to burn was – we did not want the fire jumping over there, we didn’t think it was going to jump. So our plan was we lit a backing fire on the south end, and then we went and lit a head fire on the north side of that block. And so the wind is pushing it south away from where we don’t want it to go. And then it connects with that backing fire, and it all kind of came together. It was just at the very – I mean, Jordan still sitting out there with it, I think he’s going to burn a little bit more today. But we got pretty much that block taken care of before I had to leave.

Ramsey Russell: What will that do for your turkey hunt? What will it do for turkey hunt coming up in a month or so?

Lake Pickle: A lot, honestly. I mean, the most rapid effect is, I’ve heard guy named Dr. Marcus Lashley, he referred to it as, kind of like a vacuum effect.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah.

Lake Pickle: So I remember even when I was a kid, I put together, before I knew what prescribed burning was and before I knew the benefits of fire, I just was always like, man, for whatever reason turkeys, they’re around those fresh burns. And so what it does is when you run that fire through there, obviously it kills off a lot of that understory and you have that kind of just black burned, leaf matter and pine straw, and what there isn’t there is, there’s a lot – it’s really good scratching for them. Like, there’s bugs, there’s seeds, and they’ll run through there and scratch. And I mean, it’s just a lot of like, readily available food.

Ramsey Russell: Almost immediately.

Lake Pickle: Oh yeah. Man, I’ve seen, I’m sure everyone has, turkeys will be in that burn that we just lit, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were in there tomorrow and it was still smoking. I’m serious. They can’t. I mean, they love it. But it has that immediate effect. But also in a month’s time, that 50 acres will look completely different. That sunlight will hit that ground and that native seed bed still there, and it’ll start growing, you’ll have all these native plants and forbs coming up that are good for not just turkeys.

Ramsey Russell: Depending on how dense the forest over story is around there, enough grass comes in, it wouldn’t surprise me if some hens went up in there, even besides bugging went up in there and maybe made a nest.

Lake Pickle: Yeah. I mean, so that’s a lot of the places that I’ve seen and had the opportunity to get to help on. I never present myself as being some habitat manager, I always lean on guys that know a lot more about it than I do. I just enjoy it, do it. And it intrigues me. But they’ll have these properties where they have different sections kind of in different burn rotations. So you have these different levels of succession, so different levels of plant growth. You have this place that’s burned a year ago, looks different than a place that hasn’t been burned in two years. And so you have these different stages of plant growth and some of that stuff that’s been growing longer, it’s thicker, it might be better for deer to live in some of the other stuff that’s a little had time to grow up, that’s where your turkeys might be nesting, in some of the more fresher burned stuff they’re using that to eat in, it’s more open, turkeys need open areas. It’s an ongoing process.

Ramsey Russell: What’s your favorite turkey recipe? I got to go there because I was pulling in your neighbourhood, Forrest and I were talking, he’s like, dad, he’s one that got me saving them legs and thigh quarters. I’m like, get out of here.

Lake Pickle: Do you want a turkey leg recipe? You want a turkey -?

Ramsey Russell: What’s your favorite recipe? And how do you cook turkey legs?

Lake Pickle: Okay. My favorite one, like, all out favorite one is, honestly, you go through the same step as battering and frying nuggets up.

Ramsey Russell: Oh, yeah.

Lake Pickle: I think it’s essential. Some people say you don’t have to do it, I think you do. I brine every turkey I cook.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Lake Pickle: Oh, yes.

Ramsey Russell: Salt water?

Lake Pickle: A little bit of salt, a little bit of paprika, and I really brine them at least 24 hours.

Ramsey Russell: Really?

Lake Pickle: Oh, yes.

Ramsey Russell: For tenderizing or for flavor?

Lake Pickle: That and maintaining moisture.

Ramsey Russell: I’ll be dang, never heard of that.

Lake Pickle: I brine them, everyone. The legs, too. I brine them. So you can brine them, batter them, I mean, standard. If I’m doing this recipe, I’m not getting too crazy with the batter. Just standard egg wash, and then flour, salt and pepper, a little paprika. But the kick is, is you can almost make – I’ve never had anyone turn this recipe down. It’s basically almost like a boneless wing, but it’s breast nuggets. Because what you can do is you fry them, and then you get a saucepan on the oven, and you can go buffalo sauce, you can go barbecue sauce. But you get that sauce and you put it in there, get it hot, you take those nuggets, you throw them in that saucepan, and you cover them and all of a sudden, they’re like buffalo wings or barbecue nuggets. Oh, they’re good.

Ramsey Russell: I’m a chicken fried guy. Everybody in the world knows it. That’s my favorite. I’m kind of a buttermilk guy.

Lake Pickle: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Soak it in buttermilk and then go from there. But what about turkey leg? Because anybody’s ever say you’re young and dumb and try to fry a turkey leg, you learn better. It’s got literally got steel cables inside those legs. But I’m going to say this Lake, turkey legs are my favorite cut of meat on a wild turkey.

Lake Pickle: Yeah. I heard somebody make the argument one time, like, man, you got to worry about cooking it right and you got to go through all these steps. And I said, man, I could take the finest wagyu steak and if I don’t cook it right, I can make it not taste good. And my favorite thing to do is, I’ll take those legs and quarters, again I will brine them. And then I use an insta pot. Now I used to put them in a crock pot and I would slow cook those things until when I reached in there and grabbed the leg bone, all the meat would come off with just fall off. And then I shred it, I mean, it almost looks like a pulled chicken or a pulled pork. I mean, you got to go through and make sure you get the steel cables was a very accurate analogy with the tendons and stuff in there. You got to make sure you get all that out of there. But what I tell people as far as, like wild game goes, it’s got to pass the girlfriend test or the wife test. I make those pulled turkey legs, and we use them to make sandwiches or tacos or enchiladas. And Lacy loves them. I mean, if we have that for supper one night, I better have enough extra that she can take some to work for lunch the next day.

Ramsey Russell: Can I share with you my favorite turkey leg recipe? Very similar, but it’s going to change your life, if you never done it, it’s life changing.

Lake Pickle: I’m all ears.

Ramsey Russell: And I can’t remember the French word for it, I just drew a blank. But take those turkey legs and quarters, put them in a crock pot or insta pot, either one and cover them with duck fat. Cover them with duck fat. You can put season in there, you can put peppercorns or shallots or garlic or nothing, but cook them down in that duck fat and then take them apart, pull them apart, throw the steel cables away, chop them up. And man, don’t be the crazy guy, because duck fat ain’t cheap even at Walmart. You can pour that stuff back in a jar and do this again.

Lake Pickle: Oh, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And so what we’ll do, we cooked them overnight in the duck fat, there’s a French word for that kind of fancy, I can’t remember what it is now. And we take it out, chop it up – and my favorite, I love, like, street tacos.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: So we’re going to chop it up and cook them with the taco seasonings and whatnot and put them on street tacos with whatever you want to eat on top of like a taco. But to your point, also, I love to then take it. And really, when you put it in the skillet and you’re cooking it with a taco or whatever or the barbecue, all you’re doing is heating it up and getting that season baked in with it, you know what I’m saying? So I’ll do the same thing with barbecue sauce, maybe some sauteed onions and turkey leg meat. And I like coleslaw on barbecue sandwiches.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, but I’m like a dark meat fan. I don’t care if we’re talking chicken or wild turkeys, I’m a dark meat, man. I don’t like breast, I like that. Unless it’s chicken fried. Now when it comes chicken fried, I’ll eat anything. But now that’s just kind of my deal. But you inspired my son to keep those turkey legs and thigh quarters, and he brought them over the house one day and man, that’s all I tell them now is like, go ahead and keep the breast on. Bring me the leg and thigh quarters.

Lake Pickle: Yeah, man, it just bothered me, man. I still see it, people do it to this day. They think that on a turkey, the breast meat’s all, that’s good. I mean, the breast meat is fantastic, but man, don’t throw away those legs and thighs, they’re good. They’re good.

Ramsey Russell: Have you killed all the turkeys in the country or done the slams?

Lake Pickle: I mean, I haven’t kill –

Ramsey Russell: Because I’m sitting here looking, you got an impressive wall right here.

Lake Pickle: No, I haven’t done the 49.

Ramsey Russell: What about the different species?

Lake Pickle: Oh, yeah, I’ve done that. Yeah. I mean, that big wall of fans, a lot of the turkeys I’ve been able to kill, I mean, a lot of that’s credit to my time spent at Primos, where opened the doors to a lot of those opportunities and allowed me to spend a lot of time in the spring woods. But yeah, I hope to get the 49 one day. I’m not chasing it as hard as – I went on about a 2 or 3 year span there where I was trying to knock off new states every year. And honestly I got to the point where I wasn’t enjoying it so much as I would get to a state and I was trying to see how fast I could kill a turkey and get to another state. And I was like, you know what, I’m just going to chill out with this for a little while. I’m going to make sure that I’m enjoying what I’m doing and then I’ll get back to it someday.

Ramsey Russell: Forrest is on that kick. And I’m telling you that I don’t know where he gets it, but the kid is driven and he’s good at turkey hunting, he truly is. But he’s checking off those states and doing that stuff. And to get on point with this podcast topic today, Lake, one of the biggest tools in his chest is on X. I mean, man, what that resource represents and the features in that app and what it’s doing for him, he can drive to a foreign state and he’s done his research, he’s done his homework, he’s dropped a few test pens. Boom, and he goes right to that pen. Now he’s on the ground and he’s in the element and he’s hunting and it’s amazing. What came first? Your position with onX or onX?

Lake Pickle: OnX came first. So I remember very vividly, I was turkey hunting and it was either Jordan Blissett or Keith Polk. But someone sent me a property and they asked me something about who owned the neighbour, who owned the lands of the east. I was like, how am I supposed to know that? And they were like, do you not have – I mean, this was like, I don’t know, 2014, 2015. And they were like, do you not have OnX? And I was like, what is OnX? I mean, but I remember they sent me a link to the app, I downloaded it, pulled it up, I was like, holy smokes. And I didn’t even know what the rest of it would do, but just the fact that I had that because when I was in college, man, I’ve told this story a bunch of times when I would go turkey hunting around Mississippi State and Starkville and stuff, I would go to the library and I’d pay 10 cents to print off colored aerial maps.

Ramsey Russell: Same here. I may have walked off with a few topographic maps before.

Lake Pickle: Yeah. And so all of a sudden, that’s in the palm of your hand. I was like, holy smokes. But so, yeah, OnX came first. I was a user of OnX for 5, 6 years before they ever offered me a job.

Ramsey Russell: What do you do there now?

Lake Pickle: I am one of several marketing managers. So we have the marketing managers set up in a different avenues focused on different species, that’s how you and I kind of initially – well, it’s not how we cross paths, but that’s how we cross paths about OnX is I manage the waterfowl side and then I help on the turkey side as well, because it’s just kind of my hopeless addiction is spring turkeys. And so I work on both waterfowl and turkey.

“I feel more powerful than George W. Bush the day he was sworn into office. I’ve got those answers right there in my questions.”

Ramsey Russell: You hear a lot said and espoused today about how technology has changed hunting for the worst. And they’re talking mostly social media platforms and back in the day in chat room, people would announce, oh, I killed a bunch of ducks on blank WMA and next thing you know, there’s 5,000 trucks trying to kill a duck there. But man, this technology today, Google Earth, this technology today, man, is just amazing for the access it gives you, anywhere. I mean, I could leave Mississippi and go anywhere and find my way, just like Forrest is doing with turkeys. I could do the same thing with ducks. It’s unbelievable, the power that’s in my hands. I feel more powerful than George W. Bush the day he was sworn into office. I’ve got those answers right there in my questions. How long has OnX existed? And could you give us a quick overview for those who’ve been living under rock, like myself, of what OnX Maps is and what inspired its creation? How did they even come up with this idea?

“I could do the same thing with ducks. It’s unbelievable, the power that’s in my hands.”

Lake Pickle: Yeah. So, man, the year I think I should know this, I think it was around 2009. And what’s funny is, and this story is shared publicly, but it is funny. OnX was formed out of necessity. Our founder got lost in the woods, he’s a Montana native, good dude, great guy, cares a lot about land and hunting, as you can imagine. But it got founded after getting lost in the woods. And it started out, you remember the handheld GPS that you put a chip in. That’s how OnX started. And in fact, I mean, it being founded in Montana, it was a Montana mapping company at first, and then it morphed into nationwide and then it morphed into not just being a GPS chip, but also on the mobile phone. And I mean, it was growing already, but when it evolved from the 2 big steps, was it evolving to nationwide and getting on a phone instead of just a handheld GPS, that’s when it just kind of exploded. And I mean, you can find the chips for the, for the handheld GPS is still, but we’re not currently producing them anymore, it’s all pretty much on the phone now. So OnX is a mapping app on your phone. We have 4 verticals now. It’s crazy to think about. We have OnX Hunt, we have OnX Fish, we have OnX Off Road, we have OnX Backcountry. I work specifically on OnX Hunt and that’s the first one. OnX Hunt was the first one to come out. And that OnX Hunt, that app is built and designed specifically for hunters, that’s what it is made for. Now it gets used for a lot of different things which we love hearing about. Foresters use it, real estate people use it, lots of people use it. But it’s designed for people that turkey hunt, for people that duck hunt and goose hunt and deer hunt, elk hunt. That’s why we have marketing managers like me that focus on waterfowl and turkey and deer and we try our hardest because everyone that works there, we’re all hunters. We all got into this for the same reason as probably you did. We love to do it and love the resource and yeah, we’re all trying to find every day different ways to make it better.

Ramsey Russell: One of my favorite getting lost stories reminds me of navigating the Russian backwoods, following a Russian guide that was using a GPS. And we walked blindly into the dark, down a bear trail. And being a forester, I’m just counting my change, you know what I’m saying? The idle time we walked for about 2 1/2 miles back in this million acre boreal forest. And on the way out, I just noticed it was different. I’m like, something’s wrong, my count’s wrong. And finally he looked at his GPS, I looked over his shoulder and realized he hadn’t toggled something. And he said a very bad word in Russian, you know what I’m saying? I just noticed and put it in his pocket and we were lost. And we found a way out about 4 hours later. But man, what this technology would have done. We could have just boom, navigated right back to the car.

Lake Pickle: Yeah. When I was in junior college, a buddy of mine, we got lost on a big piece of public land during duck season. Well, creek had gotten outside its banks, we were going to find us some ducks. We took off in the boat. Next thing you know, creek gets outside his banks, all that flooded woods, they all start to look the same. And I think about that often. I mean, we were like 18 years old, man, just peak dumb. And I was like, man, if we’d have had Onx then we wouldn’t have been out there till 11 o’ clock at night.

Ramsey Russell: I know good and dang. Well, my buddy Glenn Falla from Australia is listening to this story, I know exactly what he’s thinking of. He’s thinking of the time without any technology, we were in the middle of a red good swamp, a thousand acres, and I started walking out. He goes, where are you going? I said, I’m going out. I said, dude, I’m a forester, I don’t care what part of the world we’re going right there. He said, really? I said, I’m telling. We’re going to roll right through here, take a shortcut to the truck. Well, let me tell you what, we went I think it was a complete opposite direction. He still hasn’t let me forget that my internal map is off in the Southern hemisphere. Let me ask you this. What makes OnX Maps different from other navigation apps like Google Map or Gaia GPS? What are some of the features that make it different?

Lake Pickle: Right. That’s a good question because we get asked that a lot. I could access Google Maps or Gaia for free. So, I mean, there’s a couple things like straight on the mapping side of it is we have what’s called, we have recent imagery, which is imagery that’s supposed to be around two weeks old. We have Leaf off imagery, it’s not fully nationwide yet, but it’s going to get nationwide. So if you hear this and you try to turn on Leaf off and it says not available yet, it’s coming. And again, to focus on, like I said, we try to put features in that app that not just gimmicky stuff, we put it stuff in there that will help a hunter out. That’s what we’re always thinking about. And so one of talking about Turkey season, one thing I use all the time, in the layers, there’s a tree species layer and so I can scroll down through there and there’s a tree species layer called deciduous versus coniferous. We all know down here in the southeast we got a whole lot of pine trees, right? And so if I’m scouting out a new place, whether it’s here in Mississippi or I’m thinking about traveling new property, I can turn that deciduous versus coniferous layer on and on a macro level, you know, I mean I’ll fine tune it, but on a macro level real quick, I normally can key in on drainages, I can key in on habitat changes, I can key in on places where again decision where my hardwood trees are going to be. So that sometimes equates to acorns, sometimes equates to roost trees. And so just little stuff like that, man, that just helps you just pick up on something a lot quicker. You just start dropping waypoints on like, I want to go look at that spot, I want to go check on that spot. I could go on and on. There’s the tracker feature, I’m sure Forrest has used that one before. As far as marking routes in and out of a place, as far as marking distances, there’s the compass mode. Compass mode is, so basically you can have the phone, you turn compass mode on and all of a sudden the way that you face the phone correlates with, you’ll have a line jut out from your current position and it’ll turn with you as you turn the phone.

Ramsey Russell: So just kind of keep you on an azimuth or a bearing.

Lake Pickle: Well also, it has a built in range finder on. So again, if I’m on a new place and I hear a turkey gobble, I can hit it on compass mode real quick and I can go, he’s about 275 yards and by looking at that real quick I can go, okay, he’s on us, he’s on the property that we can hunt. But there’s a creek between me and him. I need to get across that creek before I try to call him to me. Just little stuff, man, like small details that we’ve thought about and picked up on and put into the app. Because as we’re out there hunting with it, we go, you know what? It would be really beneficial if we had a tool that did this.

Ramsey Russell: Man, you just ran through a lot of core features of ONX map that makes it such a valuable tool as compared to just looking at something from the global view. Forrest told me one time that if he’s in the woods, it’s on. And he used the same exact example you did that he hears that turkey gobbling or some reason that turkey snagged up, he can take a look, say, oh, it’s that creek or is that fence or is that something that’s got him hung up. I mean, that’s just invaluable.

Lake Pickle: The tracker too. I mean, a lot of people think about using the tracker for, I mean, good reasons. Like, for one reason, talking about stuff looking different in the dark and trying to get to a duck hole or something, you can mark a track into a place. So that way if you’re trying to be sneaky or something, you don’t have to be shining a headlight. You can follow the track. But also like, typically, not all the time, I try it typically if I’m hunting, if I’m out hunting, anything I have my tracker on. Because for some reason, if I get turned around and I – and not just in a sense of – if I have that map with me, I know where the truck is.

Ramsey Russell: It’s like dropping bread crumbs that you turn around and go right back or if you leave your turkey call by a tree.

Lake Pickle: Exactly. If I drop something, I can go, well, I got my track, so I can probably find it. We got thickets everywhere down here in the south, if I know the trail that I’m using, if I know my track, then the route that if I take a different route back to the truck, I may not have my clothes may be torn to shreds from walking through thorns and stuff. So I use that tracker all the time, man. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Talk about how the OnX app helps users identify or navigate public and private boundaries.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And not only that, but who owns that boundary?

Lake Pickle: Yeah. So, man, that’s more or less our bread and butter. That’s what kind of made Onx as big as it was. Because again, now it’s been around long enough and unless you find somebody that hasn’t heard of it, everyone’s like, yeah, public and private land boundaries, that’s what they do. But again, talking about me several years ago when I got that app for the first time and I was like, holy smokes, I can see who owns all that. And so you pull up the map and OnX has like, let’s say I’m in Alabama. I can pull up layers, I can go to the different states, I can find Alabama. And it’ll pull up Alabama and you’ll have these options. It’ll say, Alabama, private lands, Alabama public lands. So there may be some other options in there. If you’re out west and there’s some, like, walk in opportunities, like if you’re in Montana, there’s going to be an option to turn on block management, stuff like that. But you have all that on and you can immediately see where private land boundaries are. You can see where public lands are going off different color coding it tells you within the app. For instance, government lands are usually a shade of green. But again, on like just a macro level of scouting, if I’m thinking I’m going to South Carolina, I’ve never turkey hunted in South Carolina. And I’m thinking, I want to go, I slide over there on the map, turn on South Carolina and boom, I can see all the public lands and I can go in and start scouting them. Not only that, but like, you get out there, you’re hunting in an unfamiliar place. I’m not trying to poach, I’m not trying to trespass. So you can always make sure that you know where you stand. You know, no pun intended. That’s where the catchphrase came from. You know that you’re doing right because you know, you’re like, all right, I’m good, I’m 100 yards inside this piece of public. I’m good right here.

Ramsey Russell: It makes a difference because there’s a lot of boundaries interface with public land that aren’t marked.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Fences are gone, there ain’t no posting signs. But, boy, they know if you’re on their property, that makes a big deal.

Lake Pickle: Because there’s several places down here at home where the lines are usually pretty easy to see. There’s a timber change or there’s an old fence line or there’s some sort of distinct edge that you can go, that’s probably the line right there. You go to some places where it all looks the same and like I said, not an old fence or anything. And you’re like, I don’t know if I’m good or not. If unless you don’t have those maps to look at and nobody wants a trespassing ticket. I don’t want to trespass at all.

Ramsey Russell: Heck no. Talk about OnX maps offline capabilities. What do I do if I get somewhere and I don’t have cell phone service?

Lake Pickle: Man, I’m glad you said that. I should have brought that up early on when you first asked about why we were so good for hunting. That question gets asked every day, like, because I promise you, our customer service team shout out to them. They’re awesome. They get asked that every day. Emails and phone calls, people are like, man, this app sounds awesome, but I hunt where there’s no cell service. So all you have to do, there’s a thing in OnX called offline maps. And if you know right where you’re going, if you know relatively where you’re going, you can cover yourself. So because you can download different of size. But you go and you select the area, you know that where you’re going to be hunting, you can make – and I always tell people to be generous in case you veer outside of there. But you download that, you download an offline map and then if you go in there, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a single stitch of service, it will operate, the map will work.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, that really does away with me having to go put a map under my coat pocket back in old library days.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: That’s amazing, isn’t it?

Lake Pickle: Hell, yeah.

Ramsey Russell: It offers topographic, satellite and hybrid type maps, what do you use most often? How do these different views enhance the user experience? For example, you and I were starting off talking about those topo maps, man, that’s all I needed. I could find those bottlenecks. I could find which way to cut through or which way the deer might be funneling through or something like that, but put that together for everybody on how they can be used together and interchangeably for a different user experience.

Lake Pickle: Sure. So I tell people almost one of my favorite things within the app is the hybrid base map setting, and that’s because I get aerial imagery as well as the topographic lines. When I was younger, I remember I was so intimidated trying to learn how to read topography. The maps, Topo maps. It is one of the strongest tools you can put in your tool bag as a hunter, regardless of what kind of hunting you’re doing. Fortunately, if you don’t know how to read topographic lines, we have something in the app now called, we have 3D maps on mobile, as well as a thing called 3D elevation exaggeration. What I tell folks, I tell folks, I said, look, if you don’t know how to read Topo, you can turn those 3D maps on and you can teach yourself how to read Topo. Because you can turn the map on 3D and then you can start correlating, when you see kind of a circle right there, that means you’re on a knob or a high point. You can start seeing what saddles look like, what you were talking about funnels, that sort of thing. But I tell folks all the time, I almost never, and I encourage people not to just run their base maps on just satellite imagery. If you’re trying to see something clear, sure, turn it to satellite if you want to just look just at the imagery. But if you’re trying to hunt, especially if you’re in a new place, you’re scouting, have the hybrid maps on or have 3D maps on. Because there was an area near Chula that Primos used to lease out right in the hills, right on the edge of the delta. And if I look at that place on just aerial imagery and I base my scouting. If I was scouting for turkeys just based off the aerial imagery, I would be backwards or I would be so unsure of what to do when I actually got there. Because that place has all the terrain changes.

Ramsey Russell: That’s some steep terrain, too. They aren’t just little hills.

Lake Pickle: Yeah. And you see what I’m saying. So those topo lines tell you that the aerial imagery by itself does not. To the other end of it, if you’re yelping at a turkey and you’re sitting there, he’s gobbling, and you’re trying to, you’re looking at your map, and you’re going, there ain’t no creek, I don’t see any obstruction there, you may be one ridge over from him, there’s a steep holler there that you didn’t know was there because you don’t have your Topo lines on. Topo lines are very important.

Ramsey Russell: I think they’re very important. You talked a little bit about waypoints, route tracking, 3D terrain. What are some examples of how listeners can use this to either explore places they haven’t been or to hunt places they’ve been and kind of plan their trip more effectively?

Lake Pickle: Okay. Yeah. So waypoints are basically, some people do this – I say it sometimes it’s like dropping a pin, you drop a pin on something. So I use that for planning a trip, I use that for a place that I’ve hunted my entire life. And what I mean is, say I’m planning a trip, I’m going somewhere out of state and I’m scouting a piece of public, and I find a spot. I’m like, okay, that looks like a good high point right there, that would be a great spot to walk to before daylight and owl hoot and see if I can hear a turkey gobble. I’m going to drop a waypoint right there. And when you drop a waypoint, you can name it, a certain name. You can change the waypoint colors, you can pick the kind of waypoint, like you can put a deer on there, a turkey, there’s a whole lot of options. And I encourage people all the time, it takes a little bit longer. When I say a little bit longer, I’m talking about just a couple seconds. But I tell people to customize their waypoints because if you don’t, you end up with just a whole lot, it’ll default to just a red X. And if you want to do that, that’s fine. The reason I say that is because I did that for a couple years. And then a lot of my map I pull up is a lot of red X’s.

Ramsey Russell: Deer, ducks, turkeys, whatever.

Lake Pickle: So I got to zoom in on it and click on it and go, oh, I know what that is. So, for instance, it sounds goofy, but to keep myself organized, if during the spring or getting ready for spring, if I mark a spot where I want to go and listen, I put a rabbit waypoint on there because rabbits got big ears. It just helps, it keeps it organized. If a waypoint is the color white that means I have never been there before. It just means I’ve scouted it and that’s somewhere that I possibly want to go. As far as places, you know, not just planning for a new trip, if I’m hunting somewhere this season, the place I’ve been to or whatever. And I see a turkey hear a turkey gobble, whatever, I’m marking that turkey, I’m dropping a waypoint on that turkey because I cannot tell you how many times that I have checked the Rolodex, so to speak. And if I’m having a slow day or whatever, I’m not really sure, I’m like, huh, I found a turkey right in here two years ago and it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t work every time. But sometimes I walk over there and find a turkey right near the same spot. So you just kind of build a memory bank of just places you’re like, that was good habitat over there, let me go check that spot. So yeah, multiple uses there.

Ramsey Russell: Fantastic. What about weather and wind? What role do they play in the hunting feature of OnX?

“Little stuff like that to just help people make decisions quicker, not waste any time, just get the information they need real quick and get to the woods.”

Lake Pickle: Yeah. I mean, we have all the weather data you could want – there’s in the like the top right hand corner, if I remember right, you can hit weather and a pull up weather for your currently where you’re at. And then as far as wind goes, this doesn’t really play in for turkeys, wind isn’t a factor unless it’s so windy you can’t hear them gobble. But for deer hunters, for elk hunters and even for duck hunters, that’s the thing we’re trying to tell folks now, it’s like that some of the wind features we have are very helpful for a duck hunter. So we have a feature called optimal wind. And what that means is if I drop a waypoint on a say a duck blind, okay or a timber hole, whatever. If I drop a waypoint on a place where I want to duck hunt, when I’m setting that waypoint up, if I’ve set it, I put a duck icon on it, all that stuff. If I scroll down to the bottom, there’s an option to set optimal wind or to show current wind. You can do either one. I personally like to set optimal wind and I’ll get in there and it’ll show me kind of like a compass and it’ll say north, northwest, west, southwest, south, give me the whole gamut and I’ll get in there and I’ll say, okay, this duck blind particular hunts really good on a north, northwest or a west. And I set it. Well, if I go back in there now, look, not only does it show me the wind conditions for that day, and if it’s one of the three good ones, it’ll be highlighted green. So I know it’s a good wind. Also can set what’s called a wind calendar. And this has been really popular for people in that have a lot of deer properties, a lot of deer stands or duck clubs where they have a lot of blinds and they’re like, where should we go today? Well, you can pull up the wind calendar within the app and the wind calendar is going to pull up every waypoint you have that has the wind set on it. And it’ll show you several days in advance what the wind’s going to be. And you can find out real quick, like, okay, this blind right here is going to be really good for Saturday and Sunday. And just again, little stuff like that to just help people make decisions quicker, not waste any time, just get the information they need real quick and get to the woods.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve been told, Forrest says, that when he shoots a deer, shoots a turkey, shoot something, that he can also go into that point and take notes. Make little journal entries, take a picture.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

“To where years from now, he may have forgotten that bird or that deer or I don’t know, and it’ll bring him right back to it.”

Ramsey Russell: To where years from now, he may have forgotten that bird or that deer or I don’t know, and it’ll bring him right back to it.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, so I can actually journal and chronicle this stuff at the same time, too.

Lake Pickle: Yeah. And so originally when that was put in there, it’s like the notes in the picture, it was thinking for more of like an information, like just keeping information. But some folks, man, they’ll journal in there like you’re talking about. They’ll have a picture of a turkey and they’ll say, April, whatever. I was with my dad, we had a great hunt. And they’ll have them a little journal in there. It’s pretty cool.

Ramsey Russell: Well, when you start talking about some of these wind features and putting this whole thing together, first off, the developers at OnX seem real open to suggestions. I’m just assuming a lot of these features are coming from people interacting, saying, hey, this would be a great idea. This is what would work or work better. And that’s how it continues to evolve. Speaking of which, how often does Onx update and come up with these new features?

Lake Pickle: Constantly. So one of the thing that’s cool is, is like all the employees will basically beta test these new features, which is great. Because I’d been subject, not at OnX, but places I were prior, I’d seen some things slip as far as, like, stuff that would go out to customers, never went through really any testing and all of a sudden it’s on the shelf and people are spending their hard earned money on it. So at OnX, those features, they all get beta tested and no one, I guess, approaches the beta testing wearing rose glasses. I mean, if it works great, if it’s not, if there’s criticism, tell us about it because they want to know. We don’t want anything turning live on that app until it is ready, which is, and I can appreciate like the compass mode that I was telling you about. That is one of my favorite features in the app. And not just for turkey hunting, but for all kinds. I think about my younger days when I was hunting on Mississippi public land and you’d go, man, they ain’t working us, but they’ve been landing over there all morning. Now, I don’t know what over there is, but if that happened to you, now again, I can turn that compass mode on, I can face it that direction and I can go, that’s about 200ish. There is a hole right there. That compass mode, I can’t remember how many times it got pushed back because it just wasn’t ready. I think it was 2 years ago, we were testing it during spring turkey season and we were all like, guys, when we get this right, it’s going to be awesome. It’s just not there yet. You know, just little bugs and quirks to make to it. And yeah, the engineers, the guys that are actually – I’m a marketer, I’m a hunter and I’m a marketer, but the guys that are actually in there putting this stuff in the app and working on it, they’re awesome. I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how they do it, but I’m glad they do.

Ramsey Russell: You start talking about that optimal wind. I can sit there and study my app and say, man, the wind’s going to be optimal for these locations or this, I wonder how far away OnX maps is from maybe even based on my entries, from a predictive feature saying, hey, based on the last 20 duck hunter, 200 duck hunts you’ve been on, or deer hunts, the weather to this, that the barometric pressure, we suggest you go here. I mean, it could happen.

Lake Pickle: I can’t tell you a time frame on it, not because it’s secret, but because I don’t know. But I can tell you it’s being kicked around.

Ramsey Russell: I guarantee you. I mean, it’s coming. What about the regional regulations in hunting zone? For a guy like me that goes throughout the United States and Canada, how can you all help with something like that?

Lake Pickle: Yeah. Again, growing up down here, we just don’t have to worry about that as much as, like some of the states out west where you have hunting units and stuff like that. But it’s all in the app. I mean, like Montana, for instance, you can turn on. Well, just pull it up while I’m looking here, so I don’t give a misnomer. But I tell people all the time, if they’re discouraged by something that they can’t find in their layers or that they can’t find, go to the layers folder. Because almost always the information you’re looking for is in layers. But again, I’m holding my phone right now, and I have Montana pulled up and there’s Montana Hunting Districts, Montana Possible Access, Montana Block Management, and a lot of those, you know, states out west. Different states that have this zone and that you have to abide by.

Ramsey Russell: Those zones are on there, too. That makes a big difference. Like, I have applied for big game and waterfowl to where you got to know what the heck unit you’re in. I’m like, how the heck do I find out what unit that is?

Lake Pickle: Yeah. Man, I wonder all the time because again, when I’ve been in those situations now I just toggle the map on. Like, I can tell you what unit, some people call them zones, some states call them zones. If I didn’t have this map, man, I’m like, I don’t know how I would figure this out. But now you just toggle the switch on and you can make double sure that you’re legal and doing right.

Ramsey Russell: It’s really truly I’m sitting here, the scale, I mean it’s not just that the capability in my hands when I’m walking out and going to a place in the woods or Golly, I’ve been 5 states over, 20 states over, now all of a sudden when it comes down to the application period, then on the hunt period, then on the documenting period, it’s unbelievable.

Lake Pickle: Yeah, it’s crazy, man. And I’ve learned more about that because again, OnX being based out of Montana and those guys, it’s funny you talk to those guys that grew up in Montana that are so way more used to just part of the common process of hunting is putting in for these kind of draws and putting in for preference points and trying to get drawn for an elk hunt in this state. But it’s again, we try to have resources for all that kind of stuff.

Ramsey Russell: A little bit of deviation from the OnX user experience for hunters. But are you aware of, heard of any like search and rescue teams, conservation groups, law enforcement agencies that also use this app for their work?

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: What are some good stories in that line?

Lake Pickle: Well, I can tell you one that’s close to home. One, almost all the law enforcement officers at Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks use it.

Ramsey Russell: I wonder if you could be sitting in the middle of the wood going no, here’s the boundary.

Lake Pickle: Well, we work with a lot of different states, state agencies and try, but man, and there was, again, a couple of them, a lot of game wardens use the OnX app on the conservation side of things, Anthony Ballard, who’s the black bear program coordinator here in Mississippi, the way him and I kind of started talking was he showed me how he was using the app to mark collard bears that he had to mark dens that he found just using it for his research work. I went down to South Florida 2 years ago with a guy named Marcus Lashley, he’s a wildlife biologist and professor at the University of Florida and we did a whole film on how they were using the hunt app on their turkey research project, marking nesting hens and all that sort of stuff. And so like I said, it’s designed for hunters, it’s designed for people to go out and hunt. But it gets used for all these other things like conservation work. And obviously we love to hear that.

Ramsey Russell: Back in old GPS days, oh gosh, I dreaded those days, especially back when I was having to monument plots and studies 20, 30 years ago. But there was a way to take it from the GPS and upload it into ArcView and different stuff like that. Does OnX lend itself to downloads and doing stuff like that or all in the OnX experience?

Lake Pickle: I know you can do that, but I don’t know how to do it. I know you can. There’s a way for folks to do that if they wanted to, I’ve personally never done it.

Ramsey Russell: Nothing else that’ll give me the long of exactly where I’m standing at these points. So I’m just wondering. I just got thinking ahead one, if there’s a spreadsheet I could download and move it over here and use it elsewhere.

Lake Pickle: Like the KML file. You can do that. And it gives you anywhere you touch on the map when it pulls up like a waypoint or whatever, it gives you the latten long and you can use that to. For whatever you need.

Ramsey Russell: You know, for anybody listening that won’t that wants to get started with OnX you can go to onxmaps and use GETDUCKS20, 20% introductory rate to something like this. But what are some of the other ways. Is there a free version they can use just to get started? What’s the difference in that and the full version? And how can somebody get started that’s been missing out on this?

Lake Pickle: Right. I mean you can download that for free. You can get a 7 day trial for free. And when you get the 7 day trial you can get the elite version. And I tell folks, if you’ve never tried it before, you want to figure out what on it onX Elite is about. Get in there and in those 7 days, use all the features, use every one of them. You know, turn on, go through it.

Ramsey Russell: Figure out what you want, what you don’t.

Lake Pickle: Exactly. And so there’s a couple tiers to it. There’s a premium, which gets you a single state, then there’s premium 2 states, you get 2 states. And then there’s OnX Elite. Elite is obviously that’s kind of like our creme de la creme, so to speak. And Elite gets you the entire country, there’s some Elite specific features, like recent imagery, leaf off imagery, there’s the Elite pro deals, so to speak. We get deals on a bunch of really cool brands and stuff that we work with. What I tell folks, because even when you and I’ve been talking, I feel like I’ve put out a lot of information and I know some folks, I mean, we’ll talk to ambassadors that we work with and have worked with OnX for years, and we’ll start showing them a feature and they’re like, I have no idea that was in there. So we always try to stay cognizant of there’s a whole lot of stuff in that app. And so we try our best to put out resources constantly to make people aware of new features, to let people know how to use them. And so we have this program called OnX Masterclasses. And what that is here’s a perfect example. Every month we put on a OnX Maps 101, and you can register for one of those class. It’s absolutely free. And what it is, it’s like attending a zoom meeting.

Ramsey Russell: Where do I do that?

Lake Pickle: So you can do that at the OnX website, onxmaps.com you can go to the hunt section, you can find the master classes, and you can register for one of those classes. You also see them talked about like we send emails about them, we put them on our social media. But you can register for one of those classes and you can attend it live and you can ask questions. If you don’t want to attend one live, we archive them. So if you’re like, I don’t want to register, I just want to watch a class and that’s fine. You can go to the archives and you can watch them maps 101, those are great. I tell people I’m like, man, if you’re trying to get started and you legitimately just don’t know where to even begin, watch one of those map 101s and it helps a lot.

Ramsey Russell: Heck yeah. That’s unbelievable. If I have OnX on my cell phone, which we all live and die by our cell phones. But with that membership, can I also use it on my tablet and my desktop?

Lake Pickle: Oh yeah, for sure.

Ramsey Russell: So it’s interchangeable.

Lake Pickle: Yeah. See I’m one of the guys – a lot of the guys I work with, think I’m crazy because I rarely use the web map. And when I say web map, that’s means I get on my laptop and log in. And some folks, when they’re doing their Big-E scouting, when they’re planning for trips, they like to get on that, the big map on the big screen and scout like that.

Ramsey Russell: That’s what I’m thinking.

Lake Pickle: I do that sometimes. I absolutely do. But sometimes I’m just at night when I’m having downtime after supper, I’ll just pull the map up on my phone and I start scouting around. But yeah, the same login and stuff will work on your phone, your iPad, your tablet, your laptop, whatever. Yeah, you can use on all of them.

Ramsey Russell: If you had to guess, because I know you’re a big turkey hunter, but you deer hunt, duck hunt too. If you had to guess which hunter, which segment of hunters most uses this? Like where I’m most familiar with OnX is scouting with outfitters and people scouting for waterfowl.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I mean, right off the bat, I know where I’m at. I know who owns the property, who door I need to knock on, that man’s a number one.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: Are waterfowls a bigger user or deer hunters or turkey hunters?

Lake Pickle: I think, man, if I had to guess, I think probably deer hunters would take it. Honestly, simply because they’re the majority. It’s like waterfowl hunters are a slightly smaller subset, turkey hunters. But deer hunting, they’re so readily available. It’s like they’re everywhere.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, well, I’m not going to get into details. I don’t want to mess it up. But I’m going to tell you this, my little mini me, my oldest son used OnX to crack the code of deer hunting at a certain property. It’s unfreaking believable. The results that purely coming off on the X. A lot of the features we’re talking about, what he accomplished this past season was it was mind blowing.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: And it all came from right there on his phone.

Lake Pickle: It’s crazy, isn’t it?

Ramsey Russell: You know, how he decided where to go, when to go, what to do, when to do it, and the instantaneous results of bucks flying everywhere around him. I’m like, this is mind blowing.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You know, maybe I couldn’t have done it with the app, but he sure did.

Lake Pickle: It’s so funny, man. And like I said, I’ve been using it for long enough now, and I’m even closer to it now because I work there. But I thought about just the other day, like, I took my wife and her parents actually came too, we went pheasant hunt hunting in South Dakota this year. And I’ve been doing that for several years. I just get in the truck and I load my dog up and I go. And some places I’ve been hunting year after year. I hit some new spots every year. And I’m just tooling around on the map in South Dakota in a place I’ve never been before. And I’m like, that looks public and the habitat looks good, let’s go there and I get on pheasants. And I’m like, man, before OnX, I would be scared, i’d be like, you want me to just get in my truck and go to South Dakota and try to find some public land? Like, it just seem so much more daunting, so much more hard to pull off where now it just makes that stuff so much more accessible. And it’s awesome and it’s so much fun.

Ramsey Russell: Or even properties you’ve been hunting your whole life.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You know what I’m saying. Because really and true, we talk about disturbance and waterfowl or deer hunting all the time and just the ability to navigate somewhere quietly without a whole lot of fanfare of headlights and motors and stuff like that, and just know I’m going to exactly the right place based on the wind that’s blowing right now.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: You know what I’m saying that’s a huge game changer for the average guy.

Lake Pickle: Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: We talked about the predictive features that maybe they’re torn around with. Are there any other new features and updates on the horizon that Onx Maps users should be excited about? Anything that you can talk about.

Lake Pickle: Yeah, there is. I can’t give a time frame, I wish I could, but we were talking about the importance of topography and the importance of being able to read Topo. We have a feature coming out that, think of it as, like, I don’t want to give, I don’t know, think of it as just incredibly detailed topographic maps and not just topographic lines, but also, being able to look at the map and seeing, like, whether you can read the lines or not, like almost a 3D map look. But think about being able to see even the slightest, I’m talking the slightest terrain changes, the slightest one.

Ramsey Russell: How slight?

Lake Pickle: Like a couple feet. And I’m fired up about it because I’ve seen the beta testing of it. I’ve seen what’s going to look like, man, that is going to be incredible. And so if it makes, I don’t know if it sounds boring or not, I think that’s going to be the next one – because, like, the last kind of like, mic drop feature we came out with was Car Play. I mean, you can have it in the dash of the truck. And I mean, obviously we’ve come out with different features.

Ramsey Russell: I’ve seen that. I used it this year. It’s unbelievable.

Lake Pickle: Yeah, it’s fun. But, yeah, I think when that new topography, I don’t want to put the name because I don’t know if they’ll tweak the name or not. I think when that comes out, people are going to like that one a lot. I really do.

Ramsey Russell: I know you’re in the waterfowl space, the hunt space, but I just got to think, when you start talking about micro features and stuff on the terrain, what about the water? If I’m using OnX maps, I mean, is it going – is it possible to show me the water depth?

Lake Pickle: Yeah. So, going back to recent imagery. So recent imagery, you toggle that on and again, it’s imagery that’s going to be around 2 weeks old. The other thing about that is it has a date slider on it so you can toggle back through the dates. And one thing that I do for turkey hunt and place that duck hunt along the river, where the river gets outside the banks, the water gets up. I can toggle back through that date slider and I can go through when river came up and I can kind of see what the water does in that area. So if I go look at a gauge, I can go back and I can kind of get just some relative idea of what that’s going to do and what the land’s going to be like when the river’s at a certain depth. The other thing is with those 3D maps is, you can kind of figure out like what’s going to flood first because you can pick out like that’s the lowest part, like that’s going to be holding water before anything else does. And if you’re hunting along a river system or like along the Mississippi river inside the levees where we used to hunt, that’s a big factor. Very big factor. Yeah.

Ramsey Russell: I know your favorite feature is that compass.

Lake Pickle: I love it.

Ramsey Russell: What is the one or two features of OnX map that you hear the most about? Car Play? I mean, I know I was blown away when it came up on Car Play and we were navigating. That was unbelievable.

“When that happened, people were just like, oh my gosh. You know the second one we talked about forest tracker, people love tracker just because a variety of different reasons.”

Lake Pickle: I think probably the man – I’m going to give you three that I hear the most about. So the Car Play is absolutely one of them. When that happened, people were just like, oh my gosh. You know the second one we talked about forest tracker, people love tracker just because a variety of different reasons. And the third one, as funny as it may sound, but people, they eat it up, they love it. There is a thing in there called two finger distance. And two finger distance, it’s when you take the phone and you pull the map up and I mean all it is, is a quick way to get a distance is all it is. So you get there, you get two fingers pressed on the screen and there’s your distance right there.

Ramsey Russell: Yeah, I’ve never seen that.

Lake Pickle: Yeah, and like I said, that’s not like a groundbreaking thing you could get the distance other ways, but people just like going boop and getting that distance and oh, it’s 400 yards across there, it’s mile and a half something like that. People time and time again, they think that two finger distance is just the coolest thing. So yeah, I mean it is useful, but it’s not just the most groundbreaking thing. People love it.

Ramsey Russell: Lake, I appreciate all your time, but deep dive, I’ve learned a bunch about OnX Maps today. How can listeners connect with you?

Lake Pickle: Man, if for me, I’m pretty easy to find because I’ve got such an odd name. I mean, I’m just Lake Pickle on all the different social channels. If you want to find OnX Hunt, same deal. You can go on Instagram and just type in OnX Hunt. Same thing on Facebook. Same thing on YouTube. YouTube, we put a lot of hunting videos and entertaining content out there. But we also, like I said, we have a lot of resources like, master classes, masterclass clips, short videos on how to use certain features. So the YouTube channel, we have a lot of good stuff in there. But yeah, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok even, we’re on all of them.

Ramsey Russell: Any final advice for people heading to the blind or the woods anytime soon? Any final parting shot from on OnX?

Lake Pickle: Stay safe, use your maps, and enjoy it while you’re out there.

Ramsey Russell: Thank you, Lake.

Lake Pickle: Yes, sir.

Ramsey Russell: Greatly appreciate you. And folks, thank you all for listening to this episode of MOJO’s Duck Season Somewhere podcast, where we’ve been doing a pretty deep dive in Onx maps. Here’s what I want to hear. I want to hear what you all favorite features are. What are some of your features that you all are using? Comment below or hit me up in the inbox. I look forward to hearing from you. See you next time.

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