New app guides Victorian hunters

A new smartphone app with season dates, bag limits, details of where you can hunt and much more has been released for game hunters by Game Victoria – and it even includes a duck call.

Agriculture and Food Security Minister Peter Walsh announced the new app last week, saying it will be available to Victoria’s 42,000 licensed recreational game hunters so they can check when, where and how they could legally hunt game.

“It uses a GPS function to direct hunters to the closest or any nominated State Game Reserve,” he said. “It even imitates the calls of our game ducks.”

The app includes:

hunting season dates
legal hunting times for any game species, location and day
bag limits
game species information and illustrations
game ducks calls
access to online deer hunting maps
GPS directions to State Game Reserves
firearm safety information
contacts list, including the ability to report suspected illegal hunting activity.

It follows the release almost a year ago of a similar app for Victorian fishers, and is one of many that the Department of Primary Industries has produced for a range of uses.

The NSW Game Council is working on a similar app for hunters in that state.

The Victorian hunting app is available for iPhone and Android devices from the iTunes store and Google Play. For more information, visit www.dpi.vic.gov.au/huntingapp or call the DPI on 136 186.

Mick Matheson

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Mick grew up with guns and journalism, and has included both in his career. A life-long hunter, he has long-distant military experience and holds licence categories A, B and H. In the glory days of print media, he edited six national magazines in total, and has written about, photographed and filmed firearms and hunting for more than 15 years.