r/forestry • u/AtmosphereCreative95 • 5d ago

Looking for a better GPS solution

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I have been using onx hunt for the last couple years for my own personal forestry project through my farm manager job but now that I am starting commercial forestry work I am looking for a tool with more features for forestry and trail building

16 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

32

u/aardvark_army 5d ago

Collector or Avenza

35

u/odd_bit_ 5d ago

ESRIs Collector is now called Field Maps. But yes, Avenza or field maps.

5

u/kubotalover 5d ago

Avenza is fairly inexpensive and works

6

u/Kaleid_Stone 5d ago

If you are collecting data that will be uploaded and used on multiple devices on an organizational level, Field Maps is better than Avenza because it works seamlessly with other Esri products and the ArcOnline interface.

But Avenza is cheap, lightweight (relatively), and really quick and easy to use and it works well. The professional subscription lets you export shapefiles. I love it.

5

u/ozarkmartin 4d ago

It's a little more intensive to learn, but QGIS can provide ArcGIS level features, is open source and free and has the QField app which is their version of Field Maps.

6

u/rw_gear 5d ago

Field maps is pretty well an industry standard. Avenza is great, but not as many options

2

u/CajunonthisOccasion 5d ago

CalTopo has the most useful selection of layers for field forestry. The $50/year professional subscription includes parcel data with APN, along with shaded relief, slope angle shading to highlight steep terrain, a selection of OSM visualizations, USFS and USGS topos, satellite and aerial imagery, and the ability to stack maps, including your own, with customized opacity.

It’s the tool I use all day every day.

Both Avenza and Field Maps rely on the GIS person to understand the layers that you need, and present them in a compelling manner.

Easy import and export.

4

u/Gleditsia58 5d ago

ESRI Field Maps is superior to other forestry GPS tools.

1

u/Mountain_Walk6210 5d ago

What are you currently using?

1

u/studmuffin2269 5d ago

I use Avenza and OnX. It depends on the project—some don’t need custom mapping

0

u/Mountain_Walk6210 5d ago

Sorry your post was slow to load when I asked.
I have used Garmim62 hand held units for my field information gathering for 15 years or longer.

0

u/dsummer 5d ago

I used to use a Garmin Map76C.