BushytailBushytail privacy policy
Last updated: November 14, 2026
Bushytail is a map app for squirrel and small game hunters. It has no accounts, no ads and no tracking.
What stays on your phone
- Your location. The app uses it to show the blue dot, to measure how far things are from you, and to drop a pin where you're standing. It is never sent to us.
- Your tracks. If you press Record, the app keeps reading your location until you press Stop, including while the screen is off and the phone is in your pocket, and saves the line you walked. While that is happening an Android phone shows a notification and an iPhone shows its own location marker. When you are not recording, the app reads your location only while it is open on the screen.
- Your pins, with their names and notes.
- Photos you add to a pin. The app uses the camera only when you press "Take a photo," and never the microphone. "Choose a photo" opens your phone's own photo picker, so the app sees only the pictures you pick, not the rest of your library. Each photo is shrunk before it is saved, and the hidden details a camera writes into a picture, the place it was taken included, are left out.
- The map files you download and the map areas you save for offline use.
We have no server that receives any of this. We couldn't look at it if we wanted to.
When the app goes online
- To fetch satellite, road and topo map pictures from the U.S. Geological Survey. Like any website, the USGS can see your phone's internet address and which pieces of the map were asked for. That shows roughly what area you were looking at. It does not include your GPS position or your pins.
- To download the state map files (public land, trees, property list) from our file host, Cloudflare. Cloudflare sees your phone's internet address and that the files were downloaded.
- To ask that same host, about once a day when the app is open, whether corrected map files exist. It is a request for one small file. Nothing about you or where you are goes with it.
- When you save a map area for offline use, to fetch one small settings file from that same host, along with the map pictures themselves from the USGS.
- When you tap a link to a Wisconsin DNR web page, your browser opens that page.
- When you tap "Directions" on a pin or "Drive here" on a piece of land, the app opens Google Maps with that one spot as the destination. If the Google Maps app isn't on your phone, it opens Google's maps website in your browser. Google's own privacy policy covers what happens there. Nothing goes to Google unless you tap one of those two.
- When you press "Forecast" on a pin or "Forecast here" on a piece of land, the app sends that one spot (rounded to about 30 feet) to the U.S. National Weather Service (api.weather.gov) to get its forecast. The Weather Service sees the spot and your phone's internet address. Nothing else goes with it, and nothing goes unless you press it.
- When you press "Contact us" or "Something wrong with this land? Tell us," your phone's email app opens with a message to us already started. A land report fills in the place's name and the spot you tapped, plus the app's version and your phone's system version. Nothing is sent until you press send in your email app, and you can delete any of it first.
That's the whole list.
Saving and sharing your pins, tracks and photos
"Save a copy" writes your pins to a file and opens your phone's share menu. The file holds the pins, not their photos. "Share" on a track does the same for that one track, and "Share" on a photo sends that one picture. Where a file goes after that is up to you. A track file shows where you walked and when. A shared photo does not carry the spot it was taken.
Deleting your information, and changing your mind
Everything the app keeps is on your phone, so you are the one who deletes it. Delete a pin, a photo or a track in the app and it is gone. Delete the app and all of it is gone, map files included. There is no copy anywhere else for us to delete, apart from any backup your phone made for you (below).
You can take back the permissions you gave at any time in your phone's settings, under Bushytail: turn off location, switch it to approximate, or turn off the camera. The app keeps working as a map. It will tell you when something you ask for needs a permission that is off.
Phone backups
If your phone backs itself up to Apple or Google, your pins and tracks may be included in your own backup, under your own account. That is between you and them. We never see it.
Photos are handled differently on the two kinds of phone. On Android, the automatic backup leaves the photos out, because it is too small to hold pictures. A phone restored from that backup gets its pins back without them. On an iPhone, the photos are part of your own phone backup like the rest.
Children
Bushytail doesn't collect information from anyone, kids included.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted at this address with a new date.