Hunt Planner

An unofficial, data-driven website for comparing big-game hunts across Utah, Colorado, Idaho, and Wyoming.

Live site: huntplanner.web.app

What is included

• State-specific hunt filters, seasons, weapons, quotas, draw data, and harvest survey results where the wildlife agency publishes them.
• Preference-point draw curves with an estimated P50 draw time.
• An opportunity score that combines estimated draw time and harvest success.
• Interactive hunt-boundary maps colored by harvest, draw time, or opportunity.
• Full-screen 3D hunt maps with satellite/topographic basemaps, terrain, and BLM surface-management status.
• Shareable hunt links, agency boundary links, and a contact page for data corrections.

The app currently ingests data from:

• Utah Division of Wildlife Resources
• Colorado Parks and Wildlife
• Idaho Department of Fish and Game
• Wyoming Game and Fish Department

Getting started

The generated hunt data and map boundaries are committed to the repository, so you do not need to run the ingestion pipeline for normal development.

git clone https://github.com/SamuelSauce/hunt-planner.git
cd hunt-planner
npm ci
npm run dev

Other common commands:

npm run build
npm run lint
npm run content:validate

Editorial publishing

The static content build turns the structured hunt datasets and Markdown files in content/journal/ into crawlable hunt pages, journal articles, disclosure pages, an XML sitemap, and an RSS feed. It runs automatically after the Vite build.

Each journal article must include a complete metadata block, an original image, current official sources, clearly labeled anecdotal field reports, and a link to a matching Hunt Planner record. Run the content validator before previewing or publishing.

Automated journal publications must be prepared on a dated topic branch and submitted as a ready-for-review pull request to main; they must not be pushed directly to main. After validation, add the codex and codex-automation labels when available, verify the final diff and required checks, merge the pull request, fast-forward the local main, rebuild, and deploy that exact post-merge output to Firebase Hosting.

The canonical public origin and site identity live in site.config.json. SITE_URL can temporarily override the canonical origin during a static-content build, and GOOGLE_SITE_VERIFICATION can override the Search Console token.

Refreshing source data

The Utah and Colorado PDF importers require pdftotext, which is provided by Poppler:

# macOS
brew install poppler

# Ubuntu or Debian
sudo apt install poppler-utils

Run every importer with:

npm run ingest:all

Individual state and boundary importers are also available in package.json. Downloaded PDFs and web pages are cached in the ignored work/ directory at the repository root. A fresh clone creates and populates this directory automatically as the importers run.

To share a cache between checkouts or Git worktrees, set HUNT_PLANNER_WORK_DIR to an absolute path:

HUNT_PLANNER_WORK_DIR="$HOME/.cache/hunt-planner" npm run ingest:all

Without that environment variable, each checkout keeps an independent cache in its own work/ directory.

Deployment

The app builds to static files in dist/client/ and is configured for Firebase Hosting:

npm run build
firebase deploy --only hosting

The Firebase configuration publishes the canonical site at huntplanner.web.app. The former generated hostname serves the same build with canonical links to the new address so origin-scoped guest scouting data remains available during the migration.

Data notes

Draw odds and harvest reports are historical and do not guarantee future draw or hunting outcomes. State systems differ, so the app preserves state-specific terminology and displays only the fields supported by each source.

This project is not affiliated with any state wildlife agency. Always verify current regulations, season dates, boundaries, and application rules with the official agency before applying or hunting.