Buckmoon Privacy Policy

At a Glance

Buckmoon shows hunting times for whitetail deer hunters in the United States. It has no accounts and shows no ads. Your spots, stands, sits and sightings are stored on your device, and Buckmoon never sends the exact location of a spot or stand to its servers: to get the weather, the app sends only the grid cell around a spot, an area about 5 km across. Maps and place search come from Apple on iPhone. On Android, which shows no map, place search comes from your device's geocoding service, usually provided by Google. These providers see the map areas, searches and coordinates involved. Usage statistics and crash reports help us fix and improve the app. We do not sell your information.

This policy covers iOS and Android. The Live Activity and Apple ad attribution described below are iOS features; on Android, a sit in progress shows as an ongoing notification instead.

1. Information We Process

1.1 Your Spots and Stands

The spots and stands you save — their exact coordinates, names, stand type, the direction deer come from, the winds that suit each stand, and your notes — are stored on your device and are never sent to Buckmoon's servers. Sunrise, sunset, moon times and legal light are computed on your device.

1.2 Weather Requests

To get the weather for a spot, the app rounds its coordinates to a grid of 0.05 degrees and sends our server only that grid cell, an area about 5 km across. Our server fetches the cell's hourly weather from Apple WeatherKit and looks up its time zone. The result is cached for each cell for 30 to 120 minutes, shared by everyone who asks about that cell, and not linked to any installation.

To stop misuse, each installation can ask about at most 20 different cells a day. To count them, our server keeps a keyed hash of the installation and the cell — never the cell itself — and each entry expires 24 hours after it was last used. Our server also counts requests per installation to limit their rate.

Like any online service, our server sees the IP address each request comes from. Its request logs record that address but never the cell you asked about.

1.3 Location Permission

Buckmoon asks for your location only when you tap "Use my location" or "Current location", and only while you are using the app. It asks for approximate location by default (on Android it requests approximate location only), and it never uses location in the background. If you decline, you can search a town or ZIP code, drop a pin or paste coordinates instead. You can change location permission in your device's settings.

1.4 Maps and Place Search

Maps, place search and place names are requested by your device directly: on iPhone from Apple (MapKit and its geocoding service), and on Android, which shows no map, from the geocoding service built into your device, which on most Android devices is provided by Google. These providers receive the map areas you view, what you type into search, and the coordinates used to look up a place's name or state, and handle them under their own privacy policies.

1.5 Your Log

Your sits, sightings, the conditions saved with them, notes and spot names are stored on your device and in your own device backups (iCloud Backup on iPhone, device backup on Android). Buckmoon has no cloud sync, and our servers never receive your log. Exports — sits as CSV, stands as GPX or KML — are created on your device only when you ask, can include exact coordinates, and go wherever you choose to send them.

1.6 Heads-ups and the Live Activity

Heads-ups — before a best window, the night before a strong day and, with Pro, ahead of a cold front — are worked out and scheduled on your device as local notifications. Buckmoon does not use push notifications and does not register a push token with our servers. The Live Activity that shows a sit on the iPhone Lock Screen, and the ongoing notification on Android, are updated on your device. You can turn notifications and Live Activities off in your device's settings.

1.7 No Account

There is nothing to sign up for. Buckmoon uses Apple's App Attest on iOS and Android Keystore hardware-backed key attestation on Android. The private key stays on your device; our server processes and keeps the public key, attestation evidence and key identifier to authenticate weather requests, limit them per installation and protect the service from misuse. These device credentials are not a Buckmoon user account and contain no location.

1.8 Usage Statistics, Diagnostics and Ad Attribution

To understand how Buckmoon is used and to find and fix problems, Buckmoon on iPhone sends us:

usage events, such as screens viewed, taps on Buckmoon's controls, where a Pro screen was opened from, permission results, a sit starting, being saved or ending by itself, and the export format you chose; and purchase events (product, price, currency and transaction identifiers);
crash reports, hang reports and performance measurements, such as stack traces and how long requests take;
App Store ad attribution: if you installed Buckmoon after tapping an Apple Search Ads ad, Apple's AdServices framework gives Buckmoon a token that we use to learn which campaign led to the install, together with your tracking-permission status and country. Buckmoon does not access your device's advertising identifier (IDFA) and does not ask for permission to track you.

These carry a random installation identifier that Buckmoon stores in the iOS keychain, where it can remain after you delete and reinstall the app, along with your app version, device model, iOS version and language.

On Android, Buckmoon sends usage events of the same kind, with random installation identifiers stored in the app's own storage, app and Android versions, device model and language. It does not use Android's advertising ID.

On either platform, usage events never include coordinates or grid cells, your state or time zone, the names of your spots or stands, notes, search terms, what you saw on a sit, weather readings or ratings. Nothing is sent from simulator, debug or test builds.

1.9 Purchases

Buckmoon Pro is sold through the App Store or Google Play. Apple or Google processes the payment and tells Buckmoon whether your subscription is active, which is all the app needs to unlock Pro. We never receive your payment-card details.

1.10 Feedback

When you send feedback, we receive what you write and anything you choose to add, such as photos or an email address. On iPhone, attached photos are re-encoded to remove location and other metadata, and your device model, iOS version and app version are included unless you switch them off. We use feedback only to respond to you and improve Buckmoon.

2. How We Use Information

We use this information to:

fetch the weather and time zone for the areas around your spots;
recognize your installation and protect Buckmoon's service from misuse;
unlock Pro for an active subscription;
diagnose crashes and failures, measure performance and improve features;
understand which App Store campaigns bring people to Buckmoon;
respond to your feedback.

We do not sell your information, and we do not share it with third parties for their own advertising.

3. Platform Services and Service Providers

Weather comes from Apple WeatherKit. Our server asks WeatherKit for a grid cell's weather by the cell's center; no information about you is sent with it. Weather data from Apple Weather; Apple lists its data sources and their legal attribution at developer.apple.com/weatherkit/data-source-attribution.
Maps, place search and place names use Apple's MapKit and geocoding on iPhone, and the device's geocoding service on Android, as described in 1.4.
Purchases are processed by Apple through the App Store and by Google through Google Play, under their own terms and privacy policies.
App Attest and ad attribution are provided by Apple; hardware-backed key attestation is part of Android.
Time zones are looked up on our server from timezone-boundary-builder boundary data, which is made available under the Open Database License (ODbL); nothing is sent to anyone else for this.

Our servers run on cloud infrastructure that processes data on our behalf. Data may be processed in countries other than the one where you live, including outside the United States. Where required, we use appropriate safeguards for international transfers.

4. Retention and Deletion

Deleting the app removes everything Buckmoon stored on your device. Copies in your device backups are kept or removed according to your own backup settings.
In the app you can delete a sighting, a sit, a stand (its sits stay in your log) or a spot (together with its stands and sits).
Besides your installation's device credential and the statistics and diagnostics in the next point, our servers keep nothing about you: weather is cached by area for 30 to 120 minutes, and the hashed entries that cap the cells an installation asks about expire 24 hours after their last use.
Usage events are deleted after 90 days, performance measurements after 30 to 90 days, crash reports after one year, and ad-attribution and purchase records after two years. Statistics computed from them, such as daily totals, may be kept longer.
Buckmoon has no account, so there is no account to delete. Cancelling Pro is done with the Apple or Google account used to buy it; deleting the app does not cancel it.

5. Your Choices

You can use Buckmoon without granting location, delete any sighting, sit, stand or spot, and turn heads-ups on or off in Settings. Permissions can be changed in your device's settings. Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete or receive a copy of your personal information; contact us to exercise a right that is not available directly in the app. Because Buckmoon has no account, we may not be able to find records that relate to you.