Privacy Policy

CA Hunt & Fish Guide — effective September 17, 2026

The short version

CA Hunt & Fish Guide is published by Antonio Esquivel, an individual in California. The app has no accounts, no analytics, no advertising, and no trackers of any kind. There is no server behind it. The developer receives no personal information about you, holds none, sells none, and shares none.

Everything you enter into the app — your licence and tag records, your dive log, your equipment list, your waypoints, your watched places, your settings — is written to a file inside the app on your own device. The app never sends any of it anywhere, and the developer never receives it. One thing does leave your phone, and it is not the app doing it: if you back up your iPhone, iOS puts these files in that backup, the same as it does for other apps. That is between you and Apple, and section 2 says exactly what is known about it.

The app does make requests over the internet, and this policy says exactly which ones, to whom, and what they carry. Section 4 is the important one, and it is more detailed than most privacy policies because the honest answer needs the detail.

1. What the developer collects about you

Nothing.

There is no sign-up, no login, no email list, no crash reporting, no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no advertising identifier, no fingerprinting, and no server that could receive your data even if the app tried to send it. The developer cannot identify you, cannot tell how many times you opened the app, cannot tell what you looked at, and cannot connect anything in this app to you.

Because nothing is collected, there is nothing to sell, nothing to share, and nothing to disclose to anyone for their direct marketing purposes — and the developer does none of those things.

2. What is stored on your device, itemised

All of the following is written inside the app's own container on your device — most of it as files in Application Support, and the preference-shaped items in the app's own preferences store. The app sends none of it to the developer or to anyone else, and there is no server it could be sent to. All of it is removed when you delete the app. The one exception is an iPhone backup, described at the end of this section.

• Your wallet. The documents you tell the app you hold: licences, validations, stamps, report cards, and tags. For each one, whatever you chose to enter — the document number, the licence year or season year, purchase and printed valid-through dates, harvest and report-filed dates, a title you gave it, and your own notes. Also your GO ID if you enter one, your hunter-education proof (which kind, and the detail you typed), and any course records you add, including certificate numbers.
• Your dive log. Each entry's date, the spot, maximum depth, the depth at which you saw fish, species seen, species taken, visibility, water temperature, a tide note, and your own notes.
• Your equipment list. The catalogue identifiers of the items you say you own, plus any nickname you give them and the date you added them. The app deliberately stores no free-text ballistics of any kind.
• Your waypoints. A name, a note, and the coordinates you saved.
• Your watched places. Which lakes, zones or places you are watching, their names, and when you added them.
• Your saved trips. For each trip you save: the places you chose, the dates you chose, the conditions you set and the numbers you set them to, the activity, and the result of the last run — which places matched, which did not, which could not be checked, and when each reading behind that answer was taken. Saved on your device, in the app's own files, like everything else in this list, together with the plan exactly as it read when you saved it — the same text the app's "Copy this plan" writes out, with the sources and read times it carried then. Re-running a saved trip keeps the text you saved until you choose to keep the new one. The developer never receives a saved trip, and there is no account to attach one to.
• Your settings and profile. Residency, interests, which activities your checklist covers, the onboarding flag, and your map layer preferences.
• Your acceptance of the Terms of Use. Which version you accepted, when, and which app version you accepted it in.
• The regulations dataset itself, downloaded from the app's file host, and the app's own record of it: which version you have, which update channel it came from, when the app last checked for a new one and when a check last failed, and which version your reminders were last scheduled against.
• Whether you are a founding user. The app asks Apple, once, for its signed record of when your Apple Account first obtained this app, and keeps the answer — yes or no, and that date — so the question does not have to be asked again and so it still works offline. That record comes from Apple to your device; it is not sent anywhere, and the developer never sees it.
• Which subscription you have already been shown the terms for. If you subscribe, the app keeps Apple's identifier for that subscription so it shows you the summary of what you bought, and how to cancel it, once rather than after every renewal. It is Apple's identifier for the purchase, not for you, and it is not sent anywhere.
• Map tiles you have looked at. When a topographic or nautical layer is switched on, the tile images downloaded for the area on your screen are kept in the app's cache folder so the map still draws where there is no signal. That cache is a record, on your own phone, of which parts of the map you have viewed. iOS may clear it at any time, deleting the app clears it, and nothing about it is sent anywhere.
• Depth contours you have looked at. With the Depth overlay on, the contour lines and depth areas NOAA returned for the areas on your screen are held by the app so panning back over water you have already looked at does not ask NOAA again. Like the tile cache above, that is a record, on your own phone, of which stretches of coast you have looked at. It is held only while the app is running — closing the app discards it — and nothing about it is sent anywhere.
• Water-quality readings you have looked at. When the Water quality layer is switched on, the State's bacteria results for the monitoring stations on your screen are kept in the app's own file (beach_water_quality_cache.json), together with when each station was last asked about, so the screens still work with no signal. Like the tile cache above, that file is a record, on your own phone, of which stretches of coast you have looked at. Deleting the app clears it, and nothing about it is sent anywhere.

Backups

If you back up your iPhone to iCloud or to a computer, iOS decides what goes into that backup, and these files live in the app's Application Support folder, which iOS ordinarily includes. That backup is between you and Apple under Apple's terms. The developer does not control it, never sees it, and cannot read it.

3. Your records are yours

Everything you entered can be viewed, edited, and deleted inside the app, on the screen where it was created — the wallet, the dive log, the equipment list, the waypoint list, the watchlist, and Settings. Deleting a record deletes it from the file on your device.

Five of the items in section 2 are the app's own bookkeeping rather than something you entered, and they have no delete button of their own: the record of which version of the Terms you accepted and when, the app's record of the dataset, whether you are a founding user, which subscription you have already been shown the terms for, and the cached map tiles. The first four exist so the app behaves correctly and the fifth so the map draws offline; none is sent anywhere, and all five go when the app is deleted.

Deleting the app removes everything at once. There is no copy on any server, so there is nothing to ask the developer to delete and no request process to go through: the delete button in the app, and deleting the app, are the whole mechanism.

4. Location, precisely

Your GPS position stays on your phone. When you use "Where am I?", the location fix is compared against boundary data already stored on the device, and the answer is computed there. The fix is not sent to the developer, to any server, or to anyone else. There is no code path in the app that sends your device's position over the network.

What does leave the device is the places you look at, not where you are. These are two different things, and the old version of this policy blurred them. Specifically:

• Map tiles. When you pan or zoom the map with a topographic or nautical layer switched on, the app asks the U.S. Geological Survey (basemap.nationalmap.gov) or NOAA (encdirect.noaa.gov) for the tiles covering the area on your screen. Those servers therefore see which part of California you are looking at. Tiles already fetched are kept in the app's cache on your device, so the same area asked for again may not produce a request at all. And, with the Depth overlay on, the app asks that same NOAA service for the depth contours covering the area on your screen. That request carries the corner coordinates of your screen, so that server sees which stretch of coast you are looking at — the same shape of disclosure as the tiles themselves. It is made when the map comes to rest, not while you are moving it, and not at all when you are zoomed out past the point where the app draws depth.
• The standard base map is Apple's, drawn by MapKit, which is part of iOS. When Apple's base map is displayed, Apple receives the map region being drawn, under Apple's privacy policy, the same as in any other app that shows a map.
• Elevation. When you press and hold a point on the map, the coordinate readout opens and automatically asks the USGS elevation service (epqs.nationalmap.gov) for that point's elevation. You do not have to tap anything more for that request to go out, so it is worth being plain about: opening the readout sends that coordinate. It is a point you chose on the map, not a reading of where you are — but if you press where you are standing, it is the same point, and you should know that. Opening a waypoint you saved earlier does not send anything; the elevation request happens only on the readout for a point you just pressed.
• Depth. When the Depth overlay is switched on and you press and hold a point on the map, the coordinate readout also asks NOAA's ENC Direct service (encdirect.noaa.gov) what depth its nautical charts give for that point. Like the elevation request above, it goes out automatically when the readout opens — you do not have to tap anything more — so that server sees the point you pressed. It is a point you chose on the map, not a reading of where you are, but if you press where you are standing it is the same point. When the Depth overlay is off, the app makes no depth request at all, and the readout shows no depth row. Opening a waypoint you saved earlier sends nothing. That service is already named above for the chart tiles; the Depth overlay adds no new host.
• Weather, tides, buoys and ocean data. These are fetched for coordinates and station identifiers that the app already publishes in its dataset — a lake, a zone, a named tide station, a named buoy — not for your position. They go to the National Weather Service (api.weather.gov), NOAA tides and currents (api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov), the National Data Buoy Center (www.ndbc.noaa.gov), and NOAA CoastWatch (coastwatch.noaa.gov).
• Water-quality readings. When the Water quality layer on the map is switched on, the app asks the California Open Data Portal (data.ca.gov) for the State's bacteria results at the monitoring stations for the beaches currently on your screen. The request names those station codes, so that server sees which stretch of coast you are looking at — the same shape of disclosure as the map tiles above. It does not carry your position, and the app makes no water-quality request at all while that layer is off. The answers are cached on your device (see section 2) so the screens still work with no signal.
• Running a trip plan. When you run a trip, the app asks the agencies named above about the places in that trip — the National Weather Service (api.weather.gov) for the forecast and any alerts, NOAA tides and currents (api.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov), the National Data Buoy Center (www.ndbc.noaa.gov) and NOAA CoastWatch (coastwatch.noaa.gov). It contacts no host that is not already named in this section. Readings this app collects centrally rather than on your phone — stream gauge flows, for one — arrive with the dataset download described below and cost your device no request at all. Each request the app does make names a place or a station the app already publishes in its dataset — a lake, a zone, a named tide station, a numbered buoy — and never your position. Those servers therefore see which places you asked about, which is the same shape of disclosure as the map tiles above, at the moment you press the button rather than continuously.
• How the app chooses which places to ask about, and how to stop it. If you use the "use my location" button to start a trip, the app reads your GPS position once, matches it against boundary and place data already on the device, and uses the matched place from then on. That fix is not sent to the developer, to any server, or to anyone else, and there is no code path in the app that could send it. But being honest about that requires saying the rest of it: which places the app then asks about is a consequence of where you were standing. A server that answers for five places within an hour's drive of you, seconds after you pressed that button, can infer roughly where you are, even though nothing in the request says so. The opt-out is exact and always available: type a place name instead, or pick a place you saved earlier, and the app never reads your position at all. The button is one-shot and never automatic; nothing reads GPS unless you tap it.
• Dataset downloads. The regulations dataset and these legal pages come from the app's static file host on GitHub Pages (fernando-enterprise-llc.github.io). That includes the files a subscription unlocks. Taking the regulations dataset itself first: The download is the same for everyone and carries nothing about what you bought — every device asks for the same files and receives the same bytes — and whether your device is entitled to Pro is decided on the device from Apple's signed transaction record, after the files have arrived, so the file host is never told which tier you hold, never asked to check one, and has no account, sign-in or token to check it against.

Three smaller files sit beside that dataset and work differently, and it is worth being plain about them rather than leaving you to work it out. CDFW's waterfowl hunt results, CDFW's deer harvest table and the operator directory are bytes only a device that can open a Pro planner screen has any use for, so before asking for them the app decides — on your own device, from the same signed record — whether it can open one, and if it cannot it does not ask for them at all. Which of those three a device asks for is therefore not identical for every reader, and a host that kept request logs could tell the two groups apart from the file names alone. Nothing in any of those requests names you, your device, your purchase or your position, there is no server of the developer's anywhere in that path, and the developer keeps no logs of any of it.

• Links you tap. If you tap "Open in Apple Maps" or "Open in Google Maps" for a coordinate or a saved waypoint, that coordinate is handed to Apple or Google in the link, and their privacy policies apply from that point. That only ever happens when you tap it.

Every one of those requests carries your device's IP address to the server that answers it, the same as opening any web page. Several of them also carry a line identifying the app and the developer — "CAHuntFishGuide/1.0 (svpguru@gmail.com)" or the same in a slightly different form — because the National Weather Service and NOAA require a caller to identify itself and refuse requests that do not. That line names the developer, never you. The developer receives nothing from any of these requests, keeps no logs, runs no server in the path, and has no account to attach anything to. Those servers are run by the agencies and companies named, under their own privacy practices, not the developer's.

5. Notifications

Season reminders, deadline reminders and wallet reminders are local notifications scheduled by the app on your device. There is no push server, no push certificate, and no notification service in between. Nothing about a reminder leaves your phone, and the reminders still work with the phone in airplane mode.

6. Purchases

The optional subscription — CA Hunt & Fish Pro — are sold and billed by Apple through your Apple Account. Apple handles the payment; the developer never sees your payment details, your name, your billing address, or your Apple Account. Which tier your device is entitled to is determined on the device from Apple's own signed transaction record, and whether you are a founding user is determined the same way, from Apple's signed record of when your account first obtained the app. Both of those come from Apple to your device and go no further. Apple's handling of that data is governed by Apple's privacy policy. Refunds are handled by Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.

7. Do Not Track

This app does not track you over time or across other apps or websites, and no third party collects information about your activity through it. Because the app does not conduct that kind of tracking at all, there is nothing for it to change in response to a browser or system "Do Not Track" signal, and it does not respond to one.

8. Other parties

No. There is no analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, no attribution SDK, no session-replay script, and no third-party tracker of any kind in this app. No other party collects personally identifiable information about your activities over time or across different websites or apps through your use of it.

The servers named in section 4 receive the individual requests described there and nothing more, and they are government agencies and platform providers operating under their own published practices.

9. Health and safety information

The app shows state and federal health-related information about *places* — water-quality and bacteria readings, fish-consumption advisories, and safety notices — attributed to the agency that published them, with the date. That information describes a location on the day it was sampled or issued. It is not a determination about you, about your health, or about whether anything is safe to do, and the app makes no such determination. The app collects no health information about anyone.

10. Children

The app is not directed to children. It is rated 13+, its subject is state hunting and fishing regulation, and it has no accounts, no messaging, no user-generated content shared with anyone, and no advertising. It collects no personal information from anyone, of any age, including no transmitted location information.

11. California consumer notice

The publisher of this app is Antonio Esquivel, an individual, reachable at svpguru@gmail.com or by mail at 7410 Alpine Boulevard, Alpine, CA 91901-2276. CA Hunt & Fish Pro is $34.99 per year or $5.99 per month, billed by Apple; the app itself is free. Questions and complaints may be sent to either address. The Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the California Department of Consumer Affairs may be contacted in writing at 1625 North Market Blvd., Suite N 112, Sacramento, CA 95834, or by telephone at (800) 952-5210.

The developer does not disclose personal information to third parties for those third parties' direct marketing purposes, because the developer holds no personal information.

12. Changes to this policy

This policy will change when the app changes. When it does, the updated version is posted at this address with a new effective date, and the previous version stays published so that the policy in force on any past date can be checked. If a change ever means the app starts collecting something it does not collect today, that change will be described here in plain words, on this page, before or when it takes effect — not folded silently into a list.

13. Contact

Questions about this policy or the app: svpguru@gmail.com (Antonio Esquivel, publisher), or by mail at 7410 Alpine Boulevard, Alpine, CA 91901-2276. You may also open an issue on the public data repository at https://github.com/Fernando-Enterprise-LLC/ca-hunt-fish-releases/issues. Reports of wrong or outdated regulation data are the most useful thing you can send.

CA Hunt & Fish Guide is an independent, unofficial reference and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or approved by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife or the State of California.