Q & A with Kirsch's Outdoor Products founder

Defined Outdoors: How did you get started in GIS?

Korey: I have been a "computer junkie" for years and also an avid outdoorsman. 10+ years ago, I began using GPS technologies and computers to help find fishing locations quickly and easily. As GIS was an emerging technology, I taught myself the basic things I needed to do in order to convert paper maps into GPS maps before there were any tools to really do this. This led to a product I sold for a number of years called Lake Trax. It started as a PC solution and in the product's final form began to be put on GPS memory cards. During this time, there were instances when I nearly stopped producing GPS maps. At one of these critical times, I received an email stating my product saved a person's life. A fisherman and his wife would have walked out on the ice into open water and drowned in the middle of the night but had used my map to mark a few danger spots. He had become disorientated and his GPS showed him he was near danger. He lifted up his lantern and saw water lapping up against the ice right in front of him. He would have walked right into it if the GPS hadn't shown him the danger. This experience plus many other wonderful customer service interactions kept me motivated to continue to create GPS maps as I knew I was making a difference. I continued to produce lake maps until last year when I created the all-around Sportsman Map.

Defined Outdoors: What made you interested in developing TRAX software?

Korey: Last year a series of events took place. The first was I did a custom map for a friend of mine who was going on an elk hunt in Wyoming. When he came back, he showed some of his buddies and they asked me to do a grasslands maps for Western ND. The Grasslands of North Dakota contains BLM, PLOTS and other lands both inside and right outside of the perimeter area. Due to some previous work I had done which used ND Game and Fish data, I was aware they had lots of different land GIS information. During the last 10 + years of using GPS devices, one of the thing that always bothered me was having to buy different maps for different purposes and usually had to buy a new map every year. After thinking about this, I realized there were road maps, and there were fishing maps, but no one made a sportsman map for hunting, fishing, hiking, biking, and traveling.  I had the experience with lake data already and knew how the ND Game and Fish stored their data, so I created NDTRAX and tested the concept of the all-around Sportsman's map at the Fargo Sportsman Show. The response was very positive. After completing NDTRAX, I found that I was able to create maps for other states as well and the rest is history. One year later, NDTRAX has added many new features and I have Montana, Minnesota, Wyoming, and New Mexico completed with more states coming. I also released the Google Earth version as described earlier. 

 

What started out as way to help me personally find fish quicker, many years later turned into a custom map for a buddy in Wyoming, and now has become the basic concept of what are TRAX maps. It is a great job as I get to help sportsmen fulfill their dreams every day.

Defined Outdoors: How did TRAX PC get started?

Korey: The most common requested feature for the TRAX maps was the ability to see the maps on a computer before or after going on their outdoor adventures. As GPS maps and PC maps are very different technology, I decided to integrate to Google Earth as this was the tool most sportsmen were already familiar with for scouting purposes.  It is the perfect combination with TRAX PC helping you plan or analyze your outdoor adventure and TRAX guiding the sportsman once their adventure has begun

Kirsch's Outdoor Products timeline

2001 - 2006: LAKETRAX NW 15, Devils Lake and ND Master: PC solution with integration to GPS via waypoint and track transfer

2006 - 2009: LAKETRAX PRO: GPS Memory Card version 

March 2009: NDTRAX and MNTRAX Released - 1st Sportsman maps 

April 2009: MTTRAX Released

November 2009: WYTRAX Released

December 2009: NMTRAX Released

February 2010: 2010 versions for NDTRAX, MNTRAX, WYTRAX, NMTRAX, and MTTRAX Released

February 2010: TRAXPC (Google Earth version) Released

TRAX PC

 TRAX PC directly integrates with  Google Earth to show you the location of Waterfowl Production Areas (WPA), Wildlife Management Areas (WMA), National Wildlife Refuges (NWR), National and State Parks, State Forests, State Lands, PLOTS lands, Streams and Rivers, Lake Contours for supported states, Boat Ramps, Hiking Trails, Major Roads, and Campgrounds. This makes TRAX PC an excellent resource for hunters, fishermen, hikers, boaters, and campers. 

 If you don't understand the importance of this software yet, just try to gather half of what is available through their product on your own. You will probably spend hours looking through countless websites, maps, atlases, and platt books.

 TRAX PC is the perfect compliment to the TRAX series products for GPS receivers, allowing hunters to conduct their scouting on their PC prior to setting out. As Korey put it, try scouting on your 2" or 3" GPS screen and you'll quickly see what we mean.

TRAX PC has already been released for North Dakota, Wyoming, and New Mexico, but being from Minnesota we're  most excited about the upcoming edition for our native state. Stay tuned to our website or twitter feed, we'll post an  update once the TRAX PC software for Minnesota has been released.