Second-Guessing Myself With an App: A Look at UrScore
I spend a lot of time looking at game cam photos and guessing. How old is that buck. What’s he going to score. Would I let him walk or would I take the shot if he stepped out in November. I do the same thing glassing a hillside or watching an animal work down a draw at last light. It’s a habit every hunter picks up, whether we admit it or not.
Why the Score Was Never the Point
Here’s where I land – I don’t think the score is what makes a hunt worth anything. A big rack doesn’t make a hunt good (although it doesn’t hurt), and a small one or not filling a tag doesn’t necessarily make it a bad hunt.
I think we’ve let trophy quality take up more room in our heads than it deserves, and I don’t think that’s been great for our sport. It pushes some people to pass on animals they should be thrilled to take, or to feel like a hunt was wasted because the tape came up short of some number somebody else decided mattered. That’s backwards. The hunt is the value. The score is just a number you can attach to it afterward if you want.
So when I first heard about UrScore, my interest wasn’t really about chasing a bigger rack score. It was about the gap between what I think I’m seeing through the glass and what’s actually standing there. I’ve misjudged plenty of animals over the years, I wanted something that I could test my field judging against and help me get better at it.
Meeting the Guy Who Built It
I got to meet Mike Sawicki, the guy who built UrScore, and I like where he’s coming from. I’ve always liked it when tech and hunting intersect for a real reason, not just to sell another subscription.
UrScore came out of an actual problem he ran into on an Alaska moose hunt in 2024. He wanted to know if the bull standing in front of him was over fifty inches and had no way to check in the moment. That’s an honest problem, and it’s a good reason to build something.
How the Scoring Actually Works
The idea is simple. Take a photo or a short video of an animal, tell the app what species it is, and it comes back with a predicted score along with age and weight estimates and a breakdown of the individual measurements, spread, tine length, mass, whatever applies. It’s built on the standard scoring systems, and the company claims better than ninety percent accuracy across the species it covers. You can stack up to five photos into one prediction if you’ve got them.
I’ve tried it myself, and it really works. It’s a genuinely cool piece of tech to have in your pocket.
Getting the Distance Right
Distance is the field that matters most. The app is scaling what the camera sees against how far away it is, so the number you type in is driving the number you get back.
A rangefinder reading is the right way to do it. Eyeballing it off a fence post is going to get you in the neighborhood and not much more. If you’re going to use this seriously, range the animal before you take the photo, not after.
Location Tracking and Sharing Scores
You can also tag the location of every prediction or skip it entirely. Tag it and you start building a picture over a season, which properties are producing, how animals are moving, how this year compares to last. Skip it and the prediction just saves with nothing attached. UrScore says it doesn’t share specific locations with anyone.
Every prediction lands in a Predictions tab where it stays, and there’s a Community feature to push scores to friends running the app too.
Built to Work With No Cell Service
The part I actually think is the smartest piece of this is that it works with no cell service. Before a trip you download the species models you’ll need. Whitetail and mule deer for a plains hunt, brown bear and grizzly if you’re headed to the Peninsula.
The scoring itself runs right on the phone, no signal required, and everything syncs to your account automatically once you’re back in range. Anyone who’s hunted the kind of country where this app is actually useful knows why that matters. Battery and storage are both scarce out there, and nobody wants to download a library of thirty species when they need three.
Species Coverage and Pricing
UrScore covers all 29 North American big game species, whitetail, mule deer, Coues, blacktail, Sitka, every elk and moose subspecies, all four caribou, the four wild sheep, mountain goat, pronghorn, bison, muskox, cougar, and black, brown, grizzly, and polar bear.
Pricing is annual, three tiers:
- Whitetail only: $49.99/year
- Big 3 (whitetail, mule deer, elk): $69.99/year
- All Animal (every species): $119.99/year
There’s a three day free trial, and since it bills through Apple, cancellations and refunds run through Apple as well.
Where It Falls Short
It’s iOS only right now with no Android date on the calendar, which cuts out a real chunk of hunters.
These Are Estimates, Not Certificates
UrScore is upfront that these are estimates, not official and not certifiable. It’s a second opinion, not a replacement for your own judgment. Feed it a bad angle, poor light, a blurry frame, or a sloppy distance, and the prediction suffers the same way your own read would.
The difference is a number on a screen carries a kind of authority that a gut feeling doesn’t, and I’d push back on that a little. Treat a bad photo’s output with the same skepticism you’d give a bad look through the glass. It’s also worth knowing the model is probabilistic, run the same photo through twice and you can get two different answers.
The Top Tier Is Real Money
The All Animal tier at $119.99 costs more than onX Hunt Elite, which isn’t really a fair comparison since they do different jobs, but it’s the number people will naturally put next to it. If you’ve got a sheep tag you might spend thousands to fill, that math looks different than it does for a whitetail hunter, who’s better served by the $49.99 tier anyway.
Where I Landed
I still don’t think a good score is what makes a good hunt. But I’ll say this: UrScore scratched an itch I’ve had for years, which is just wanting to know how good my own eyes actually are. Running it against game cam photos and comparing my gut guess to what it spits out has been genuinely fun, and a little humbling.
Where I think it actually earns its keep is the situations where a second opinion is hardest to come by. A tag you waited fifteen years to draw. A guided hunt where you get one real look and one decision. A species you’ve never judged before, in country you don’t know. Outfitters and land managers who want a read on animals without putting a dart in them.
If you’re the hunter who’s going to shoot the first legal buck that walks by anyway, this probably isn’t for you. For everyone else, it’s a useful tool. Just don’t let it turn your hunt into a number.
UrScore – Plans from $49.99 to $119.99/year | View at UrScore
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