Privacy Policy

What we collect

• Account information — your email address and sign-in identity. Used to authenticate you and scope your data to your account.
• Trail-camera photos — the image files you import, plus the derived thumbnail and preview versions we generate so the app is fast on a phone.
• Photo metadata — capture timestamps, image dimensions, file names, and EXIF fields we read to place a photo in time. When a camera burns the timestamp into the image instead of writing EXIF, we read that stamp from the image.
• Property and camera records — property names, camera names, camera coordinates, facing direction, install history, and any boundary you draw or upload. We treat precise coordinates and boundaries as sensitive.
• Wildlife records — encounters, animal observations, AI classifications, confidence values, and the corrections you make during review.
• Derived intelligence — property facts and findings, terrain and landscape results, camera exposure and correlation data, all computed from the above.
• Operational records — import batches, processing jobs, audit entries, support messages and feedback you send us, and error diagnostics used to fix failures.
• Scout usage events — tied to your account (pseudonymous, not anonymous): which Scout engine version ran, when an analysis started, finished, failed or was refused, how many starting points it returned and how long it took, and whether you saved, reopened, opened a finding, switched between map and results, added to a plan, recorded a field note or made a GPX/KML file. They contain no coordinates, outlines, area names, note text or photos, and a GPX/KML event only means a file was made. They are used to run and improve Scout and are deleted with your account.
• Optional Scout ratings and comments — if you choose to rate a result or a starting point, or send a comment, we store your rating, whether you judged it from the map or in the field, the finding's rank and type, and the engine version. Ratings never change your results. Comments are only readable by you and BuckPattern administrators and are deleted with your account.

Where it is stored

Application records live in a managed PostgreSQL database with row-level security, so a query can only return rows owned by the signed-in account. Photos live in private storage buckets keyed to your account; they are not publicly listable and are served through short-lived signed links to your session only.

AI processing

BuckPattern only sends photos for AI analysis if you turn on AI photo sharing in Settings. It is off until you tick the agreement box yourself, and you can switch it off at any time. If you don't agree, you can still upload, organize and review every photo yourself.

When it is on, an image derivative — normally a resized frame and, for antler checks, a cropped region — is sent from our server through Lovable AI Gateway to an OpenAI vision model to identify animals, and, when a photo has no readable date, to a Google Gemini vision model to read the date printed on the frame. Where a resized version cannot be produced (for example an unusual camera file format), the original photo is sent instead, with embedded metadata such as GPS tags and camera serial numbers removed first. Location coordinates and property boundaries are never sent with the image. The service returns a species and deer-class judgment with confidence values, which we store alongside the encounter. Your corrections are stored inside your own account and are used to improve BuckPattern's own thresholds and prompts. We do not sell your photos. We have not verified how long these services keep images or whether they use them for training, so we make no promise about either.

Third-party geographic services

Terrain and landscape intelligence query public mapping services (elevation, land cover, hydrology, and open mapping data) using coordinates within your monitored area. No photos, account identifiers or wildlife records are sent to those services.

Retention and deletion

Your records are kept while your account exists. You can delete individual photos, encounters, cameras, properties and boundaries at any time from inside the app. Deleting your account permanently removes your account, your owner-scoped records and your stored image files, including derived thumbnails and previews. A minimal, de-identified audit record of the deletion itself is retained for operational integrity. See account deletion.

Sharing

We do not sell your information and we do not share your photos, coordinates or boundaries with advertisers. Information is disclosed only to the infrastructure and AI providers described above, or where required by law.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: use Support.