Data Sources & Methodology
USFWS hunt units 2026–2027, hunting & fishing opportunities, realty boundaries & tracts and Esri counties: where our data comes from and how it's processed.
Datasets
| Dataset | Publisher | Records | Used for |
|---|---|---|---|
| National Hunt Units 2026–2027 | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | 2,215 | Hunt-unit polygons, huntable status (Yes / No / Special Regulations Apply), acreage, permit requirement, type and method, youth opportunities, links to regulations. |
| Hunting & Fishing Opportunities | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | 606 | Station reference points, allowed game categories (big game, small game, waterfowl, migratory birds, upland birds, turkey, exotics), hunting and fishing descriptions, youth hunts, permits, fishing types. |
| Realty Boundaries | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | 1,085 | Approved acquisition boundaries of refuges and other FWS units. |
| Realty Tracts (Interest) | U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service | 6,194 | FWS land ownership: fee-title land, easements and other interests, including ~3,900 Waterfowl Production Area tracts. |
| U.S. States & Counties | Esri (from U.S. Census Bureau) | 51 / 3,144 | State and county boundaries, population and area; linking refuges and WPAs to counties. |
Processing
- Records are joined on the USFWS organization code. Waterfowl Production Area tracts are linked to their managing wetland management district.
- Only fee-title WPA tracts (land owned by the United States) are listed as public WPAs. Easements are shown as private land.
- WPA acreage is the GIS acreage from realty tracts; refuge boundary acreage is computed geodesically from boundary polygons; hunt-unit acreage is as published.
- Counties are assigned by spatial overlay (at least 40 acres of overlap) or by the location of the reference point.
- Map geometries are simplified for fast loading (typically to within a few meters). Downloads (KML) use higher-precision geometry.
- Official hunting descriptions are limited to ~255 characters in the source; we trim them to complete sentences and link to the full text on fws.gov.
- Distances to towns and airports are straight-line (great-circle) distances. Sun times use the NOAA solar-position approximation.
Basemaps & services
- USGS The National Map — Topo and Imagery basemaps (public domain)
- Esri World Imagery and reference labels
- © OpenStreetMap contributors
- National Weather Service API (api.weather.gov) for forecasts
- Leaflet for interactive maps
Open data
The processed station index is available as JSON, and every refuge page offers GeoJSON, KML and GPX downloads. Source data is U.S. government work in the public domain.
Spotted an error? Refuge conditions change quickly — the refuge office is always the authoritative source.
Last updated September 29, 2026.