Terms Of Service

These Terms of Service (the “Terms”) are an agreement between you and Wildlife Connects, LLC (“Wildlife Connects”, “we”, “us”, or “our”). They govern your access to and use of the Wildlife Connects platform — every website, application and service we operate, whether you reach it at wildlifeconnects.com or at an address branded for a partner organization.

By creating an account, ticking the box that says you agree to these Terms, or otherwise using the platform, you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the platform.

1. What Wildlife Connects is

Wildlife Connects provides software that wildlife and conservation organizations use to run their programs: managing hunts and hunt applications, recording properties and land access, recording harvests, and recording and reviewing trophy scores.

We provide the software. We do not run hunts, own or manage property, issue licenses, certify scorers, or award trophies. Those activities belong to the organizations, landowners, scorers and awards programs that use the platform.

2. Organizations, and who sees your information

Most people use Wildlife Connects because an organization invited them, or because they signed up through a link that organization published. When you join an organization’s account, that organization administers your participation in its programs. Its administrators can see and manage the information tied to your membership — your profile, your applications, your harvests and your scores.

The site may carry an organization’s name, logo and colors. That branding does not change who provides the service: Wildlife Connects operates the platform, and these Terms are between you and Wildlife Connects. Your relationship with the organization itself — membership, eligibility, program rules, awards — is governed by that organization’s own rules, not by these Terms.

If you belong to more than one organization, each sees only the information tied to its own account, except where a property owner has granted an organization access to a property, in which case both can see activity recorded on it.

3. Eligibility and your account

You must be at least 18 years old to create your own account. A parent or legal guardian may create and manage an account for a minor taking part in a youth program; by doing so they accept these Terms on the minor’s behalf and are responsible for the minor’s use of the platform.

You agree to provide accurate information and keep it current, to keep your password confidential, and to tell us promptly at team@wildlifeconnects.com if you believe your account has been used without your permission. You are responsible for activity under your account. Accounts belong to one person — do not share logins.

4. Your responsibilities in the field

Hunting, harvesting, transporting and reporting game are regulated activities. You are solely responsible for complying with all applicable laws, regulations, licensing requirements, tags, seasons, bag limits, landowner permissions and program rules.

Nothing in the platform is legal advice, a license, a permit, a tag, or authorization to hunt or take an animal. Recording something in Wildlife Connects does not make it lawful, and it does not substitute for any report you owe to a government agency.

5. Content you submit

“Content” means anything you upload or enter: profile details, harvest records and measurements, property descriptions and locations, comments, and files including photographs and documents.

You keep ownership of your Content. You are also responsible for it. You represent that you own it or have the right to submit it, that it is accurate to the best of your knowledge, and that it does not infringe anyone’s rights or depict activity that breaks the law or program rules.

6. Photographs, images and uploaded documents

Images are central to how this platform works. A harvest photograph is evidence supporting a score. A property photograph describes a place. An uploaded document — a hunter education certificate, a hunting license, proof of membership — establishes eligibility. Upload them expecting that people will look at them, not merely that a server will store them.

By uploading an image or document, you grant Wildlife Connects a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, store, copy, reformat, resize, display and transmit it as needed to operate the platform, and to sublicense those rights to:

• the organization whose account the content belongs to, and its administrators;
• certified scorers and program officials reviewing an entry;
• the owner of the property on which a harvest was recorded;
• awards programs to which an entry is submitted — for example the Texas Big Game Awards, Boone & Crockett, or Pope & Young; and
• our service providers, strictly in order to provide the platform to us.

Images may be publicly visible

Parts of the platform are public. Leaderboards, score boards and showcase pages can be viewed by people who do not have an account. If your entry appears on one of them, the photograph and the details attached to it may be publicly visible. Do not upload an image you would not want seen publicly.

Promotional use

We may also use images of harvests and properties, together with the associated score and general location such as county or region, to promote the platform and the programs it supports — in demonstrations, presentations, printed material, our website and social media.

We will never use identity or eligibility documents — licenses, certificates, proof of membership — for promotion, and we will not use your image in a way that states or implies you endorse a product. If you would rather we did not use a particular image this way, write to team@wildlifeconnects.com and we will stop, and remove it from materials we control going forward.

Location data in images

Photographs can carry embedded location data recorded by the camera, and harvest and property records include location by design. Property locations are sensitive information; treat them the way the landowner would want them treated.

Removal and retention

We may remove, or decline to display, any image or document we believe is unlawful, misleading, submitted without the necessary rights, or that depicts an animal taken in violation of law or program rules. Images that form part of a scoring or awards record may be retained as part of that record even after you close your account — see section 12 and the Privacy Policy.

7. Scores and awards are not ours to give

Scores recorded in Wildlife Connects — whether you enter them yourself or a certified scorer enters them — are records and calculations. They are not an official certification. We do not verify that a measurement is correct or that an animal was lawfully taken.

Whether an entry is accepted, what it officially scores, and whether it wins anything is decided by the relevant awards program under its own rules. Scores may be marked provisional, disputed, superseded or invalidated as those programs and organizations require. We make no promise that a score you see on this platform will be the score you are awarded.

8. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• misrepresent a harvest, a measurement, a location, or your identity;
• submit an entry for an animal you did not lawfully take;
• upload someone else’s photograph as your own;
• access data belonging to another user, another organization, or another property without permission;
• probe, scan or interfere with the platform, or attempt to defeat its access controls or the separation between organizations;
• scrape or bulk-extract data from the platform;
• use the platform to harass anyone, or to publish anything unlawful; or
• resell the platform or make it available to a third party without our written agreement.

9. Cooperation with government and governing bodies

Wildlife Connects holds records — photographs, measurements, dates, license numbers and property locations — that a government agency may lawfully be entitled to. We will disclose your information, including images and files, where we are required or permitted to by law. That includes:

• in response to a subpoena, court order, search warrant, or other valid legal process;
• to a wildlife or natural resources authority — for example the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, a game warden, or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service — or to law enforcement, acting under valid legal authority; and
• where we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to prevent or investigate a serious crime, to protect someone’s safety, or to protect our legal rights.

Where we may lawfully do so, and unless we believe notice would risk harm or interfere with an investigation, we will make a reasonable effort to notify you before we disclose. We will not obstruct a lawful demand on your behalf.

Separately from legal process, an organization or an awards program may investigate the integrity of an entry under its own rules, and may review the records and images you submitted to it. That is part of taking part in the program.

10. Third-party services

The platform relies on third parties for hosting, file storage, email delivery, maps and optional sign-in. They are listed in the Privacy Policy. Links to other websites are provided for convenience; we are not responsible for their content or their practices.

11. Availability and changes to the platform

The platform is under active development. Features change, and some are offered as previews or beta. We aim to keep the service available, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted access, and we may modify, suspend or discontinue any part of it.

12. Suspension, termination and what happens to your records

You may stop using the platform at any time, and may ask us to close your account at team@wildlifeconnects.com. An organization’s administrators may remove your access to that organization’s account. We may suspend or terminate your account if you breach these Terms, or where we are required to.

When an account closes we remove or de-identify personal information as described in the Privacy Policy. Records that belong to an organization’s program — harvests, scores, and the images supporting them — generally remain with that organization as part of its program record.

13. Disclaimer of warranties

The platform is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement. We do not warrant that scores, measurements, distances, maps, county or region assignments, or scorer listings are accurate or complete.

14. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Wildlife Connects will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or lost awards or eligibility, arising from or relating to the platform.

Our total liability for all claims relating to the platform will not exceed the greater of the amount you paid us for the platform in the twelve months before the claim, or one hundred United States dollars ($100).

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations; where that is the case, these limits apply to the fullest extent permitted. Nothing here limits liability for our own fraud, or for anything that cannot lawfully be limited.

15. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless Wildlife Connects, its officers, employees and contractors from claims, damages, losses and reasonable legal costs arising out of your Content, your use of the platform, or your breach of these Terms or of any law.

16. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. When we make a material change we will update the “last updated” date on this page and, for changes that affect your rights, ask you to accept the new version the next time you sign in. Continuing to use the platform after a change takes effect means you accept it.

17. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and Wildlife Connects agree that any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the platform will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Texas, and each of us consents to the jurisdiction of those courts.

18. Contact

Wildlife Connects, LLC
team@wildlifeconnects.com