Frequently asked questions

A marketplace where US landowners rent out access to their land for outdoor recreation — foraging, hunting, fishing, trails, camping, and more — combined with a nationwide directory of 12,000+ public and open-access destinations with their real costs of access.

No. Search, maps, public-land info, and listings are open to everyone. You only need an account to book a pass or list land.

Listings are US-only (hosts must be US taxpayers with US land). Guests can browse and book from anywhere in the world — international cards work, and charges settle in USD.

Browsing is free. Guests pay the host's price plus a 6% platform fee at checkout. Hosts list for free and keep 100% of their listed price (standard payment-processing costs apply).

Listings (brown 🌲 pins) are private land you book and pay for through WildPass, with exclusive rules set by the owner. Public places are parks, forests, trails, and walk-in access programs anyone can visit — we show their access costs and link to the official source.

Each listing offers pass levels the owner designed: a day of foraging, an hourly track session, a weekend camp, a season hunting lease. Pick one, choose dates and guests, and pay. Check-in details (parking, gate codes, host phone) unlock after booking.

Cancellation policies are set by each host — check the listing and contact the host through your booking's message thread as early as possible.

The listing's rules, harvest limits, and zone map; the WildPass community guidelines and Field Safety rules; and — if the host requires it — a liability waiver acknowledging you recreate at your own risk.

Owners draw their property on satellite imagery: green areas are open to you, red areas are strictly off-limits (homes, machinery, safety zones). The dashed yellow line is the property boundary. Staying in the green is a condition of every pass.

Yes — always. A WildPass booking is the landowner's permission to be there, never a substitute for state licenses, tags, stamps, or hunter education. You can save your license number on your account to share with hunt hosts.

Document it, message the host, and file a report from your booking. Misrepresented listings hurt host ratings and repeat offenders are removed.

WildPass is an installable web app: on your phone, choose "Add to Home Screen" and it runs full-screen like a native app. Map areas you've viewed keep working with spotty service; a full offline mode is on the roadmap.

Depends on land and offer: day forage passes commonly run $20-50, camping $25-90/night, and season hunting leases $10-50+ per acre. See the Host Earnings Guide for real numbers and stacking strategies.

If you never charge, setup takes a minute — name, email, state — and no banking or tax info is ever collected. The trade-off: all your passes must be free, and pricing fields are locked.

Business details and a US address to WildPass, then identity (SSN/EIN) and bank verification directly with Stripe, our payment partner. WildPass never sees or stores that data, and Stripe handles IRS 1099-K reporting.

Stripe pays out to your bank about 2 business days after each booking. Track everything in your Payments dashboard.

No — WildPass provides no liability insurance. You carry that risk and should have your own coverage (hunt-lease liability policies often cost a few hundred dollars a year for $1M coverage). See the Insurance Directory, and enable the guest waiver on your listings.

An optional release guests must sign at booking: they assume the ordinary risks of recreation and release you from claims — except anything caused by your own gross negligence or willful misconduct, which no waiver covers. Acceptance is timestamped on the booking.

Yes — per-pass daily capacity, max guests per pass, activity-specific rules, harvest limits, and different prices for personal vs. commercial use are all built in.

You should. Commercial pickers extract more value and more volume — the standard play is a commercial pass at 3-5× the personal rate with weight limits and mandatory weigh-out. Details in the Earnings Guide.

Careful — land enrolled in public-access tax programs is often already legally committed to free public access, which can conflict with paid exclusive bookings. Check your program's rules before listing those acres.

No, never — payment-network rules prohibit it and it risks the whole platform's ability to process payments. Land access only.

Two-way: guests rate hosts and land; hosts rate guests. Ratings are tied to completed bookings only, so they can't be faked, and they follow you — good stewards get welcomed everywhere.

File an incident report from the booking. Reports affect ratings and repeat or serious violations end accounts. For crimes in progress (poaching, trespass), call your local authorities first.

Card details go directly to Stripe over their encrypted checkout — they never touch WildPass servers. Host identity/banking data likewise lives only at Stripe.

Hunting is inherently dangerous and every guest recreates at their own risk — that's explicit in the User Terms. What we do control: zone maps with safety zones, license fields, waivers, capacity limits, two-way accountability, and the Field Safety rules everyone agrees to.

No. WildPass is a marketplace — we don't own, inspect, or control any land. You accept the risks of outdoor recreation when you book (User Terms §2), and hosts are responsible for their own premises and insurance.

Official sources: state GIS services (walk-in hunting programs in 14 states, Michigan CFA and Wisconsin MFL timberland), OpenStreetMap for parks and preserves, and hand-curated entries with published fees for major destinations. Every entry links to the official source — always confirm cost and rules there before you travel.

No — they're a courtesy reference. The state agency's current regulations always control. Verify before you hunt.

Yes — boundary, route, and waypoint drawing tools are on the Explore map (they show acreage and distances). Drawings stay private in your browser.

Public-land pins mark an area's centroid, not an entrance — a large forest's pin may be miles from a road. Use the linked official map for gates and parking, and the Directions buttons for navigation.