Where I hunt it is very thick timber and has many steep plateaus making radios essentially useless. Example: my Garmin Rino cannot communicate roughly .3mi from where I shot elk to camp. No line of sight.

http://www.gotenna.com/pages/how-it-works

This uses 151-154 MHz vice the 462/467 of FRS/GMRS used by the Garmin. It should do a better job of penetrating the forest. It uses your cell phone, but only needs BT (no cell network) which doesn't burn the battery down much at all. It can send a position to a map (downloaded prior). Anybody tried this or comms experts who can chime in on potential ranges in elk country?

My thinking is that the battery differences start to become less an issue, the mapping on phones is really nice these days, but most importantly, maybe this would enable communications. Need to get horses on their way to haul elk out! As an aside, texting would be MUCH better than voice over a radio when hunting. It's quiet and easy to understand.