Two different answers to the same problem. Here's the honest difference.
Mallard Bay is a real company with a real product, and plenty of outfitters use it. If you're comparing the two, you deserve a straight comparison, not a hit piece. This is what each one is, who each one is for, and where they part ways.
Everything here about Mallard Bay comes from their public website and press coverage, last checked October 31, 2026. Their product changes; check mallardbay.com for what's current.
Software you run, or a system we build with you.
Mallard Bay
An outfitter management platform with its own booking marketplace. Hunters can find and book trips through their site, and outfitters get a back office they can set up themselves or with Mallard Bay's team: booking widget for your website, calendar, payments and deposits, e-signatures, a client list, quotes, a mobile app, and an AI assistant. They serve hunting and fishing outfitters, lodges, and charters.
HuntingCRM
A booking and paperwork system built specifically for hunting outfitters and guides, set up for you by the people who built it. The first job is answering the hunter in two minutes when you can't. The second is chasing the paperwork before camp. The third is putting the whole season on one board. We load your hunters, write your text-backs in your voice, and stay in it with you through the season.
Where they're the same and where they're not.
| Mallard Bay | HuntingCRM | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | Outfitters, lodges, and charters. Hunting and fishing. | Hunting outfitters and guides. Not lodges. |
| How you get started | Start free and set up your listings, calendar, and forms yourself, or book a demo and their team sets up your account. | We build it for you. Your hunters loaded, your species and units, your paperwork, your text-backs, before your first login. |
| When a hunter calls and you don't pick up | Message templates and automations you set up, AI-drafted follow-ups you approve, or paid services where their team follows up with your leads or takes your forwarded calls. | The system texts him back in under two minutes, in your voice, asks species and dates, and logs it. That's the whole point. |
| Online booking | Yes. Booking widget on your site, a website they can build for you, and a listing on their marketplace. | Yes, if you want it. Most outfitters we work with want the call first, so the system gets the hunter ready and holds the spot with a deposit link. |
| Deposits and payments | Yes. Automated deposits, balances, and payouts. QuickBooks sync is part of their growth packages. | Yes. Deposit link from your truck, balance reminders, flows to your books. |
| Waivers and paperwork | Yes. Waiver forms with e-signature, plus custom forms. | Yes. Waivers, license uploads, tag confirmation, medical forms, on a checklist that fires when the deposit clears and reminds until it's done. |
| Guides | Guide scheduling, plus a mobile app guides can use in the field. | Rosters and checklists by text the night before. No login unless you want one. |
| Marketplace | Yes. Hunters can find you on mallardbay.com. Bookings their marketplace sends you can carry a fee, depending on your plan. | No. We don't run a marketplace. Your hunters find you through your own phone number, website, and word of mouth, and the system makes sure none of them slip. |
| Who's on the other end | Their support team, seven days a week, by phone, text, email, or chat. | Trent and Jared. Founding outfitters have their cell numbers. |
| Pricing | See mallardbay.com. | In beta with a founding group. Covered on the call. How the founding group works. |
Mallard Bay column summarized from their public materials. If we've gotten something wrong about their product, text us at (435) 324-5115 and we'll fix it.
Which one should you actually use?
Mallard Bay is probably the better fit if…
- You want hunters to find you and book online without talking to you first.
- You run a lodge or a charter as much as a hunting operation.
- You want a mature, established platform that you run day to day yourself.
- Marketplace exposure matters more to you than the phone-answering problem.
HuntingCRM is probably the better fit if…
- Your biggest leak is the hunter who calls while you're in the field and books somewhere else.
- You're a hunting outfitter or guide, not a lodge, and you want the call before the booking.
- You'd rather have somebody build it for you than set it up on a Saturday.
- You want to be in a small founding group with a direct line to the builders while it's still being shaped.
You don't have to burn anything down.
Export your client list, send it over, and we load it. If you want to keep your marketplace listing for exposure while HuntingCRM answers the phone and chases the paperwork, that works too. We'll walk through what makes sense on the call.
See the difference on your own hunts.
Thirty minutes. You tell us how you run, we show you your season on a board. If Mallard Bay is the better fit for you, we'll say so.
Book a 30-minute callRather text? Send us a message and we'll get right back to you.