Three hunting and fishing challenge platforms on one system

About APEX Outdoor Rewards

APEX Outdoor Rewards is based in Franklin, Tennessee and runs seasonal, state-by-state challenges for hunters and anglers. A hunter or angler enters a challenge for their state, records their harvest or catch on a smartphone, and competes for cash rewards on a public leaderboard. Members also get free APEX gear with their first entries, weekly prize giveaways, discounts on name-brand gear and bonus rewards from APEX’s product partners, and a portion of the proceeds benefits conservation.

There are three challenges, each with its own website: Whitetail, Turkey and Fishing. Codiffy built all three, on one shared platform of custom WordPress and WooCommerce plugins, and the main site apexoutdoorrewards.com that links them together.

The challenge: a fair contest, in every state, from a phone

A cash-reward contest only works if every entry can be trusted and every rule is applied the same way. For APEX that meant a lot of moving parts:

• Every entry has to be proven. Hunters and anglers record their harvest or catch on video in the field and upload it from their phone, often from a weak connection.
• Every sport is scored differently. Whitetail antlers follow the Boone and Crockett scoring method, turkeys follow the NWTF method, and fish are weighed against a calibration weight.
• Every state is its own contest. Each state has its own season dates, entry fee, entry limit and prize pool, and the prize pool grows with the number of entries.
• Every result has to be checked. APEX’s scoring marshals review each entry before it counts, and the leaderboards and payouts have to follow their decisions.
• One small team runs it all. Three sites, dozens of states, entries, gear orders, members and messages, without the team doing the same job three times.

What we built: one platform, three challenge sites

Instead of three separate websites, we built one platform and run it on three sites: whitetail.apexoutdoorrewards.com, turkey.apexoutdoorrewards.com and fishing.apexoutdoorrewards.com. The same plugins power all of them, and only the scoring, the look and the rules of each sport change. On October 1, 2026 the Whitetail site listed 35 states, the Turkey site 40 and the Fishing site 48.

Whitetail: Boone and Crockett scoring on a phone

The Whitetail score sheet follows the Boone and Crockett layout: the length of each main beam and point (G1 to G7), the four circumferences (H1 to H4), abnormal points and the inside spread, in whole inches and eighths, for the left and right antler. The gross score is calculated as the hunter types, so nobody has to add up a paper score sheet. Hunters also choose their category (archery or firearm, typical or non-typical) and give their hunting license and confirmation numbers. The challenge then asks for three things from the hunter’s phone: a video of the recovery, a trophy photo, and a recording of the antler measurements taken with the APEX antler tape.

Turkey: weight, beard and spurs

The Turkey platform scores a harvest the NWTF way: the bird’s weight in pounds and ounces, plus twice the beard length, plus ten times the spur lengths. Birds with more than one beard can enter every beard. Hunters record the weighing and measuring on video and upload it with the score form, using the APEX Turkey Tool that comes with the first entry.

Fishing: calibrated weigh-ins

On the Fishing site the measure is weight. Anglers calibrate their scale with the free APEX calibration weight, weigh and release their catch, and record the calibration, the weighing and the release on video. The site’s rules limit each state to 1,000 entries, and leaderboards are kept per state, season and species.

The modules inside the platform

The platform is made of seven plugins that Codiffy wrote for APEX. Together they add 16 custom content types, 28 shortcodes for building pages and 57 AJAX handlers for the interactive parts to WordPress and WooCommerce. These are the modules that run the challenges day to day.

1. Score submission with direct video upload

Hunters and anglers fill in the score form for their sport and upload their videos and photos step by step. Videos go from the phone straight to cloud storage on Amazon S3 through a signed upload link, so large videos never pass through the website’s own server. On the full score form, hunters can also trim a video in the browser before it is sent. A score only counts as complete when every required video and photo is in.

2. Score review for APEX’s marshals

APEX’s staff open each entry, approve every video and photo one by one, work through a checklist of review questions, and enter the official score. They can then authenticate or disqualify the entry, and bonus rewards are judged separately for each partner program. An entry can only be authenticated when every checklist question is answered, and every decision updates the leaderboard at once.

3. Seasons that open and close themselves

Each state’s season has its own start date, end date and entry fee. When a season ends, the platform closes it on its own within the hour: it moves that season’s orders into their own order status, and records a “no harvest” entry for every entry a hunter bought but never used, so the season’s records are complete.

4. Leaderboards

Leaderboards are kept per state and season, with tabs for winners, scores and bonus rewards, and a search by name or score. They rank by the official score, or by the submitted score until a marshal has reviewed it. On the Whitetail boards, ties are broken by antler measurements in a fixed order, so two equal scores never depend on luck.

5. Rewards calculator

Before entering, a hunter can pick a number of entries and see the prize pool it pays: the places paid, the amounts and the special categories. The calculator follows APEX’s payout rules: the number of paid places grows with the entries (between 3 and 10 top places), places beyond the top ten open from 100 entries, point-category rewards from 40 entries and milestone places from 300 entries. For the 2026 seasons the payout tables come from APEX’s own add-on, through a connection point we left in the calculator.

6. Special categories and random drawings

Some rewards go to a random hunter in a category, such as every 7, 8, 9 or 10-point buck. The platform draws the winner from the complete scores in that category and draws again if that entry is later disqualified.

7. Partner bonus rewards and Recruit Rewards

APEX’s product partners can sponsor bonus rewards with their own seasons, winners and prizes. Winners come from scores, from entries uploaded for a partner’s program, or from Recruit Rewards: at checkout every customer says how they heard about APEX, and a hunter earns a referral when someone names them. Referrals follow fixed rules: one per order, only the new customer’s first order, no referring yourself and no staff. The Recruit Rewards pool is $10 per referral, up to $5,000. Drawings for these programs are made by staff and saved with the random seed that produced them, so every result can be checked afterwards.

8. Elite teams

Elite members get their own role and their own Elite state, which only they and APEX’s staff can see, with a team leaderboard that adds up each member’s four best scores.

9. Shop rules for entries

Entries are WooCommerce products, with rules that a normal shop does not have: an entry limit per state, a two-harvest entry that counts as two, entries for one state per cart, reserve states that open only with a promo code, stock kept per state, member prices for returning hunters, and free challenges that skip checkout after an SMS opt-in. Every paid order creates one score form per entry, and a cancelled or refunded order takes those forms back.

10. Texts, emails and member lists

APEX keeps its hunters in lists: contestants, past contestants, free members, reservations, waitlists and trade-show sign-ups. Staff write text and email templates once and send them to chosen lists and states, on a date or a set number of days before or after a season starts or ends, with each hunter’s name and state filled in. The platform also sends texts on its own for purchases, shipping, reservations, waitlist sign-ups, warranty decisions and submitted scores. Texts go through Twilio and emails through SendGrid, and every message is logged. Once a year, on each state’s own dates, the lists roll over by themselves.

11. One account across all APEX sites

A hunter signs up once. When someone registers, updates their profile, resets their password or deletes their account on one challenge site, the change is copied to the sister sites, and new members are sent to the main APEX site. A daily check compares the free-member lists with the main site, 500 members at a time.

12. More modules

• Waitlists and reservations per state and product, with notification emails and CSV export.
• Warranty replacement: a Warranty button on eligible orders within a set number of years; staff approve or reject, and the hunter gets an email and a text.
• Banquets and trade shows: a banquet page per state with attendee names collected at checkout, and a trade-show sign-up form with CSV export.
• Top banners with start and end dates, shown to everyone or to chosen states, with the state sponsor’s banner at the end.
• Social proof: small pop-ups of recent entries and reservations in the visitor’s state.
• Bundles, saved carts and score imports: bundle products with three pricing modes, carts cleared after a set time, and scores imported from a spreadsheet.
• Conservation section per state, and an editor for the store’s email templates.

Keeping it working in the field

A platform like this is judged on the day a hunter tries to upload a video from the woods. One example from September 23, 2026: on the Whitetail site, iPhone videos began to stop partway through uploading, while MP4 videos from other phones went through. The cause was that the upload link was always prepared for MP4 video, while iPhones record MOV. We changed the upload so the link is prepared for the real video type, tested it on an iPhone 16 Pro Max, an iPhone 14 Pro Max, a Samsung Galaxy A40, an iPad and Chrome on a PC, and put it live on the staging and production sites the same day, changing three files and nothing else.

Results

• 3challenge platforms on one system: Whitetail, Turkey and Fishing
• 35, 40 and 48states listed on the Whitetail, Turkey and Fishing sites on October 1, 2026
• $365,650in rewards shown for 2,500 hunter entries in the Tennessee Whitetail challenge

Every entry on every site goes through the same path: bought in the shop, scored on a phone, proven on video, reviewed by a marshal and ranked on the leaderboard. APEX runs three sports and dozens of state contests from one platform, and a change made once reaches every site.

Technology

WordPress and WooCommerce with the Astra theme and Elementor; seven custom plugins by Codiffy (challenges and scoring, seasons, waitlists, social proof, bundle products, saved carts, and Twilio messaging); Advanced Custom Fields; Amazon S3 for direct video uploads; Twilio for text messages and SendGrid for email; the WordPress REST API between the APEX sites; and scheduled background jobs for seasons, lists and messages. More about this kind of work on our WooCommerce development, custom plugin development and custom integrations pages.