arrow32 Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 This year i started one. I just right down some info off every hunt. If ive seen deer around what time the tempeture where they came from what stand i was in and so on. Just seeing if this info will ever do me any good. Im not even sure if this will help me since my writting sucks.lol But im going to try. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HitRmisS Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 Re: Hunting Journal well it definately can't hurt, i wish i would have started one early this year, i still might Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arrow32 Posted October 22, 2006 Author Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 Re: Hunting Journal Im just going to keep it going threw a few years and see if i cant figure out some things. What there eating and when im seeing different kinds of activity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wtnhunt Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 Re: Hunting Journal I use to keep up with mine pretty well. I keep it in word, started keeping up with it again this year. Hope to do a little better. Makes it a lot easier to go back and figure out if there are any patterns. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doc Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 Re: Hunting Journal I have a hunting journal in Excel. It goes back to the mid 80's with a few entries from a far back as the late 70's. Everything is in there about the hunt or scouting trip including wind speed, wind direction, cloud cover, types of precipitation (or not), coded stand location, coded area designations of unique portions of hunting grounds (several on top of the hill, side hill and valley bottom), sightings (buck, doe, or unidentified), Type of hunting (scouting, stand hunting, still hunting, walking to or from the stand), Deer entry directions and exit directions, deer reactions, whether I shot or not, date, time of day, etc. etc. You get the idea, everything that describes the hunt. All these entries are coded or written with the same terms so that I can sort all this info just about anyway I want. For example, I can sort on a stand and see what time of year the stand was most productive, whether it is a good morning or evening stand, what kind of weather does a particular stand work best in and so on and so forth. From the area sorts, I can tell when the deer favor the top of the hill, side hill or valley bottom, on certain days or certain types of weather and what times of day. I can analyse the percent success of any stand. When I see a predicted wind direction on the TV, I can sort out all the stands that are favorable to that wind direction (I have over 110 stand locations coded into the database). One would think that I could almost do my hunting from my computer.....lol. One little problem with the whole system: information gets obsolete. After all these years, I find that the data is polluted with out-of-date entries. For example, stands have been made useless by people building houses or posting the property that they used to be on. Fields or brushy areas are completely different now due to maturing of the habitat. Natural occurrences such as the big ice storm that we had back in '91 completely changed the trails and food supplies. In other words much of my data is irrelevant now and biases sorts and studies with info that simply isn't valid anymore. Of course there still is a lot of data that is still useful, and every entry completely describes each hunt and therefore provides a whole lot of great memories. but as far as the journal being a great predictor of present hunting activities and results, it just doesn't cut it anymore. It's still a great log of a large portion of my hunting life and anyone who is interested (including myself)can always access it and practically relive some of my more memorable hunts. I made sure to put a "comments" column in the spreadsheet to describe any odd occurrences that may have happened, including even some non-hunting related things that I have observed at each hunt while on stand or meandering through the woods scouting. So it hasn't been a complete waste, but if I had known how my hunting lands were going to change, I probably wouldn't have been quite so detailed, and my expectations of the journal's predictive usefulness wouldn't have been quite so high. Doc Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoyt03 Posted October 22, 2006 Report Share Posted October 22, 2006 Re: Hunting Journal thats a very good idea, by the wat find any Beman stickers yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brianxt Posted October 25, 2006 Report Share Posted October 25, 2006 Re: Hunting Journal I have had one for 4 yrs no.I write down same thing others have posted one didnt see was what moon phase your in if I seen any sign rubs scrapes tracks things like that.Compare after ever season you will see it helps your odds of getting shot at deer when deer move best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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