Tracking your hunts

[Moneyball]

Great friend of mine and avid outdoorsman has been keeping a hunting and fishing journal since he was 12! he is now in his late 60's. His family had his journals printed as a gift and it is up to 11 volumes now with each volume being a pretty good size.

He has hunted all over the world, been to Mexico duck hunting I believe 28 times. It is really fun sitting down with a random volume and flipping through the pages. I learn something new every time I flip through one.

 

[griebel303]

I looked into apps for hunt journals and just using notes in my phone and then the idea grew in my head to something I could share with my kids and family, or bring to hunt camp to reminisce, which ended up being a book. Part of the idea has driven by losing my dad in my teenage years and the only spot his wild racing stories live is in my uncle's head. If something should happen to me I wanted my stories to be written so my kids can see why hunting is such a big part of our lives, as well as share knowledge I have learned from each hunt (mostly the hard way). I haven't been hunting super long (8 years) but it was enough to do about 35 pages with some pictures. It was relatively affordable to print (~$30) online with a company called Lulu.

 

[minas stiris]

I’ve been journaling my hunts for the past 4 seasons. I’ve yet to go back through and compile statistics. I generally review prior seasons as I progress through a season to help me remember my prior learning experiences. I’ve found that reviewing my journals is incredibly useful and help me repeat success and avoid repeating mistakes. I do however want to come up with ways of making my notes more easily searchable - though I’m unlikely to take the time to digitize them.

Edit: I also keep a tiny notepad with me when hunting to write down little details worth remembering - such as: return to x stand and clear a better shooting lane / move stand 20 yards north to the hemlock. I later add these notes to my journal.

 

[TaperPin]

I remember when going digital was said to eliminate all paper and anything we save digitally will be around forever. lol

For half dozen years I journaled into a personal web page that anyone could check out, but anything online is often sharing too much. Just journaling privately works until a crazy girlfriend formats both hardrives because she thinks you’re an ass. Moving, upgrading, being locked out of online accounts, crazy exes, expired editing software, forums changing software or going out of business, etc., all contributed to me being ok with going by memory and showing close friends pics on my phone. Don’t get me wrong, journaling, even on forums, is a fun way to relive the hunt and save it for posterity. Unfortunately, for many who see a journal it becomes like watching a slide show of someone else’s vacation to Florida and everyone, even your hunting buddies, aren’t bored enough to read it, but might look at the pictures. I had a decade of discussions about the highest levels of difficult remodeling topics wiped out when Fine Homebuilding was purchased and the discussion forums in the older software package were deleted.

I was surprised to open up a banker’s box of old printed photos and slides taken up until the 2000’s and see images that were long forgotten. If I had advice for my younger self it would be to not trust anything online or not backed up in multiple places will last forever. Remember when Apple would say our photos are safely backed up, but phone upgrades wipe out many of them to this day. lol

Email must be safe, or so I thought for a while, so the very best images were sent to myself as attachments, but old emails are are at the mercy of the provider and I think it was hotmail that reduced storage capacity, or I hit a limit, so older attachments were no longer saved.

Better to keep making new adventures I guess.

 

[johnnycake]

I pheasant hunt a ton. I've started hopping back in the truck after a walk and opening up my phone's notes app and ripping a few sentences down. Number of birds, whether the weather was notable, location of birds in each parcel, good or bad dog work, good or bad shooting, etc. Then I total the number of flushes, shots, birds harvested, and birds lost. If I don't want to take much time, I'll then refine my notes and add more color/detail once home or done for the day. Makes a really fun set of stats at the end of the year, and re-reading them helps with scouting for different times of the year in future seasons depending on crop cover, weather, time of season, etc. It also helps me remember the hunts better, like taking notes in class. Pretty fun to hunt an area and remember each point or flush, cripple recovery etc. as you're walking through a spot years later. Regarding big game, I don't hunt quite enough to need to document those as a couple deer a year is easy to remember with icloud and snapchat photo memories. Also Apple does a great job with making those little memory video reels. Those are always fun to go through.

I track all my upland hunts in an Excel spreadsheet. It has turned into a phenomenal personal resource to identify trends over the years and to help find new productive habitats or maximize my odds of success in a given place/time for a particular species.

 

[rac5115]

We keep a book/record at camp not just hunts but really all trips. Makes for fun. To read back through and good memories. My personal records are just pictures but I don't post on social media really so don't need to worry about spot burning.