The response to my last post and this site in general was a little overwhelming but positive. I received some good suggestions and have tweaked a few things. As of now, and probably for a while, it is still a work in progress. However, as the title suggests we are up and running and open for "business".
Any questions, concerns or suggestions are still and will be always appreciated. I am not going to go into great detail on how to use this site or what to do because I will be making a video shorty to try and help with that. Please read/review the first post to see if it addresses your question. If it does not and you feel that it is a question other people will have, please ask it in the comment section. Deer season is already upon us. Please contribute as much as you can and in the long run we will all reap the benefits. Good luck and be safe As July rolled around I finally reached that point. The point I, and most hunters, reach where I have finally run out of things to do to keep my mind of the fact it is not hunting season. It is usually about this time that I get online, try and remember all my passwords to the plethora of hunting forums and read as much as possible while I day dream about how epic the next hunting season will be. I could feel this itch coming on pretty heavy for the last week or so. This annual ritual was brought on full force when I stumbled upon TPWD's release of MOST of the 2015-2016 hunting dates. Unfortunately, duck season is still to be determined, although it appears it will be pretty standard. All that being said what has my mind going this off season is nothing new, just with a new twist.
I do not know how many times I have told myself or talked about with friends how great it would be to have all my previous hunts recorded in some sort of hunting journal or hunting logbook. Not only would it be interesting to look at how different variables affected game animal movement, it would also be something to do in the off season, and obviously the information used properly could provide great rewards. I have made it as far as purchasing a logbook and making a few entries. Call it laziness, ignorance, lack of motivation or whatever but I have gathered very little data. I personally like to attribute most of it to two things. First, the fact that logging only my hunts and reaping the benefits will be a slow process. Between there never being enough time to hunt and splitting the time that is available between duck hunting and white-tail deer hunting it always occurs to me that it will be many years before there is much payoff. Second, to gather the most reliable weather data you must either be very detailed in you observations or go back and look up the weather after the hunt, which use to be a slow process. Maybe this does not have to be true. Now let me get away from the rambling and to the actual purpose of this post and the main purpose behind the whole site. I will simply state my idea, what I believe to be the advantages, the hurdles and anything else that I, or friends have thought of. After that I welcome, encourage and look forward to any comments, suggestions and/or feedback in general. The idea is to make a "form" on this website that users can fill out and submit any previous and current hunting data. An early stages example of the form can be found on the HUNT SUBMISSION page. The basic theory behind this is to make it easier for a group of people that might not hunt together or see each other all that often, the ability to share and compare information from their hunts. Having a group of hunters obviously would help speed up the process of having enough information to make educated guesses as to what the animals will be doing under certain conditions. I would then enter everyone's forms into a spreadsheet. Using a spreadsheet has huge advantages. Most applicable weather data can be simply copy and pasted. In a matter of 5-10 minutes Twenty years of weather can be entered into the spreadsheet. The other major benefit is that the spreadsheet can be manipulated so many different ways that the search possibilities are almost endless. For instance you could search: 75803, November, or 75803, November, temperature<30, etc. The same Hunt Submission form could be used for deer or ducks, and I will enter them into separate spreadsheets. That is the basics. Questions that have come up: 1. Privacy-Understandably a lot of people will not want to disclose their name and/or hunting location. I do not think this is hard to work around. I would heavily advice users to submit a correct zip code since that is probably how the weather data will be found. After that it is kind of up to you. I would not mind any extra info such as maybe weather its the river bottom or not but it shouldn't be that big of a deal as long as the zip is correct. What i would highly suggest is whatever piece of info (name,location, stand) your not comfortable with others knowing make up another name/nickname/code/number. In the future you would be able to use this information to search the spreadsheet, so instead of looking it over and thinking its gonna be a good weekend, you might be able to figure out more specifically where you wanted to hunt. 2. THE SPREADSHEET- As of now I have not had the time to try every option, but I have not figured out how to post the spreadsheet on here where it is searchable or manipulable to everyone. I also do not know if everyone would be comfortable with that. There are a few options and on the technical side probably a few more i haven't figured out yet. As it is now the most recent month (although its just an example now) would show up on the PAST HUNT DATA page and then there is a link at the bottom that takes you to an open spreadsheet that can be viewed and searched by all. This could be taken off and emailed out. As of now I do not have the ability to lock anything on the website or offer usernames/passwords etc because for now it is hosted and put together for free. 3. OLD PEOPLE and TECHNOLOGY- Its the nature of the beast. It is the fastest most effective way to accomplish my goal. Old Woody (some of us no more than 2 Woody) hates technology and can send his hunt log via carrier pigeon or telegraph. If you have made it to this point I appreciate you taking the time to review my rambles. As stated previously I welcome any and all feedback. This whole project is meant to be useful to anyone that participates. |
AuthorTripper Swift ArchivesCategories |