I have kept track of everything now for 29 seasons. So far this season I've got in 52 hunts and seen 474 deer from stand and have passed up shots at 40 bucks, including two that would've grossed 130 maybe last night at 10 yards that were inspecting the decoy. I may regret that here in 8 days when our rifle season intervenes.
My logs are very important to me and were helpful in putting together my book in 2008, My Neck of the Woods, as well as my next one that I'm working on now. More importantly, it provides a nice record of where I've been and what I've seen, and helps keep the memories alive. While I've put in over 2000 bowhunts for deer, usually reading a couple lines of my log entries can bring back the recall of the especially memorable hunts instantly.
I keep track of dates, days, time in and out, AM/PM, temp, sky, wind, other weather details, stand used, modes of hunting used, scent, other wildlife seen, and on each group of deer seen I record, time, sex/age, where, action, distance, direction moving, * (whether I could've shot them or not), and buck size and description. And then I keep a running total in the bottom right corner of hrs. on stand, bucks/does/fawns/unknown seen, total, (*) and * (bucks/does-fawns I passed up). And I break this down AM v. PM, and by property, and before rifle season v. after rifle season.
I also usually keep track in my log book of all my buddies and when they kill their animals. That's a fun one, although I've got some catching up to do right now because they are falling every day here in NE as things get fired up. And for each of my successes I record hunt #, date, date, Am/PM, size, property, stand, shot distance, hit, recovery distance, method, permit number, and equipment used.
Sounds like a lot of work and it is. But I don't regret one bit of it. It's never too late to start.
Topic: how many keep journals and what have ya saw this year? (Read 723 times)
