Track and Analyze Your Hunts With This Interactive Tool
Have you ever tracked your deer sightings throughout a hunting season? The 2021 deer season was the first time I diligently documented my hunts in terms of number of hunts, locations hunted and what I saw on each of those hunts. After doing this exercise all season, I was determined to find an effective way to analyze and learn from the data collected. This resulted in building an analysis tool in excel using slicers and graphs to have the ability to interact with and learn from the data. Forewarning, this is coming from a hunting addict that’s also an excel nerd.
After doing this, it was so helpful to me that I wanted to make it available to other hunters that might benefit from this tool as well. I’m making this template available for anyone that wants it, by sending it to all our newsletter subscribers, courtesy of Foxtrot Hunting Co. If you aren’t already subscribed, you can do so here to get this same tool for your own benefit. In this article, I’ll explain how this tool works along with a few key learnings from my 2021 whitetail deer season, which includes some state-by-state comparisons. Also, if you haven’t seen it, check out the video on our YouTube channel “TRACK YOUR HUNTS,” for a more in-depth breakdown of the template and my observations.
What This Tool Does for You
This excel template is useful for anyone that either wants to begin tracking their hunts for the first time, or anyone that has been tracking their hunts for some time but wants to do more with their data. This tool simply takes your line-by-line hunt entries and automatically populates it into a useful dashboard, where you can manipulate the datasets in a combination of ways to analyze the information. An example of the dashboard is provided here to give you an idea of what this tool populates in interactive graphs. This includes comparison graphs for each of the following topics: Deer Sightings per State, Deer Sightings by Time of Day, Deer Sightings per Month, Average Deer Sightings per Hunt, Buck Type per State, and Land Type.
Overview of the dashboard this tool will populate with your hunting data
What I Learned from Documenting my Hunts
In 2021, I deer hunted a total of 47 times. My goal before the season was to get in 45 sits and I was fortunate to have the time to exceed that goal. Note that on 11 of those sits I didn’t see a single deer. That’s 23% of my hunts that I didn’t see a deer for the entire hunt. I think that’s important to note, especially for new hunters to not get discouraged when you don’t see deer. It’s part of hunting; you have to learn from it and always appreciate the time in the woods.
I hunted across three states last year, including my home state of Michigan, and out-of-state trips to both Kansas and Iowa. In the video I note the importance of doing this exercise yourself because everyone’s information will differ based on a variety of factors. For instance, I didn’t hunt a single time in Michigan in November due to my out-of-state trips, which I suspect would have significantly changed my buck sightings in Michigan in comparison to the other states. In addition, only 55% of my hunting in Michigan was on public land, while 100% of my hunts in both Kansas and Iowa were on public land. All that’s being said as a disclaimer to take this information with a grain of salt and for example purposes only, and to encourage you to do this same exercise with your own information to gain the greatest benefit.
After reviewing my data, I had three key takeaways from the season. First, the buck sightings I had between states correlated with how difficult it was to get a tag in each of those states. With Iowa and Kansas both being draw states for a non-resident tag and having more points in Iowa than Kansas for the draw, my total buck and mature buck sightings increased as the difficulty to get a tag increased. Now I did get more hunts in Iowa than Kansas to impact that comparison, so take that for what it’s worth. It was still reassuring for me to see after all the money and time spent to hunt those coveted states.
The second takeaway was my buck to doe ratio observed in Michigan being better on public land compared to my private land hunts. My Michigan public land hunts observed a 25:100 buck to doe ratio, while that was a 16:100 ratio on private. Now these are not great ratios to start with, but that’s a whole other topic. I was surprised to see the comparison to come out that way. I don’t own any of the private land I hunted, but as a landowner this could give you a better idea of how to manage your property and area, especially when you start documenting numbers year over year to strive for a healthier balance.
View of public land deer sightings in Michigan
The third and most important takeaway for me was how a many more bucks I saw on morning hunts compared to evening hunts. I saw nearly 3x more bucks on my morning hunts compared to my evening hunts. In Iowa this was extremely prevalent, where I saw a total of 10 mature bucks throughout my morning hunts, while only seeing a total of one on all my evening hunts there. If you watch a lot of The Hunting Public videos, you’ll notice they seem to do more evening than morning hunts, and certainly have a ton of success doing so. This was a message to myself that I need to improve my evening stand location scouting and selection. This exercise has motivated me to try and shift my evening strategies next season to see if I can improve on those hunts, and is something I may not have realized without documenting my hunts becoming a habit.
View of deer sightings in Iowa by time of day
Why You Should Track Your Hunts
In the end, I was extremely happy with the results of tracking my hunts and the benefits of this tool to analyze the information. I’m excited to build on this data season after season to not only learn from it, but also have another way to capture the lifelong memories made each season. I strongly encourage you to start documenting your hunts and hope this tool from us helps contribute to reaching your hunting goals year after year. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive this tool in your inbox before this fall!
