Remember back in the old days when you would watch the weather channel in the morning to find out what the days outlook would be while hunting? And then you would have a flagging tape trail to your deer stand while holding a compass? Along with that, the only way you knew what kind of deer activity other people were experiencing was by word of mouth. I sure don't! I'm not old enough to have experienced that type of hunting but I've heard plenty about how it used to be back in the day. In this day and age, apps are everywhere. There are so many hunting apps out there; how do you know what is helpful and what is junk? I've listed five apps here that I use, which I think can be extremely beneficial to your hunting and scouting efforts.
1. Wunderground - Wunderground is a in depth weather app. It gives you up to date information on the current temperature, rain accumulation, humidity, dew point, visibility, and barometric pressure. It also gives you sunrise and sunset times along with when the moon will rise and set. Not only does it give you that information, but it also gives you the current moon phase and when the next full and new moon occurs. What I like best about this app is that you can go look on any day in the past and instantly get the all the information from that day. This can be particularly helpful when sorting through old trail cam photos and figuring out why deer moved on a certain day. You can go look at that day and see what the pressure, moon, temp was etc.
2. Scoutlook Hunting - Scoutlook Hunting is a jack of all trades app. It includes weather for your location, and also serves as a GPS in a way. You have the ability to mark everything from tree stands, trail cams, to even primary trails and scrapes and rubs. Something that I really like about this app is it has a wind cone, so you can visually see how the wind will be blowing at a given location. You can search locations that you have created, and see what the wind and weather is where you want to hunt. At any time, you can also log notes for a given location. I find that I use this app probably the most, and it is definitely one of my favorites.
3. Rut Reporters - The Rut Reporters is an app provided by Field and Stream. This one is really cool as it provides updates on the rut from all over the country, which are broken up into different regions. It has an interactive heat map which shows deer activity and the rut phase from across the country as well, which is taken from people inputting activity they have seen. It also includes the "best days of the rut" that Field and Stream also publishes and tells you why they are considered the best days. This app is what you need to stay up to date on everything to do with the rut.
4. HuntStand - HuntStand is another jack of all trades app. This one is unique in that you set up hunting areas. Within these hunting areas you can download the weather data for that area along with the wind speed. You can also add way points such as tree stand or trail camera locations. What I really like about this one is that you can measure straight distances or even draw shapes on your map and measure the area within that shape. This is really useful when determining how many acres a specific area is within the area that you hunt. HuntStand also gives moon information along with what peak game activity times are in the morning and evening if that is something you believe in.
5. Whitetail Watch - Whitetail Watch is a rather new app/website. I like to think of it as a deer hunting Facebook. It was created by Bill Winke of MidwestWhitetail. When you have this app, you create a profile and then can add friends. On your timeline or home page you see other people's post which include their status's on what is happening in their neck of the woods. What is really cool about this one is that people can add activity logs and can post that, so you can see where in the country they are hunting, and what kind of activity they are experiencing. What is particularly nice about this app is you can create an activity log after every hunt and track how many deer you see during the season. You can also track the times you saw deer, along with what they were doing, such as feeding in a field or chasing during the rut.
Downloading any of these apps doesn't guarantee you anything, but they can be of great help to your organization and can get you engulfed into the hunting community. These aren't the only hunting apps out there, but they are some of the best ones.
