3 Data Examples Used for Predictions in Hunting Apps
The outdoor industry, specifically hunting and fishing, has been one of the last industries to embrace technology. Until recently, these sports relied on tried-and-true methods to be successful. Innovations like hunting apps have started to change that trend.
Hunting apps running on your smartphone now allow you to track field observations, map hunting locations, monitor weather conditions, and even predict the best times to hunt. These advances have changed the game and put the power of prediction in your pocket.
Paper maps full of Sharpie dots and pins holes and composition books loaded with handwritten notes are no longer needed. The best hunting apps allow you to see your location and journal your hunts in the field. These features make it easier to adapt to changing conditions and plan subsequent hunts all from the data available to you on your phone.
How Prediction Improves Your Hunts
There are many reasons to be using hunting apps. Some of which we have outlined in a previous article, titled “Hunting Apps and Reasons You Should Be Using Them.” Unlike other free deer hunting apps, TrophyTracks is building prediction alongside its many other features. It is all about being at the right spot at the right time. That is the basis for hunting. You are successfully only if you continually put yourself in optimal situations where your chances of seeing game is more likely.
Prediction comes in to play two different ways, general and specific. General prediction identifies better than average days to hunt based on weather observations and other regional information. Specific prediction provides stand by stand and day by day ratings to help you decide when and where to hunt. Unlocking specific predictions for hunters is powerful and very few of the best hunting apps even try to do this.
Examples of Data Hunting Apps Use to Build Predictions
Predicting anything requires data. A prediction is based on historical and real-time data to form a likelihood that an event will occur. For hunters, those events are a positive day in the woods. There are no hunting apps that can promise you will harvest a deer or other game on any given day. What they can do is give you days, times, and locations that are highly likely to have animal movements. These high likelihood days provide you a better than average chance to see game. Harvesting that deer (or other animal) is still up to your preparation and skill as a hunter.
3 Essential Data Points for Better Hunt Predictions
These data elements, all of which can be tracked in modern hunting apps, are critical for providing predictions. What sets apart the best hunting apps, like TrophyTracks, is their ability to accurately capture these data points and make them easily accessible for the hunter to use.
- Recording Observations – Actual observations are the most important data element. Consistent observations of actual game sightings tell a story when trying to predict ideal hunting days. Be careful because not all free deer hunting apps allow you to record observations and store relevant data associated with that observation such as weather data. These records of “good” hunting days and locations, along with bad ones, start to form patterns. Patterns that become specific predictions to improve your hunting success.
- Accurate Weather – Weather has such a large impact on animal movements that it is key to predicting good (or bad) days for hunting. Most free deer hunting apps provide current weather and possibly even a few days of forecasted weather. Those features a great, but what is often missing is attaching weather conditions to observations and specific hunting locations. This feature, found in few hunting apps, is what makes specific predictions possible when incorporating weather data.
- Location Information – It is hard to use a specific prediction without having locations identified to hunt. Deer hunting apps that predict the best times to hunt must have the ability to store location information. Location data is then used to reference historical weather, future weather, and tie it to past hunting observations.
What Free Hunting Apps Don’t Have
Algorithm is a big, scary word most hunters have no business needing to know. Except nowadays when advanced deer hunting apps use them to build predictions. Don’t worry about its meaning or how it works in your app. Algorithms in hunting apps are proprietary and extremely complex. However, focus on its output and the results it gives you in predicting good days to be in the woods.
The bottom line is that hunting is changing. New technology in equipment, clothing, and scent management are we all are familiar with. Technology, however, is more foreign but should be embrace like other changes. Hunting apps will only get better and become more of a factor every season. If you understand the data that can be collected and how it is use, the better it will help you be at the right spot at the right time.