2010 Deer Activity Calendar
Outdoor Outlook's 2010 Deer Activity Calendars
In 2007 Outdoor Outlook launched our deer activity calendars with great success. Since then, hunters have expressed great satisfaction with the calendars with some hunters getting their best bucks on our forecasted "best" times to hunt. In 2009, we launched a new calendar that has been created from Pope & Young deer records of over 33,000 record-book sized whitetails. These records are included with certain purchases from the Pope & Young website. In 2010, we have combined all of our calendars into one and have added a few new features.
Unlike other lunar prediction calendars, our calendars are based entirely upon whitetail hunting. Other lunar game activity calendars are based partly upon fishing results. Our activity calendar was created from a five year study which resulted in over 19,000 deer sightings in 4,500 days of hunting. Each of these sightings were catalogued by time of day and moon phase/age. This enormous wealth of information has been used to rank dates and times based upon the hunter success in seeing deer activity (and the number of deer observed) during each time period. Each date/time is ranked from lowest activity to highest activity. These rankings fall into one of five color-codes which can be used to quickly evaluate the probability of deer activity during any given time and date.
Outdoor Outlook has produced two calendars from our research, the “relative” calendar and the “overall” calendar. The “relative” calendar compares mornings to mornings, midday to midday and afternoon to afternoon. For example, with the relative calendar, you can determine the most productive midday hunts when compared to other midday hunts. The “overall” calendar shows the best times to hunt regardless if it is am (before 10am),noon (10am to 2pm) or pm (after 2pm). If you are looking for the most productive times of the month, regardless of what time of day, use the “overall” calendar.
The P&Y portion of this calendar is based on a statistical survey of over 33,000 trophy bucks reported to the Pope and Young Club ( www.pope-young.org ) over approximately 40 years. The moon age/phase has been calculated for each trophy and the totals for each lunar day have been tabulated. The relative strength of each lunar day determines the color code added to the calendar. In some instances, particular lunar dates created 40%more trophy bucks than other lunar dates. In other words, on particular lunar dates, you are 40% more likely to get a mature buck than on other dates. Please note that the colors are added based on Lunar age and not the calendar date.
Three calendars have been created from the P&Y survey. These three calendars represent three sub-species of whitetail that cover the majority of the whitetail’s range. Notably, each sub-species showed different influence to the moon. These calendars are : the Southeast Calendar - O.v. Virginianus (Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama), the Northeast Calendar - O.v. Borealis (Ontario, Quebec, Eastern Minnesota,Wisconsin,Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland,New Jersey and all states further to the north), and the Midwest Calendar - O.v. Texanus and O.v. Macrourus ( Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming).