How to Keep a Deer Hunting Log (Free Template)

If you already keep a deer hunting log, you are ahead of most hunters. Maybe it is a beat-up notebook in the truck, a spreadsheet you fill in after every sit, or a stack of seasons in a three-ring binder. Whatever it looks like, it holds something nobody else has: a record of how deer actually behave on the ground you hunt. This guide covers what a good deer log should capture, gives you a free template, and shows how to get far more out of the seasons you have already written down.

What Belongs in a Deer Hunting Log

A deer log only pays off if every entry captures the same things, so you can compare one sit to another years later. These are the fields worth recording every time you hunt:

• Date and time of day. Morning, midday, or evening sit, plus how many hours you were in the stand.
• Spot and stand. Name every stand the same way every time. "Creek stand" and "creek" in two different years become two places when you go back to compare.
• Weather. Temperature, wind direction and speed, barometric pressure and whether it was rising or falling, and the sky. Wind direction is the one most hunters regret skipping.
• Deer seen. Does, young bucks, and mature bucks counted separately. A sit with eight does and a sit with one shooter are very different hunts.
• Deer killed. What you took, if anything.
• Rut activity. Scrapes, chasing, grunting, or nothing at all. Logged across a few seasons, this tells you when the rut really kicks off on your ground.
• What the deer were doing. Hunting over a food plot, a trail, a creek crossing, or a ridge, and which way the deer came from.
• Notes. Anything a number does not capture: pressure from the neighbors, a new scrape line, a shot you missed.

The sits where nothing moved belong in the log too. Without the slow days you cannot tell which conditions separate a good sit from a dead one. We wrote a whole post on why the dead sits matter, and the slow days are the easiest ones to skip.

Free Deer Hunting Log Template

Download the free deer hunting log template (CSV). It opens in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers. Each row is one sit, and the columns are:

• Date, written like 11/2/2021
• Time of day: Morning, Late Morning, Afternoon, Evening, or Night
• Spot: the name of the property or stand
• Notes
• Hours spent
• Weapon: Compound Bow, Crossbow, Rifle, Shotgun, Muzzleloader, and so on
• Rut activity: None, Hardly Any, Noticeable Amount, or Peak Rut Activity
• Call receptiveness: Not Receptive, Barely Receptive, Receptive, or Very Receptive
• Target animals in range: how many deer you could have shot
• Hunting over: Food Plot, Trail, Creek, Ridge, Field, and similar
• Seen and Killed counts for antlerless whitetails, immature bucks, premature bucks, and mature bucks

Leave a column blank when it does not apply. A few habits that keep a spreadsheet log useful for years:

1. One row per sit, not per day. A morning sit and an evening sit are two different hunts with two different winds.
2. Use whole numbers for counts. "A few" and "lots" cannot be compared later. Write 3, or 8.
3. Name stands the same way every season. Pick one name per stand and stick to it.
4. Log the sit the day you hunt it. Your memory of a sit fades faster than you think, and the slow days are the first ones you forget.

Notebook, Spreadsheet, or App?

Hunters have kept deer logs in notebooks for generations, and a notebook is far better than nothing. It goes anywhere and never needs a charger. The catch is that you cannot sort it, search it, or ask it a question.

A spreadsheet fixes that. You can filter to every November sit at one stand and see what the wind was doing. But two problems never go away. First, you have to look up the weather yourself after every sit, and most people eventually stop. Second, finding a pattern is still up to you. With a few hundred rows, the patterns are in there, but spotting which combination of wind, pressure, and temperature actually moves deer on your ground is a lot of work.

That is the gap STAT Outdoors was built for. When you log a hunt in the app, the weather for that date, time, and spot is captured automatically, including a pressure and wind pattern from two days before to two days after your sit. Your logs feed season reports, a STAT Report Card for every trip, and STAT Vision, which reads your own history to predict which upcoming days are worth hunting.

Already Keeping a Log? Bring It With You

Switching to an app usually means starting over. Five seasons of notes stay stuck in a notebook while the new app knows nothing about your ground.

With Past Logs Import, a STAT PRO feature on the web, your old log comes with you:

1. Create your spots first. Imported logs attach to your spots, so add the farms and stands you hunt before you import.
2. Open Past Logs Import at app.statoutdoors.com and pick the sport.
3. Bring in your logs. Upload a CSV, paste rows straight from Excel or Google Sheets, or type in a paper logbook in a quick grid with no file at all.
4. Match your columns. Your sheet does not have to use our template. STAT guesses what each column is and you fix anything it missed. "Stand" becomes Spot, "AM/PM" becomes Time of day.
5. Match your values once. Every distinct value is matched one time, not row by row. "Back 40" points to your Back 40 spot, "PM" becomes Evening, and a few hundred rows usually come down to a handful of choices.
6. Review and import. Each row shows any problem right under it, like a missing date. Add GameSTATS or details like rut activity to any row, then import.

A few honest notes so nothing surprises you:

• Weather goes back to August 2021. Logs from August 2021 on get weather and a full weather pattern filled in automatically after import. Weather history does not go back further than that, so older logs import without weather and do not count toward weather patterns. They still count toward your season stats and reports.
• Imported hunts count toward season stats, not XP or badges. Your history fills in your season reports without turning an import into a leveling shortcut.
• You can undo it. If something comes in wrong, Undo this import on the screen right after importing removes every log from that import in one step.
• Photos come after. Open any imported log and choose Add/Remove Photos to attach pictures from that hunt.

What Your Old Logs Unlock

The value of a hunting log grows with every season in it. Imported seasons fill in season reports for years you hunted before STAT, give STAT Vision more of your own history to compare against, and mean your patterns can start showing up from day one instead of after another season of logging. If you want to see what a well-kept log can reveal, read our guides on how to pattern a specific buck and barometric pressure and deer movement.

The Bottom Line

A deer hunting log is the cheapest edge in hunting. Write the same fields down after every sit, slow days included, and use whole numbers. If you have been doing that for years in a notebook or spreadsheet, you already have the most valuable part. Download the free template to start one today, or go PRO and import the seasons you have already logged.