A homing device

[caorach]

When stalking alone in forestry it is often useful to mark where you took the shot from and where you thought the deer was standing to help with the search. As most of my shots take place near to last light I use a glow stick to mark where I took the shot from, and one to mark where I thought the beast was standing. I might also use one to mark the deer when I find it.

You can buy the glow sticks on ebay in bulk for not a lot of cash, many come with hooks and some string in the package so you can easily tie them onto a tree or hang them on a branch or on your sticks if necessary. They produce no heat, you just bend them to break an inner glass capsule which starts the chemical reaction. The 12 hour ones are good for two nights, though not as bright the 2nd night, should that be necessary. They are available in a range of colours should you wish to colour code your marking and can also act as emergency lighting.

I would also sometimes use them to mark my route back out of thick forestry, if for example I needed to duck through a specific hole in the hedge to get out or similar then I drop a glow stick/light stick right at the spot and it makes it easy to locate on the way back in the pitch dark.

Clearly this only works well at night but it certainly provides a simple, pretty fail safe method of helping find shot deer in the dark, and marking them once you do.

 

[baconbutty]

I've been thinking of asking my 17 year old lad, who's a whizz at programming to write me a smart phone app to do just this. Was thinking of photo, gps tag of point where shot was taken, where deer was shot and where grallocked/ left for pick-up (this would convert to a grid ref plus allow pin drops on google earth). It'd also capture time, etc. developing the idea was then thinking you could scroll through your rifle selection, ammo used, input weather, scroll through species, sex, etc. you could also tag videos, etc to the record. This info could then feed into a larder system and game records. It seems to be getting a life of its own!

 

[barongcw]

I've been thinking of asking my 17 year old lad, who's a whizz at programming to write me a smart phone app to do just this. Was thinking of photo, gps tag of point where shot was taken, where deer was shot and where grallocked/ left for pick-up (this would convert to a grid ref plus allow pin drops on google earth). It'd also capture time, etc. developing the idea was then thinking you could scroll through your rifle selection, ammo used, input weather, scroll through species, sex, etc. you could also tag videos, etc to the record. This info could then feed into a larder system and game records. It seems to be getting a life of its own!

I'll happily be your first customer but I do not need much more than photos, say, 3, gps points where shot was taken and where deer stood and was left gralloched. Also a GPS point where deer was last seen in case of a wounded one you could send this information to a tracker. Also room for a few lines of notes.
I myself think rifle details and what follows are too fidgety for smart phone imput. Better done at home.

You might suggest he trolls US websites in case some of this has been done already.

 

[baconbutty]

I'll happily be your first customer but I do not need much more than photos, say, 3, gps points where shot was taken and where deer stood and was left gralloched. Also a GPS point where deer was last seen in case of a wounded one you could send this information to a tracker. Also room for a few lines of notes.
I myself think rifle details and what follows are too fidgety for smart phone imput. Better done at home.

You might suggest he trolls US websites in case some of this has been done already.

Thanks - its really just something to keep him occupied and something that might be useful to me. Trawling the US sites is a great idea. Will get him onto that too.