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Help Us Pick The Prize for Our Next Caption Contest!

Alex Robinson — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 14:33:47 -0500

So Outdoor Life is part of a cool contest operated by Crown Royal, sponsor of Field & Stream’s Hook Shots show and maker of the whiskey that comes in a purple bag. The contest is called “Pass the Crown,” and it’s a variation on the Secret Santa gift exchange anyone who’s ever worked in an office is familiar with. Are you lucky enough to have never worked in an office? Then here’s how this works:

Each day from now until Dec. 15 Crown Royal is giving away a prize to a different web site to pass along to its readers. Today is Outdoor Life’s turn, but here’s the catch. Crown’s not telling us which prize they’re giving us right away. Instead, we get a clue, embroidered on one of their famous purple bags,* and we have to guess what prize the clue refers to. Based on that guess, we then get to decide whether to keep the prize in our bag or steal one of the prizes that have already been opened by a different site. Here’s a list of the prizes that have already been opened.

This is where we need your help. Do we keep our prize, or steal one from somebody else? You’ve got until 4 PM this afternoon to weigh in. Check out our clue (below), then post your best argument for keeping the prize in our bag or for stealing a specific prize from another site in the comments section here or on our Facebook post about the contest over at facebook.com/outdoorlife. If you can convince us your argument is best, we’ll go with your suggestion. If you’re not convincing enough, we’ll make the decision ourselves.

We’ll post an update here tomorrow telling you what prize was in our bag, and whether we decided to keep it or not. Keep in mind that any of the five sites who come after us can steal our gift, so don’t get too attached to whatever we end up with!

And last, of course; how will we determine which of our readers wins the prize we end up with at the end of the contest? It’ll be a caption contest, photo and date TBD. Stay tuned!

*Crown is running this contest is to get the word out about the custom-embroidered Crown bags ($9.95), and the free personalized Crown Royal bottle labels (21 and over, only) available at CrownRoyal.com. If you’ve got a Crown-lover in your family, this would make a great gift.

Whitetail Tips: How Cloud Cover Affects Deer Movement

Alex Robinson — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:38:32 -0400

Last week we talked about wind direction, wind speed and their effects on deer activity. With that in mind, we can now apply cloud types. We will keep it simple and talk about the most common ones. These are divided into low, middle and high cloud types. Each one is affected differently by the wind.

Low Clouds
Let’s start with low, which run from ground level to around 6000’. Stratus and Nimbostratus my personal favorites, both resemble fog and are sometimes accompanied by drizzle or light rain! With an east quadrant wind it will rain, with a west quadrant it will be overcast. Both are excellent for whitetail hunting. The common middle clouds, lets say 6000 feet to more than 12,000 feet above ground are altocumulus and altostratus again wind direction affects the incoming weather.

With altocumulus you can expect overcast conditions unless the wind shifts to a south to NE direction. If it does it will almost always rain in 24 hours. Deer know this too, and the pm or am hunting period coming up is going to be very good if you have the correct stand placement for the wind. Altostratus usually will bring continuous rain, if it’s blowing from an easterly direction you have about 10-15 hours. Movement will be good before and after this cloud type.

High Clouds
Now let’s get a look at two common high cloud types, cirrus and cumulous. The first is considered a fair weather cloud and is associated with high pressure systems. Cumulous clouds are also considered a fair weather cloud unless they contain or build vertically then you have a chance of thunderstorms. Both of these clouds types can and will produce rain if the wind shifts to NE to south, usually within 24 hours! By knowing this we can predict deer activity. Here’s an example: Let’s say you see alto cumulous clouds and you have an east wind. I would try and get out within the next 12 hours and hunt because deer will be moving. Now it clears out, the wind shifts clockwise to a westerly direction and you have cirrus clouds. I know the barometer is rising and I would hunt this window also, especially during morning hours after an evening storm.

There are many more cloud types and wind direction combinations and I’m just scratching the surface, but this is the basis in which cloud forecasting was built around on Outdoor Life weather. To find the weather forecast and deer movement predictions where you hunt go to OL Weather.

OL Weather: A Weather Report for Outdoorsmen

EricAichele — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:56:58 -0400

When I first began developing the idea for a weather site, I asked myself: "What kind of weather information is absolutely essential for sportsmen?"

All of us look forward to those magical days when the woods come alive with bucks chasing does or turkeys gobbling from their roosts, or those amazing times when, no matter what you throw, every cast draws a strike. The only problem: No one could predict when those magical hunting and fishing days would occur…until now.

CLICK HERE FOR OL WEATHER >>

After years of studying records and cross-referencing them to weather, moon and solar activity, I have partnered with Outdoor Life to develop a tool to predict exactly when the best days to be afield will be. Thousands of harvest and catch records were cross-referenced to site- and time-specific barometer, temperature, wind, sky cover and moon-phase data to determine the whitetail, turkey and fish forecasts you see here. Combining these tools can even further enhance your chances for success.

The best thing about our weather forecasts is that they’re built upon solid data that relates directly to your area of outdoor interest. And our 5-day forecasts are the most accurate, because we’ve based them upon thousands of cross-referenced data entries.

Fishermen will find our water temperature charts, relating specifically to individual species, invaluable in determining which days (and what hours of those days) will produce the best action.

Hunters can rely on our forecasts to tell them the absolute best days and times to be on stand because we’ve done all of the homework for them, comparing thousands of record-book entries for trophy deer and turkeys, then cross-referencing them with the actual weather conditions that occurred when those trophies were taken.

The unique result is the most useful and reliable weather forecasts anyone has ever produced specifically for hunters and fishermen.

Got a question about how all of this works? No problem. Simply post your question in our Answer’s Tool and we will be happy to try to answer it.

Want to help build our database to make it even bigger? Add your harvest information, and you’ll be automatically entered to possibly win some great outdoor prizes.

Got a comment about our site or a story to tell about how our information helped you in the field? Come join in our lively comments section.

So bookmark this page and use our information. We believe you’ll find it to be the most useful hunting and fishing tool you can find anywhere.

Moonstruck: The Effects of the Moon on Whitetails

Outdoor Life Intern — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 11:50:12 -0400

Though moonlight has helped melt the heart of many a fair maiden, the effects of the moon on whitetails is less understood. Many hunters, especially those in northern latitudes, believe that the breeding season is somehow ramped up by the moon phases that occur in November. Most biologists aren't as convinced.

Generally, the hunters who buy in to the notion that a lunar phase somehow controls the timing of the rut fall into one of two camps: those who believe the second full moon after the Autumnal Equinox and the contrarians who say it's the new moon that sends whitetails into a frenzy of licentiousness. Of course, this rutting moon business might come as news to most Southern hunters. Depending upon where one hunts in Dixie and upon the gene pool of local deer, the rut is liable to hit its peak at any time between late October and early February, moon or no moon. In some Southern states where various stockings of whitetails from other regions occurred during the middle part of the last century (most notably Mississippi, Alabama and Florida), the timing of the rut is all over the calendar.

Who Turned Out the Lights?
Scientists generally agree that it's actually the shrinking photoperiod, the shortening of the days‚ that is the main factor that kicks off the rut, with secondary causes such as genetics, predation or hunting pressure, the buck-to-doe ratio, local weather, average air temperature and habitat quality also playing a role. An in-depth study of whitetail breeding seasons was conducted at the turn of the 21st century and involved wildlife biologists from eight state fish and game agencies (including Maine, Michigan and Minnesota) and three universities. Essentially, results were based on backdating fetal ages of pregnant does and looking at corresponding lunar phases.

In summary of data from free-roaming populations, photoperiod as measured by calendar date is better than a particular moon phase for predicting deer breeding chronology, says David Osborn, wildlife research coordinator at the University of Georgia‚Äôs Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources. Said Osborn when he presented the moon phase research at the 24th annual meeting of the Southeast Deer Study Group in St. Louis in 2001. The study found that the relationship between moon phase and deer breeding is more variable than the relationship between date and deer breeding, regardless of latitude. In our opinion, the bottom line is that moon phase has little influence on deer breeding at the individual and population levels. Furthermore, calendar dates based on long-term biological data remain the best predictor of deer breeding chronology.

Moon or no, deer are nocturnally inclined. Accepting that deer might travel more on a moonlit night is quite different from believing that moonlight triggers physiological changes in these animals that compel them to mate, however. Empirical evidence that lunar phases have anything to do with the deer rut is tenuous at best.

What the Heck Is a Hunter's Moon?
In the days leading up to and following the autumnal equinox, around the third week in September, the full moon might rise at sunset‚ or even before sunset‚ without any intervening period of darkness. Consequently, twilight extends much longer into the night.

September's Harvest Moon and October's Hunter' Moon are so named because farmers have a longer light period to bring in their crops, and hunters have more time to hunt, though nowadays, established legal shooting hours generally don‚Äôt accommodate it.