South Carolina Whitetail - hunt club confirms 89% of deer taken within Outdoor Phd time zone charts - After convincing myself, through my own observations and experiences, that my moon position charts worked, I decided to see if I could verify the effectiveness of this system by comparing other hunters experiences with the moon charting diagrams for the dates, and locations of their deer kills.

A friend of mine who is a member of a South Carolina hunting club had pretty detailed records of dates and tag times from October, 1990 through December, 2003. During this time, this hunt club has documented 157 kills.

I got pretty excited when I received this information and began keying dates and times and zip codes into the Outdoor Phd website. The instant gratification of hitting the submit button and seeing the charts appear on the screen was terrific. I really got excited when recorded kill after kill coincided with the predicted times on the website charts.  After I had done several dozen of these evaluations, a programming buddy of mine volunteered to write a program routine to evaluate all of them for me and print out the percentage of kills that had occurred during times that the moon charting program predicted that deer should be moving. To my great satisfaction, 89 percent of the recorded kills occurred during times that the moon charts predicted that deer should have been moving.  This was a very high percentage of correlation, but I wanted to go further in my verification.

I asked my friend if he knew of any times when hunters jumped deer in their bedding areas while they were walking to or from their stands or were just walking around still hunting. He responded that with the number of hunters in the club, there were some times that this happened and would cause deer to be moving when they would otherwise not have been. He also pointed out that there had been some instances of a stray dog or coyote spooking deer from their bedding areas while hunt club members were present. He stated that he had, in fact, killed a coyote while deer hunting.  I asked him if he felt that over the 14 year period that the deer kill records spanned, if he thought some deer might have been killed as a result of this unnatural movement of deer. He said that although he was not present during every hunt, he felt that some deer had probably been killed as a result of this circumstance. He further stated that he could not estimate with any degree of confidence how many times this might have occurred.

The 11 percent that fell outside the moon chart predicted times remain a statistical reality that I cannot definitely explain; but I will take an 89 percent confirmed correlation any time I am heading for my tree stand.

About ten years ago, I realized that I did not know how to deer hunt and decided to learn. I started reading about deer hunting and talking to hunters who were successful every year. As a result of this research, I began to understand and practice the use of human odor control, cover scents, wind direction, camouflage, stand placement, tracking, time in the woods scouting, and patterning deer.

Almost immediately, my success ration improved dramatically. However, I was mystified that although deer are basically nocturnal animals and we generally hunt for them at dawn and dusk, and try to intercept them either coming from a food source to their bedding area or coming from their bedding area to a food source, I spent far too many mornings and evenings in a tree stand when nothing happened.

Furthermore, I often would spook deer as I was leaving a stand at 10 or 11 am. I knew that there had to be a reason for this behavior, but I did not know what it was.

I manage a small electric utility and am on first call or back up call to deal with power outage situations almost 24/7. Im very busy. I also have a wife and children which makes my time in the field deer hunting limited, but it is still very valuable to me. So, if I had a way to figure out the best time to be in my tree stand and see deer, I could maximize my time and be a much more productive hunter.

After reading a lot and talking with many successful hunters, I began to be interested in the position of the moon. It seemed to me that deer responded to the moons position in the sky.

My research was not all that scientific, but personal observations and experiences convinced me that deer seemed to move around and feed during the times that the moon was directly overhead, or directly underfoot, and that if the moon was rising within an hour or two of sunrise or sunset, then deer seemed to me to be more likely to be on the move during those times.

My next step was to find a way to predict the moons position in the sky for future dates. After many hours of looking and searching, I was able to begin predicting the sun and moon on any given day for a given place. This took a good deal of time and patience, but it started working for me. I began sharing what I was doing with some friends and they too have found that this method works.

The bell ringing truth for me came this past hunting season. I wanted to plan a hunt in Illinois, some 400 miles away from my home. And I could take off only about three days from work, including driving time. I immediately began using this technique to determine the best times for me to be in a tree stand in Illinois.

While I was working on my charts, which took some time to make, a friend of mine saw them and asked me what they were. When I told him, he immediately became excited and had me help him in planning his hunt to Virginia using the charts for his times and location.

My hunt in Illinois was probably the greatest deer hunting experience of my life, I harvested the biggest and nicest buck that I have ever taken and I harvested him during the time when the newly developed moon charts indicated that deer would be moving. When I arrived home, I had an email from my friend who had hunted in Virginia, and he too had harvested a great buck during the times the charts indicated deer would be on the move.

Now, a newly developed computer program available through this website will allow hunters all over the world to plan deer hunts around the times that deer are most likely to be on the move in their area.

Merely by logging in, keying in the date, putting in a zip code or the longitude and latitude of your location, you can instantly have a moon position chart that tells you the best times to hunt your area.

So, no matter where you are, or where you want to hunt, or when you want to hunt, if you can get to an internet connection, you can get this information instantly. For me, it doesnt get much better than that!

Charles Tolley