Smart Phone Application "My Tracks" Can Make Hunters More Efficient in the Woods

    Looking for a simple tool to aid in your scouting efforts or assist you during the shed hunting season?  Look no further than your smart phone.   Yes, your smart phone.  My Tracks, an application downloadable to a variety of smart phones including Droid, iPhone or Blackberry, can help you be a more efficient hunter in the woods.  Here’s how.

My Tracks is an application that works with Google Maps to record your every move during your time afield.  Once your track as been recorded you view it directly on your phone or upload it to Google Spreadsheets on Google My Maps.   While this application is not designed specifically for hunters, it provides several features that can be very useful to all hunters alike.  For example, say you’ve just acquired a new piece of property and you are scouting it for potential stand locations.  With My Tracks, you are able to insert waypoints, or makers, that will appear via aerial map on your smart phone.  This way, you are able to analyze terrain features in accordance to your stand site or find it easily should you forget the stand location.  My Tracks also comes in handy should you have trouble blood trailing a deer.  You could start recording your track from the point of impact, insert markers where blood becomes scarce and, when you recover your deer, aerially view the blood trail in Google Maps.  Shed hunters could also utilize the same features when looking for antlers.  By marking the location of each shed antler you find as well as the path you took to find that shed, you can be more efficient by concentrating on areas where you have a better chance of finding a shed.  The possibilities with My Tracks are truly endless for the serious whitetail hunter.

While recording tracks, you can:
1.    See location / progress on a map
2.    Monitor real-time statistics: time, distance, speed, elevation
1.    View elevation profile by time or distance
2.    Zoom, pan elevation profile
3.    Create waypoints
4.    Create statistics waypoints (splits tracks into subtracks)