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Why You Need HuntCast to Know the Best Time to Hunt

6 Minute Read

You may be at the end of your deer season by now. Was it successful? Or do you wish you had another shot to tag out this season?

Maybe you spent some quality time in the field during the peak season and came home empty-handed. Or, perhaps you used HuntWise to plan a hunt but it didn't turn out quite like you hoped. You weren't quite sure when to go out even though you scouted your hunt area using the app.

Let's make sure every time you hunt, it's during peak hunting times with the best opportunities to come home with whatever you're after, whether it's a deer, turkey, elk, or duck.

Today, we'll talk about the HuntCast feature in the HuntWise hunting app and how it can help you hunt better. With HuntCast, you'll know the best time to hunt in your area to improve your chances of bringing home the game you're after!

 

A hunter uses the HuntWise app while in a hunting blind.

What Is HuntCast?

It is as close to a "foolproof" way to know when you should be in the field for your best chance of tagging out.

HuntCast is an algorithm that incorporates real-time weather and animal movements to pinpoint the best timeframes to be in the field. Depending on your HuntWise subscription, you can look "into the future" between four and 15 days (for Elite users) to plan your hunt.

This feature takes the guesswork out of planning your hunt and knowing when you should (and should not) be in the field for your best opportunities for success. HuntCast helps you make the best use of your time in the field to reduce the potential of coming home empty-handed.

You avoid long, unproductive sits in your stand or blind by using HuntCast to help you plan days (or just hours) in the field when you're most likely to see animal activity. You can even set HuntCast Alerts so the app tells you when to grab your gear and get out for a hunt!

 

A hunter in camo and blaze orange uses binoculars in the woods, find the best time to hunt concept.

How Does it Work?

Let's hear from one of our HuntWise Field Team hunters on how he uses HuntCast for success in the field.

Cody Barhorst shares this:

"Let me start by saying that HuntWise is an amazing tool for the sport of hunting — and something that I wish I had earlier in my years of hunting.

Can you get by and still be a successful hunter without Huntwise? Of course, you can. But having the HuntWise tool as another tool in your toolbox is unmatched, especially for hunting whitetails.

HuntWise is an all-around great app for the outdoors. It gives you so many benefits, including maps with multiple available layers, deer movement predictions based on the weather, barometric pressure, informational hunting articles and blogs, and significant discounts on top-of-the-line gear.

However, today, I want to talk about HuntCast to give you the best chance to be in the stand when your target buck is cruising by.

Let us start with HuntCast as a whole. After you create your HuntWise account, you will have full access to the app or the website, which allows you to access the HuntCast feature located on the bottom tab bar in the app. This is an amazing feature that will combine a multitude of distinct factors and spit out a percentage of how likely it is that deer will be moving during that time. It will even break this down into hours of the day.

Inside HuntCast, you will see the percentage for a different number of days, depending on your subscription level. It factors in temperature change, windspeed, moon phase, barometric pressure, and weather fronts moving through your area and then tells you the peak whitetail movement probability time.

It also acts as a weather app and shows the current temperature, sunrise and sunset, wind speed and direction, along with the percentage of precipitation. This hunting app combines everything that you need into one app — and most of it on one screen — to make it simple for us hunters.

One of the best parts about HuntCast and all these awesome features is that it will give you all of this information for every property that you hunt. So, say that you have permission to hunt three different properties, and you have several stands hung on each property. HuntCast will give you a separate page for each property with a prediction on the whitetail movements."

 

A buck deer in a field of tall brush.

But Does it Work?

I can tell you it works, and Cody can tell you it works (as can many other hunters). 

But to show you that HuntCast works, let's hear from another hunter who used HuntWise and the HuntCast feature for a big win this season.

Our friend Noah Dotson shares this:

"I use your app every day before I go hunting! All that week, I was planning on going hunting that day cause the app showed it was the best deer movement for that week.

So, that Monday, I called my dad and asked him if he wanted to go with me Thursday to set up a decoy and hunt from a pop-up blind. Of course, he was all fired up and said yes. That Monday, we went up to set up the pop-up blind so they could get used to it.

Long story short, I killed the biggest deer of my life thanks to HuntWise and the HuntCast deer predictions for the week.

I would never have planned a hunt like that in the middle of the week without checking the HuntWise app first. It was also the first time I've hunted with my dad in 10+ years, so that made it extra special to me!"

If you haven't yet tried HuntWise and HuntCast to plan a hunt, we believe it will improve your hunts — no matter what you hunt throughout the year — because of stories like this and many more that we hear all year long.

 

Close-up of hands using HuntCast in the HuntWise app for deer movement forecast.

Try HuntWise and HuntCast to find the Best Time to Hunt

Even if your deer season is over, it's never a bad time to download and try HuntWise for free.

Maybe you can still get out for a late-season deer hunt. Or you can plan a duck hunt you weren't sure you could fit in this season. Whether you have a lot of time (or a little) to get out into the field, HuntCast can help you pinpoint the best time to hunt based on the game you're after.

So, start planning your next hunt for free! Download HuntWise and explore it — free — for your first week.

To get the most out of the app and get access to that 15-Day HuntCast forecasting, try an Elite subscription. You also get deeper discounts on gear and access to our FieldGuide+ — exclusive content curated by our HuntWise Pros to help you be a better hunter.

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