Deer Journal

A complete stalking record, from the hill to the return

Deer Journal logs culls, sightings and outings on your phone — in the field, with no mobile signal — and turns them into the season reports and statutory returns that have to be filed afterwards.

Works on iPhone, Android and desktop. Access is currently by invitation.

Built around how a day on the hill actually goes

Ground is set up once. After that an outing is the container for a day out — where you were, when you started and finished, and everything you took or saw while you were there.

Records

Outings, culls and sightings

Everything sits in one hierarchy: property, then area or DMU, then the outing, then the culls and sightings within it. Set the ground up once and it is there next season.

Offline

Works with no signal

The app loads from your device, so records can be created, edited and browsed with no connection at all. Anything saved offline is queued and synced automatically the moment signal returns.

Mapping

Your ground on the map

Draw property and area boundaries, or import them from a file. The app works out which area a cull falls in, gives you the acreage of each block, and drops a pin for every record with a GPS fix.

Offline maps

A map that draws without a connection

Online maps show a grey screen on a hill with no signal. Deer Journal can store the map itself on your phone, so your ground and your pins still draw when there is nothing to fetch them from.

Together

Shared outings

When two of you are out together, one shares the active outing with a join code and the other logs from their own phone. Both see each other's records appear as they are entered.

Returns

Reports and statutory returns

A live season summary — culls, outings, hours, hours per deer — plus monthly summaries against target, a full cull-by-cull table, an Excel workbook, and the NatureScot return in its required column format.

Also in the app: barcode scanning to find a cull from the tag in your hand, gates and access codes stored against the ground, photographs against records, import of historical cull data, and a three-column desktop layout on larger screens.

What it looks like

Real screenshots from the app.

The Deer Journal home screen
Home
Logging a cull record
Logging a cull
The map view, showing cull pins on mapped ground
Map view
The reports screen, showing the season summary
Reports
The three-column desktop layout
The desktop layout, on screens 1024px and wider

A walk through the app

Coming soon A short walkthrough of setting up ground, logging a cull and pulling off a return.

Getting access

Deer Journal is in use on working deer ground and accounts are set up by invitation rather than public sign-up. If you already have an account, open the app and sign in with Google or your email address.

If you manage deer and think it would be useful on your ground, get in touch.

Get in touch