HOW IT WORKS
What the number knows
The Hunt Index reads tonight against nights like it and tells you what the night is worth.
THE HUNT INDEX
One number, one question
The Hunt Index runs 0 to 100, and it answers one question: what is tonight worth next to other nights?
A 78 means tonight ranks better than 78 of every 100 nights. That is all it means. It is a place in line — not a percent chance, not a promise, and not a score out of a hundred you could earn more of.
The tier word comes off the same number, so the word and the number never disagree. In daylight the noun swaps — a PRIME NIGHT and a PRIME DAY are the same band, read by different rules.
Nights lined up worst to best. A 78 stands above most of them.
THE INPUTS
Three things move it. One sits beside it.
Three things move the read, and every one of them is something you can check yourself on the walk out. They are not weighted the same, and one of them — the moon — only speaks to one of the two reads. The fourth card is not a lever on the number — it is its own line beside it.
Temperature, against its own week
Tonight is not measured against a calendar or an average. It is measured against the nights right before it, on your own ground. Roughly two degrees either side of that is the same night.
Warm is the problem. A warm snap in the middle of a cold run is the night you feel it: of the temperature readings, warm is the only one that reliably pulls the read down. What a cold night does on its own is still being worked out.
Warm for its own week pulls the read down.
The moon's height
The moon counts for one thing: whether coyotes are up and moving. What matters is its height — up over the ridge, or down under it.
How bright it is, and what phase it is in, are not what the read uses. Two nights with the same moon overhead get the same answer out of it whether it is full or a sliver.
Height only — and it speaks to whether coyotes are on their feet, never to whether one answers.
How deep into the night
The read knows how far into the night you are. A late window opens about six hours after sunset, and the hours inside it are not the same hours as the ones at dusk.
The night itself runs 5 PM to 6 AM, and the whole night gets read every time — not just the hours you have left.
The late window opens about six hours after sunset and runs to the end of the night.
How fresh the ground is
Ground you hunted today is not the ground you hunted last week. When your log shows the area was hunted in the last day, the app says so: give it a day.
This is the lever with your hand on it. Everything else tonight is weather and sky — this one is a decision about when you go back.
Full read
Give it a day
Hunt the area today and the app says give it a day. It does not move the index — it is its own line beside it, and the one input you control.
TWO QUESTIONS
Two reads, not one
Two questions live under the one number. Will a coyote answer the call on this stand — and are coyotes on their feet at all.
They are not the same question and they do not always agree. Coyotes can be up and crossing country on a night nothing answers, and a quiet night can still turn one around. Keeping them apart is why the log asks how a coyote came — called, stalked or chance — so the record can tell a stalked coyote from a called one.
The moon speaks only to the second question. It has no vote at all on whether one answers.
The same night can run high on one and low on the other. The moon only ever touches the moving side.
HOUR BY HOUR
The night strip
A night is not one number deep. The strip lays it out from 5 PM to 6 AM, one cell to the hour, so you can see where the night actually goes.
Brightness is the read — four levels, dim to bright. The hour speaks in one word: Peak, Building, Slow. A tick shows where you are in it.
The strip carries no curve and no numbers, because the hours do not know themselves that precisely. Four steps is the honest resolution on the glass; the sheet behind an hour can say more.
Peak
- Peak
- Building
- Slow
Brightness is the read. The tick marks the hour you are standing in, and the word under the strip is that hour's state.
THE BANDS
The tiers, and what to do with them
Four words sit on top of the number, and they are the part you act on. The color behind a tier is only ever repeating what the word and the number already said.
- PRIME85 and up
As good as nights come — worth every hour of it.
- STRONG65 – 84
Worth a full night.
- SOLID30 – 64
A normal grind — pick your window.
- GRINDBelow 30
Fewer, better stands.
DAYLIGHT
The Day Read
Plenty of coyotes get killed in daylight, so the app reads daylight too — and the sun decides which read you get, before anything else does.
In full day the number rests on temperature alone, with the ground line beside it as at night. The moon is held neutral on purpose: what the moon does is about light, and at noon the light is not the moon’s. Averaging it in, or splitting the difference, would be inventing a number the app does not have.
In the shoulder — civil twilight, the short band at either end of the night — the moon comes live again. Below that it is dark, and the night index takes over.
A day read still gets its number and tier word. Its odds come in plain speech only, with no range under them, and it wears the outline mark every time. Same bands, same words, a different noun: PRIME DAY, GRIND DAY.
- DAYDay Read — temperature, ground line beside it
- SHOULDERCivil twilight — the moon comes live
- DARKThe night index
One sun, one ruler: the switch fires the same minute as the dark time printed beside it.
THE MARK
- Filled
- Half
- Outline
The small mark beside a read says how settled it is. Filled means conditions the book knows well; half means partly; outline means it’s reaching further from what it knows. Nothing on the screen explains it — a tap on the mark gives that line.
HOWL FORECAST
The howl window
A different question: when coyotes will be talking tonight. The howl window answers that — and when it lands in the moon-down dark, it gives the index a real lift.
It is not a promise that one answers a call, and it is not the same question as either read above. It is where the talking usually lands — useful if you locate first and move in after.
STRAIGHT UP
What it will not do
The read is a read. It is built to be useful on a bad night as well as a good one, which means it has to be honest on both.
It will not promise you a coyote.
It will not tell you to stay in. Even the worst nights on the board get answered more often than not.
It reads the night. You run the stand.
Know the night before you go
Free to start. Tonight’s read, the log, the map, the feed.