The value of keeping records

I have found over the years that keeping notes, a journal, or a log book of various outdoor activities has been very helpful in remembering trips, documenting vehicle use, maintaining service records for that vehicle, or recording sight settings and load information for various firearms.

Keeping a shooting journal has been especially helpful when shooting my blackpowder firearms. I’ve recently been experimenting with powder charges in a couple of different muzzleloaders. Having a record of powder charge, sight setting and group size at a specific distance has helped greatly in refining the best loads for my purposes.

I keep a log book in my boat which documents why a trip was made, the date, engine hours, and anything I thought was worth logging when I made the entry. I find this information useful in planning fishing trips and especially in documenting maintenance work done on the boat or trailer over the years.

I do the same for our small motorhome. Again, I log total miles each trip, where we went, and any maintenance performed. I also find the entries useful in recalling events from the trip itself. Sometimes, those memories are more important to me than any other documentation in the book.

I was cleaning a section of my garage the other day and I found a single sheet of paper where I had recorded my wife’s and my coho fishing success one season. Unfortunately, I had neglected to log the year on the paper. It was a record of who caught what fish on what day. I had also noted each fish’s sex and weight. I was reminded of how good coho sport fishing in the Northern District had been at one time (and, hopefully, will be again!).

After studying the sheet, I recalled making the entries after each trip. I believe the year was 2008, but I won’t guarantee it. We had started our coho fishing on July 27 when I landed a nine-pound male. My wife was skunked. On July 30, the tables were turned and she landed two female silvers: one was eight pounds and the other was five pounds while I went home empty-handed.

We made four different fishing trips from August 1-6 where we both caught our limit of two coho each. I caught five more coho on three additional trips over the weeks from Aug. 11-23. We ended the season with a total of 167.5 pounds of silvers between us. The average weight was just less than seven pounds per fish. The largest silver was an eleven-pound male and the smallest, also a male, weighed four pounds.

I was a little surprised at how much information was contained on that single page and how easy it had been to simply jot the information down after each trip.

I also have a shooting journal that my father had started decades ago to record loading data and group sizes for his various firearms. He also used the book to keep an inventory of his personal guns and gear. That’s interesting to look through for some good reloading “recipes” and to remember some of his different firearms, but I have used the back section of the book for another purpose.

After inheriting the journal following my father’s passing, I started logging in my big game hunting success, starting with the first large animal I harvested, a young bull caribou, from the North Slope in July, 1972. The most recent was a yearling cow moose during the “hot spot” or targeted hunt in February, 2013. I used my Winchester model 70 in 300 Winchester Magnum for the caribou and a Remington model 870 shotgun with slugs for the moose.

I’m not bragging, but there are 46 entries, including bison, moose, caribou, elk, Sitka Blacktailed deer, and whitetailed deer in the journal. As you might notice, I like to eat what I harvest so I have concentrated on the “food” species. I still hope to take a nice spring black bear someday. Why spring? Because the animal should be much better tasting then than one off a salmon stream in the fall.

If you don’t currently keep records of your fishing or hunting trips, you might want to start. It’s not hard to write down a few observations or counts at the end of the day. If you note weather conditions, observed animal movements, weight and sex of your fish, or whatever you choose to record, you will be creating a valuable reference over the years which will contribute to your later successes.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. This column is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman or its parent company, Wick Communications. You can leave Delo a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.