Let me preface this by saying that the jury is still out on this app. I'm not endorsing it or claiming it will work. About 30 minutes ago I got a text from one of my Arkansas hunting buddies telling me about a phone app he stumbled across and he immediately thought of me because I'm colorblind. The app is named "TracknTrail". Among its many features, which include navigation, property boundaries, property owner info, weather data, wind direction and solar/lunar data, it has a feature that could be a true game changer for this of us who are colorblind. Heck, it could be a game changer for those who have normal color vision. The app uses the phone camera and the app's technology scans for blood. It flashes a "blood detected" alert, circles the blood on the screen and allows you to add a waypoint where the blood is on your current track. Being colorblind has been the bane of my existence as a bow hunter. Unless I see a deer fall or get lucky and find it, I'm pretty much dependent on someone else for help tracking. As soon as I saw my buddy's text, I got excited. I downloaded the app. When I opened the app on my phone I found that there is a $29 per year subscription fee. I thought to myself, "That is a very small price to pay if this actually works and I'm willing to spend $29 just to test it. It's pouring rain outside right now, so I tested it the only way I knew how: I used my wife's "finger stabber" from my wife's glucose test kit, punctured my finger, squeezed a good little drop of blood and wiped it on the floor. Below are two pics. One is the blood on the floor and the other is my finger (of course). From what little I've read so far it only detects blood within 6 feet, but that should be more than sufficient to totally change my hunting life. I am curious as to what technology is behind this. I already know that it's more than just a camera detecting the color red because of this pic. It's just my hand with no blood on it. I haven't even had a chance to look at all of the other features of this app. I'll be investigating it soon. If this actually works, these guys don't know what they've got here nor do they realize just how much someone like me would actually pay for it. Shhhh. Let's not tell them. Edit: I should have let the blood dry to see if it can detect dried blood. That would be a huge bonus. I guess I need to stab my finger again.
I pricked my finger again and smeared a few tiny drops of blood on our bathroom vanity top. I used a blow dryer to dry it out and it still detected the dry blood. This is promising.
What will they think of next. Amazing technology. Keep us posted as you use it more before and during hunting season. Only negative would be rain which would screw up any kind of tracking. Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, that lack of blood was a mystery. That doe had a huge hole in her side when we found her but we had to grid search to find her.
have you tried using just a smidge of water only, ketchup (yea, not in the wild I know), try some dog crap smeared, decaying material, any other 'material' it might alert to ?? .. cut some very small pieces of steak/meat and place/smear on leaves and see if it picks it up ... what about stomach juices/intestinal, etc. ... daytime vs night ? ... wet ground/leaves/grass vs dry ? ...
Those are good ideas and I’ll have to check them out. I do know that it definitely scans for red because anything bright red will trigger it. There has to be more to it than that though. I’m about to leave for Arkansas to help my sister with a plumbing issue, but I’ll try some of these when I get back.
I also figured out something else by scanning the kitchen. It also scans for anything “shiney”. I got to put metal dish drainer and it lit up every round corner that was reflecting light. It also lit up the edge of a glass jar. If the blood is still wet that will be a good feature in my opinion. If the leaves are wet it could make it a bit difficult, but it still scans for red.
Thats interesting. I saw this on another website last week, but no one actually bought it or used it. Look be worth having and trying. Between this app, thermal, dog and wife, hopefully you have a solution to find deer. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
hmmm .. what about clear internal juices/gut hit type ... any diff between night vs day locating .... I'm not bad at tracking, I found deer when others couldnt .... not all trails end well however ...
Time will tell I suppose. I do know that for it to work at night you need a bright light. I’m really convinced that this will be a huge help to me.
I pulled up a pic of the buck I killed on 06 October 2019. I've often wondered how much blood there was in the pic. The only thing I can see with my eyes is the smear on the inside of the left front leg. Someone with good color vision tell me how much blood you see in this pic:
Most of the blood is near the deers hind and back. See if you can see the free handed blue...I tried to shade the heavier areas.
