How does StagSense score a day?

Updated October 10, 2026

StagSense reads rut phase, barometric pressure, temperature trends, wind, cloud cover, precipitation and moon phase together, scores deer movement for morning, mid-day and afternoon, and gives you the strategy that fits the day.

What goes in

For your location, StagSense pulls a weather forecast in three-hour steps and reads seven things together: rut phase, barometric pressure, temperature trends, wind, cloud cover, precipitation and moon phase. It also looks back, measuring how far pressure has moved over the last 6, 12 and 24 hours, how much the temperature has changed over the last 12 and 24, and how today compares with the seasonal norm.

How conditions combine

The score is built from hunting rules written for whitetail behavior. A rule can be a single condition or a combination, because the interaction between variables tells more than any one of them. Each rule that matches adds or subtracts points, and each rule belongs to a category (pressure, temperature, wind and so on) with its own weight. Some weather events, such as a cold front, keep counting for hours after they pass, fading as they go.

How the rut changes the math

The current rut phase for your location scales every matched rule, and each phase weights morning, mid-day and afternoon differently. The same weather can score differently in Seeking than outside the rut (Normal Feeding), because the rut changes how deer respond to it. Rut timing comes from state wildlife agency data and published deer research where it exists; see where StagSense's rut dates come from.

Three windows a day

Morning is the first three hours after sunrise. Afternoon is the last three hours before sunset. Mid-day is everything between. Each window gets its own score, and the day's score blends them, with morning and afternoon counting twice as much as mid-day.

What comes out

The points are mapped onto a 0-100 score and a rating: Poor, Fair, Good, Very Good or Excellent. Free users see the rating for every window. Premium users see the precise number and every factor that moved it, and can adjust how each category is weighted with Custom Model Weighting. The highest-scoring day in your forecast gets the Top Day badge.

Compare what each tier shows on the pricing page.

Why temperature sits at the core

In a nationwide trail-camera sample of 40 locations, colder-than-average days were the single strongest weather-only driver of deer detections. This is why temperature sits at the core of every StagSense score.

What the score does not read

StagSense reads weather and rut timing. It does not read terrain, hunting pressure, food sources or your specific property. It is a ranking tool, not a guarantee: it tells you which days are your best bets.

To see how the score has held up against real deer data, read Does StagSense work?