To what extent will tracking collars help?

[cat and bear]

Benny your right on the world changing, including our dogs and protection. I'm far from a expert on the garmin and mountains, but my best dogs would have beep and garmin. The garmin must work pretty well, as I hooked up with van last spring, and he had ten garmin collars for his dogs, i guess i never really asked how good they worked out west, but I assume good, or he wouldnt have them. I'm sure I confused you more I just ordered a garmin from buddy and a few collars, to stay on top of my lead dogs, which from the beep collars, you can be very close in tracking but not as accurate as the garmin, and show what road they are close to to protect them. I have toyed with the idea of some type of lock for the collars, so not just anyone can take them off, LOL, as i have a buddy which does a lot of import from korea. They say in some states in the east, guys are driving around just trying to steal you dogs, its real bad

[Conejos]

Sorry to hear about your bad experiance Benny! Its a pretty common problem up here in Northern NM. I had a puppy taken from my kennell this year. Its tough but the radio collars will help I cut a few would be theives short a few times with them.

[Big Mike]

Benny if I was going to invest in tracking collars I would go with the GPS style. I cussed them when they first came out because they make it a little too easy, but now after using some i sure like them. All the guys I know that have them and hunt the way we do ( horseback) love them (old harded headed hunters too)LOL. Ive hunted with them a little and I sure like them. There is no guess work to where your dog is. Even if they loose signal they give you the last location of the dog and distance so makes it easy to find them.

Hunting mountain country a guy can on a high peak and peak and get a signal ussually. Ive have had no problem picking up dogs 3-5 miles away. They will save a guy tons of time and you will never have to leave a dog over night unless you want to or just cant get to them, but you will know exactly where they are.

Ive got too much invested in the beep beep kind but when its time for new ones im switchn to GPS

[sourdough]

No one can combat a dog thief from removing your collars but, for a small fee a vet can chip your hounds and if that dog ends up at the dog pound, vet office, or you have a dispute over the fact of ownership of a said hound a quick scan will take care of it. I read a article in the local troubles a few years back some folks stopped at a local rest area and their little house dog took off, after searching for it they gave up heart broken. well any how the dog ended up at the vet office and a scan of the ear gave them all the information they needed to be able to return the dog to it owner. It's sad that this is where we have to go to protect ourselves from thieves. I like the idea of beating the perpetrator unmercifully this could all be taken care of if we still had some right to Cowboy justice. Benny figure out what you want in a recovery system, research it. Look at battery life, max tracking range, portability, and ease of use. There is no doubt that the mapping capabilities of the Garmin is a plus but, I would really consider battery life in rough country. Can you recover that dog in the time frame the battery allows you. It is my understanding that with the GPS battery life is one of the main down falls I don't have one so I can only go off what I have heard. There has also been a ton of talk about having a beep type collar on the dogs as well I have no use for a gadget that has to have a back up and will not be sucked into getting one because they are cool.

sourdough

[festus]

Benny,
I hear "Marshal telemetry systems" are coming out with a GPS unit in the near future. Marshal is definately top notch stuff as well.

[Mike Leonard]

I started running Telemetry with Johnson in the early 80's they served me well. I have had Wildlife, Quick Trac, Klein , Marshall,. Innotek, Tracker and they are all a heck of a lot better than being without it.

The old days of living in camp in isolated country and never worrying about a lost dog are gone. I am staying with my Tracker 1000 and my Quick Trac collars until somebody can come along and show me they can find their dogs better with a Garmin GPS. So far they haven't and I don't care where Little Theif Springs is on the map or whatever is I want to know where them dang dogs are when they are two or three big canyons away.
Bounce you bet some mountains worse than others lots of probelm but I may bot be as good as Chaser at finding them dogs but if they are still on the mountain or heading to town in somebody's pickup truck I can pretty well read the sign.

Drive around in a big diesel truck for a couple of days and take off work and you have got a pretty good set paid for.....LOse a good dog and do the same and you will really scratch your head or something. LOL!

[fallriverwalker1]

well benny i have to agree with mike ,any tracking system is better than not having one ' if mike can age himself ,guess i can to .when i started we didnt have collars when we turned them loose you stayed as close as you could ,when they left the area you drove for days looking ,believe me ive spent more money on gas looking for dogs than my system cost i run johnson collars and the blue box .there is a learning curve but ,if you know your country well enough it comes pretty easy ,not to say you'll learn over night but it will come . but i know guys that cant find there dogs tied to my truck .if you have prolbms just ask some of these guys they'll tell what to look for .i never turn a dog loose with out one ,of course you have to remember to take the magnet out everytime .now lets here thst i'm the only one thats ever done that.www.fallriverwalker.com

[George Streepy]

If you have made it this long without tracking equipment, you must stay with your dogs pretty well. I love my Garmin and haven't experienced any of the bad people talk about. I would do the GPS in your case simply because it is easier to use/learn. It will show you on the screen exactly where the dogs are. It takes a while to really learn telemetry to where it actually becomes an asset. JMO.

[ferjr]

If you have made it this long without tracking equipment, you must stay with your dogs pretty well. I love my Garmin and haven't experienced any of the bad people talk about. I would do the GPS in your case simply because it is easier to use/learn. It will show you on the screen exactly where the dogs are. It takes a while to really learn telemetry to where it actually becomes an asset. JMO.

+1

[Bplott]

i agree with mike gps hasnt proved anything to me....my hunting partner has garmin gps and it quits him all the time...so he has all but quit using it...collars dont even last him 1 year

[Coyote]

I don't think the learning curve for beep systems is enough to deter him from trying it. It only took me a little while before I could find my dogs with little trouble. I have hunted around the Garmin but I'm still waiting until the bugs get worked out and Marshall shows what it's cooking. I looked on their website and they stated that they are working on something but won't talk about or say when it will be released.

[M Evertsen]

ferjr - I think the biggest "problem" around here that I see is the time that it takes to get to dogs if something goes wrong.


Sure 99 times out of 100, you will get your dogs back in a few hours at most.

Last winter, I had to spend a night on the mountain several miles from the truck. From the time I turned the dogs loose the day before (7 AM) until I found the last one (12 Noon) was about 29 hours. I am not sure the Garmin collars would last that long, at least I wouldn't want to risk it. Of the two people I know that have the Garmin, they both still will not turn out without regular collars on.

Bad things happen when hunting with hounds, denying it is lying to ourselves and asking for trouble. I know those Klein collars will work for as long as I need to get to my dogs.

Another instance was 7 days total, still going strong. That Garmin would have been dead, and I would have been looking for dead dogs as well. I got stuck real bad, and had no way to get where the dogs were, even had I known where they were at exactly, it would have made no difference.


Later,

Marcial

[Benny G]

George,
You are right about me staying with the dogs. When I first started this hound gig, I was about 125 pounds, so I could keep close enough to the dogs that it didn't matter. Since then, I have stopped chasing bears, and almost never start out hunting on foot. I have always believed that I owed it to the dogs to stay within a reasonable proximity to them in case they were to get into trouble. Coyote races seem to be about the only time that I don't stay close to the dogs (those SOB's can really run!). Until now, with the attempted thieving of my dogs, I have never felt the need for tracking collars, hence my complete ignorance on the subject.

I do appreciate all of the responses so far. It is not my intention to get a rumble started on here. I know that everyone has an opinion, and that is what I am asking for. I hope that things won't heat up too much, and I have no doubt that I too will someday form my own opinion!

[catenaround]

benny i got a buddy that was hunting northern cal. some body picked his dog up and he followed the beep in his pickup into town drove right to their house. they said they didnt have his dog he told he all ready called the cops and they gave his dog back. they had know idea how to turn the callor off or were smart enough to take the callor off if they did know what it was.