Garmin question

[kbe119]

Ok since I'm pretty new at this and this is the first year I have had any real races I have run into battery life issues on my collars, we mostly rig the dogs and I turn my collars on first thing in the morning and run them all day thus wearing my batteries down. So question is do you leave your collars off until you turn loose and then turn them on or do you turn them on as soon as you start. Thanks in advance.

[rockytrails]

I use Alpha. I turn the collar on and on a 2 minute update rate. Then on the handheld I turn the tracking on for those dogs. When dogs are on the compass page I'd "pause all tracking". Then lock the screen. When ready to turn loose, unlock screen and touch resume. Never used Astro.

[RunTheWoods]

I have ran the astro and alpha, I always turned the collars on right when I started although you will run your battery down like you are. You can collar the dogs up and not turn the collars on, but when you strike off the box make sure to turn your collars on before turning the dogs loose. You should always try and wait till the collars are triple flashing so you know you have full reception. Hope that helps you out.

[Bayemup34]

We use the Astro and I can't recall ever having the collars go dead in one day. It runs them down but the collars will actually last a few days when they go to rescue mode. I know the DC 50s do this automatically, not sure about the rest. As long as the collars get charged every night I can't see that this would be an issue. We always turn the collars on first thing bcuz in the heat of the moment it's easy to forget to turn them on.

[srconnell22]

I have ran astro and now run alpha. I don't collar my dogs up until I'm ready to turn loose. If I'm using the truck radio, I'll run that on medium or high until I'm ready to turn loose when I switch it to low. Then, when the radio is on low, I turn my GPS and the collars on and collar up dogs.

The way I figure it, an extra 10 minutes isn't going to determine whether or not I can jump and catch the game. If they are in the box and I'm looking for tracks, I have a pretty good idea where they are so no need to track them. You never know when your dogs are going to be out longer than you expect or want them to so you may need that 3-4 hours of extra battery you burned up before you turned loose.

Just my opinion.

[kbe119]

Thanks, for all the input I got concerned after hunting one day and I left my collars on all night to see if they would still have a charge the next morning. When I got up they were dead. I have been turning them on first thing in the morning because the guys I run with have beep collars so they dump the dogs and they are gone. My dogs are pretty green so I wanted them ready to run with the other dogs when we hit a track. Thanks for all the input again. Maybe I will change the setting to slow down the updates and I should probably consider running a beep collars with my GPS

[Bayemup34]

Running a beep will definitely be a bonus. We never turn one loose without it, even coon huntin, bcuz you never know what can happen. If the garmins are on rescue mode, which they should do automatically when the battery gets pretty low, they're supposed to last several more hours but you can never guarantee you'll get them back that fast.