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Hey everyone I was wondering wich you perfer, if you had to only run one for the rest of your life, I'm just wondering because my first tracking think I bought was garmin, and I kinda feel I should have started with an old school one first, but I just bought a telemtry one so I'm gonna start using that more and wanted to know what you guys do

I don't think too many people "prefer" telemetry over gps, but I don't think there is any one person on here that completely trusts their astro dog enough to run it solo and not be worried!

I think the two reasons people prefer telemetry are battery life and range. Some dogs are not easily caught before the Garmin collar battery dies. If Garmin corrects that problem, I think the telemetry manufacturers may shut down.

The two previous replies pretty much sum it up perfectly.

I us only Garmin and trust them to get the job done. I have used them 2 1/2 years , over 200 trees with lions, bears and lynx and have never had them go dead. Even if you drop the odd collar, all your dogs should be close together. Teaching the dogs to respond and quit a track with tritronics is just as valuable.

zachvu wrote:I don't think too many people "prefer" telemetry over gps, but I don't think there is any one person on here that completely trusts their astro dog enough to run it solo and not be worried!

Think again. There aren't many people running both anymore. This may have been true 2 years ago but I know more people that run just the garmin than run just telemetry. You get more peace of mind from the garmin than you lose because of battery life. I just charge mine every day and leave it on a 30 second update. No worries here.

I know a lot of people with garmins, but I don't know anybody that runs only garmin, no telemetry collars. I know a couple people that only run garmin on a few of there dogs and telemetry on all of them, and I know a couple that run telemetry on a few and garmin on all of them, and quite a lot that run only telemtry, (myself included) but nobody that trusts the garmin enough to only run them.

This year I have only ran my Garmins, with no problems I might add. Actualy I only used a telemetry collar once this year, only reason is when I got out and checked the battery life on all my garmins I saw that one only had one bar of battery life, I forgot to charge it, I used a telemetry collar just in case but I never had to use it, the Garmin lasted the race.

zachvu wrote:I don't think too many people "prefer" telemetry over gps, but I don't think there is any one person on here that completely trusts their astro dog enough to run it solo and not be worried!

+1, i use both, would not let my dogs go without my wildlife materials.

Our Garmins seem to lose the dogs after about a mile, past that we'll pick em up but not constantly. Everyone we hunt with (20-30 dogs out on the trucks or running somewhere in the area) runs both. A couple days on the Garmin battery doesn't seem like too much peace of mind, but a telemetry that'll run for a month makes all my worries go away!

zachvu wrote:Our Garmins seem to lose the dogs after about a mile, past that we'll pick em up but not constantly. Everyone we hunt with (20-30 dogs out on the trucks or running somewhere in the area) runs both. A couple days on the Garmin battery doesn't seem like too much peace of mind, but a telemetry that'll run for a month makes all my worries go away!

With a Garmin you know exactly where your dogs are, you dont have to spend all day trying to get a good signal like you do with telemetry. I have never took more than a couple of hours to get to my dogs, the longest races we have had has only been about 5 hours, so I have not found the battery life of a Garmin to be a issue, as long as you make sure they are charged before every hunt. Last year I did run both, but never had to use the telemetry, not even once, so now it stays behind the seat of the truck, where it belongs. As long as you have two Astro's and a long range antanea there is no reason to use the telemetry, in my opinion. Maybe if you dont have a truck or a four wheeler and have to spend all weekend walking to get to your dogs, it would have a use, but where I hunt you can get to your dogs relatively easy and with the wolves arround here I never let my hounds get more than a couple of miles from me, if they start getting over a mile from me, its time to move and get closer to them.

ferjr wrote:

zachvu wrote:Our Garmins seem to lose the dogs after about a mile, past that we'll pick em up but not constantly. Everyone we hunt with (20-30 dogs out on the trucks or running somewhere in the area) runs both. A couple days on the Garmin battery doesn't seem like too much peace of mind, but a telemetry that'll run for a month makes all my worries go away!

With a Garmin you know exactly where your dogs are, you dont have to spend all day trying to get a good signal like you do with telemetry. I have never took more than a couple of hours to get to my dogs, the longest races we have had has only been about 5 hours, so I have not found the battery life of a Garmin to be a issue, as long as you make sure they are charged before every hunt. Last year I did run both, but never had to use the telemetry, not even once, so now it stays behind the seat of the truck, where it belongs. As long as you have two Astro's and a long range antanea there is no reason to use the telemetry, in my opinion. Maybe if you dont have a truck or a four wheeler and have to spend all weekend walking to get to your dogs, it would have a use, but where I hunt you can get to your dogs relatively easy and with the wolves arround here I never let my hounds get more than a couple of miles from me, if they start getting over a mile from me, its time to move and get closer to them.

If road access weren't too bad I can see that. Where we hunt (and always where the bears seemingly like to head) is into cliff areas, canyons, and the thick high stuff that there's no way we could do anything but hike into. We run the same setup with two astros and a long range magnet antenna. I think they may be kinda fried from the radios again though...could be part of my frustration with them so far!!

garmins will let a silent dog or ones with a poor voice be found alot easier and faster not to mention let you get to the tree/game in a better amount of time . Less time wasted looking for routes , lost dogs and such.

the telemetry is tried and true and will last a long time, but the signal bounce is really bad in some situations and can send you on a wild goose chase.

if one could extend the batterry life on the garmin collars even if the weight was increased with a secondary battery i think it would improve how people feel about it

KIP wrote:garmins will let a silent dog or ones with a poor voice be found alot easier and faster not to mention let you get to the tree/game in a better amount of time . Less time wasted looking for routes , lost dogs and such.

the telemetry is tried and true and will last a long time, but the signal bounce is really bad in some situations and can send you on a wild goose chase.

if one could extend the batterry life on the garmin collars even if the weight was increased with a secondary battery i think it would improve how people feel about it

That's spot on with what I feel. The Garmin is awesome, if not we wouldn't keep shelling out money for more of them! I just don't trust it on it's own, not only from the battery, but from the range aspect as well. Dogs are just too quick!

zachvu wrote:

KIP wrote:garmins will let a silent dog or ones with a poor voice be found alot easier and faster not to mention let you get to the tree/game in a better amount of time . Less time wasted looking for routes , lost dogs and such.

the telemetry is tried and true and will last a long time, but the signal bounce is really bad in some situations and can send you on a wild goose chase.

if one could extend the batterry life on the garmin collars even if the weight was increased with a secondary battery i think it would improve how people feel about it

That's spot on with what I feel. The Garmin is awesome, if not we wouldn't keep shelling out money for more of them! I just don't trust it on it's own, not only from the battery, but from the range aspect as well. Dogs are just too quick!

Even if your dogs get out of range, it doesnt just drop the signal, just head in the dirrection of your last reading and as you get closer to your dogs it will pick it back up. Really no big deal, I havnt had a problem yet, we lose the signal alot but as you get closer or get on better terrain it picks it right back up. I can see it maybe a issue if you are on foot and cant cover ground as fast as the dogs, then yes a telemetry with the Garmin is deffinitly the way to go. But from what I have seen from the telemetry arround here, they are just to aggrevating, you get signal skips and will be running all over the mountains trying to figure out where your dogs are, spending all day looking for them, playing the guessing game. If I didnt have a Garmin, I probably wouldnt be hunting hounds, telemetry is just to much of a pain in the a$$. JMO.