Best Dog Tracking Collars For Hunting And E-Collars For Training (2)

Continued from the blog posted on June 19th.

Should I get a hunting dog tracking collar or an e-collar?

When I am in a training session doing “yard work”, I only use an e-collar.  These systems have been used and refined for roughly fifty years for this specific task and they are simply the best tool.  The simplicity and quick adjustability of the handheld transmitters makes their use very intuitive allowing me to focus my attention on the dog I’m training.  In these situations, the dog will never have the opportunity to get out of my line of sight, so I have no need for a hunting dog tracking system.

As soon as we leave civilization and venture out for hunting or hikes, I always place a hunting dog tracking collar on my dog.  German shorthaired pointers have been bred specifically to enhance their natural instincts to find and point birds for you.  They can’t do this walking right next to you.  When allowed to do their job, they will range out hundreds of yards and log three to four times as many miles as I will on the same hike.

You may contest that you will train your companions to remain at your side at all times so you don’t run the risk of losing sight of them.  This will be helpful but with their high prey drive, it will likely only be a matter of time before something draws them away from you.  Your dog isn’t abandoning you, they are performing their instinctual job.

The difficulty occurs when your buddy goes on point.  This can mean they won’t move a muscle or respond to your pleas to return for a very long time, potentially over an hour.  This can happen even when the “animal” they are pointing isn’t there, but the scent is strong.  Locked up thirty feet away in dense cover, you won’t know if he’s chased a deer into the next county or if something tragic has happened to him.

I have spent frantic hours searching for dogs that lost track of me or were on point.  To my relief, I eventually found each of them, sometimes very close to the spot where I lost them.  Other tools exist like bells and beeper collars are better than nothing but tremendously less effective.  If a dog is on point, the bell won’t make a sound.  Beeper collars make an obnoxious amount of noise and are disappointingly ineffective when wind, dense cover, and terrain come into play.

If your dog is ever off leash, which hopefully is an option for them, make sure you have a hunting dog tracking system.