Does Your Hunting Dog Need A GPS? (1)
Oct 14, 2022
Where oh where has my hunting dog gone? To the store to buy a GPS tracking collar, I hope.
Losing a dog is one of a hunter’s biggest fears. Roughly 14 percent of lost dogs are never found. One of my setters disappeared in a South Dakota cornfield 25 years ago and is still missing. If she’d been wearing a GPS collar I’d have known her precise location, updated every few seconds. But GPS collars didn’t exist back then. They do now. And you can bet I see their value.
How smart is it to invest $1,500 in a pup, pour another $1,000 into your veterinarian’s bank account, sink countless hours in training, give years of love—and then send Dog off into unknown territory while hoping he doesn’t disappear, get snatched or fall prey to a sinkhole? A GPS collar helps insure against such tragedies.
Less traumatic but more common and maddening is wondering if Dog has run off, is lost and searching for you, or is merely holding down the largest, slowest covey of upland birds you’ve never seen. I don’t know about you, but many times I’ve walked north looking for a dog that was pointing south of me. More often I’ve trudged to a hilltop thinking Dog had disappeared over it, only to look back and see her on point just 40 yards below where I’d been. Grrr. You don’t have to be an efficiency expert to hate such wastes of time and energy. A GPS collar can prevent them.
