Loosing a Dog While Hunting is Tramatic
For anyone who hunts with dogs, one of the most traumatic things that can happen is to lose a dog. I have been hunting with German Shorthair Pointers since 2006 and up to this point had never lost a dog. This article is about the time I lost Willow in a “sea” of corn.
So there we were...
It was November of 2019 and I was hunting in Iowa with Willow, a twenty month old German Shorthair Pointer. I had acquired Willow the previous August as a “started” dog. Attempts to hunt her with my older dog had proved a disaster. So I was trying to hunt her by herself.
Willow has an almost insane amount of drive. When she starts hunting she is 110% focused on hunting to the point of tuning out everything else, including me.
In this situation, we were hunting public ground in Iowa. There is a long narrow trail to the hunting area that is bordered by standing corn. As we reached the prairie the field opened up to the east. To the west and south was a huge field of standing corn. We proceeded to work to the east and within a couple hundred yards she locked up on point.
I approached and a rooster flushed flying due east. I missed. Willow chased after it for a little way and then came back to me but kept right on going and disappeared into the corn. I whistled for her, no dog. I remotely turned on the beeper on her collar, nothing.
For the next 15 minutes I stayed in the same area and whistled for her, called for her. I even fired a shot to see if she would come to check it out. No dog. I went into the corn where she had gone in and walked quite a ways hoping to her her beeper. Nothing.
At this point I was getting really worried. I walked back to the truck and drove south to the end of the field hoping to see her come out the south side. Nothing. So I parked the truck and started walking. It was a huge field. I walked 1/2 mile to the east and ran into a fence line. So I headed north and eventually hit the hunting area. Then I walked back to the trail. As I looked west towards where I had originally parked I could see her. I whistled and she immediately came.
Now what?
While relieved I was also concerned about next time. I definitely needed to work on her recall but what about those situations where she could not hear me due to wind. It occurred to me that a GPS collar might be the trick. So when I got back to the motel I started researching GPS collars.
Garmin Alpha 100
I settled on a Garmin Alpha 100 after doing a bunch of research. One of the better sources of information were a bunch of YouTube videos by Outdoor Dog Supply. I ordered it from Outdoor Dog Supply and it arrived on time and just as I expected.
Learning Opportunity
Between the manual, the Outdoor Dog Supply videos and some experimentation I was able to pretty quickly figure out how to use the collars and handhelds. Figuring out how to mount the handheld to my vest was a bigger challenge than I hoped for. I ended up using a belt clip and hanging it from the chest strap. This worked, in that the handheld did not bounce around and I could easily read it, although it was upside down.
The really nice thing was that I could see what direction a dog was and how far away. It also told me whether the dog was moving or stationary. The handheld also had buttons to initiate the training functions such as nick, continuous stimulation, tone or vibrate.
The Payoff
The system worked really well. On one of the last hunts of the season, Willow was working about 50 yards away and disappeared behind some brush. I could tell that she was tracking. Soon the handheld told me she was on point. So I walked towards her and as I got close a rooster flushed. I dropped it and Willow found it. That was the first Rooster I shot over her.
