Your experience afield is incomplete without a pointing dog. And that time afield sometimes turns down right scary when your beloved bird dog cannot be located.
Life was easier 25 years ago when I started hunting with a Swiss cowbell on my big ranging Brit. Until it got not so easy, with a big ranging 2 year old who was slightly out of control running more than a mile out at times in big country. But, even the biggest bell couldn’t be heard at that range and if the dog was out sight and out of sound, what to do next other than holler, whistle and wait. Or maybe fire off a shot and see if he returned for the retrieved (which I did in a number of moments of desperation with seemingly great success).
Looking back on it, I ordered some really great sounding bells, some of which were very pricey and difficult to find in catalogs. I lost or gave away many of them over the years, but the real challenge was getting the dog accustomed to it, and for that task I had to start with clip on fishing bells or cat bells, so that the dog wouldn’t freeze up in my training sessions of leaving the bell on for hours around the house each day. Further, I became convinced that a bell was a hindrance to finding grouse, as the grouse surely heard the bell coming. Someone recently wrote a great article on this over at Project Upland.
Then the day came when I finally broke down and put an e-collar on my 2 year old Brit after nearly losing him a few times out hunting. I really liked the beep only feature, as I could hear it from a mile or two away in the mountains and at least could start heading in his direction (and he learned to head in mine before I shocked him for not responding to the come-here whistle). The beep on point feature was too loud and annoyed me, the dog and the grouse. The level of settings was good for training and I miss the simplicity of the training keys nicely configured for two dogs which couldn’t be accidentally triggered or reset in your pocket. And the remote was light and the collar relatively light, but not waterproof nor very durable. I am not very big on training with the e-collar shocking but that’s another story.
But now, you “have to” have a whole bag of tricks, including the Alpha 200i with Inreach and paired with the TT-15 collars and a Garmin watch and OnX maps on your phone, just to show up in the upcountry. I am not sure we are any better off for it as hunters, but it does give you a lot of piece of mind and information at the same time. Not sure the gadgets are putting any more birds in the bag, but they are here to stay. In 2023, they came out with the 300i and new TT25 collars doubling the battery life. https://www.lcsupply.com/pages/lcs-trade-in-program New Garmin watches have also evolved slightly from my Fenix 6 version which still works fine.
