John D
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Jun 2003
Location: Missouri
Posts: 4321 |
quote:
Originally posted by CooperCreek
I haven't heard of anybody, or at least not very many people, who use, or expected to use, the Garmin system as a full replacement to a conventional tracking unit.
I run both, they compliment each other well.
Thats how I see it, too. There will be problems and drawbacks with the Garmin but the info. thats available is something we've never seen before.
Before I bought mine, I'd decided I was going to use my wildlife collar, at the same time. I've been playing with mounting the Garmin on the same collar as the wildlife. I weighed both the wildlife unit (without the collar) and the Garmin and they were almost the same weight. That tells me they are balanced and the Garmin is as likely to be on the bottom of the dog's neck as the Wildlife. Thats exactly what I saw in the woods.
So, I've been experimenting with counterweights. I cut a piece of steel that weighs about half of the Wildlife and taped it to the Wildlife unit. That helped but I've noticed the Garmin still wants to ride to the side just alittle. I'm going to increase the weight in very small amounts until I get it balanced right. Obviously I don't want to use any more weight than necessary since thats just something else the dog has to carry around. When I figure out the right amount of weight, I might come up with something that sort of encases the wildlife to make it less likely to hang up and a little neater.
I've also bought some rechargeable AA batteries and my plan is to stick 2-4 extra batteries in my pocket when I go hunting. One more th ing to carry, but I'm packing a cell phone, extra keys, etc. anyway.
The amount of information available from this is awesome. I've got a couple females here I raised from pups and hunted all their lives. There are things I know about how they hunt and things I suspect about them. Last night, I turned each one loose by herself. The one I've thought didn't fire in there and hunt like I'd like, and maybe was a little lazy, was hunting HARD. She doesn't run field edges and roads to get deep like some dogs. She was working the timber right in front of me and she was zigging and zagging and covering the country, but not in a straight line. She got treed in the center of some loops she'd made, without opening on the ground. It looked like she was circling and circling to home in on a coon. The Garmin showed all that to me and I never suspected she was working that hard. She's always been good about treeing a coon close and not going past coons and I can see why.
The other female I'd always figured was a more straight line hunter, prone to taking the easier path, deeper. I cut her up a ATV path in some oak timber thinking she'd be likely to run that path. The Garmin did show she covered ground, fast and pretty much in a line. But, she did not follow the ATV path, she followed a small feeder ditch and got treed at the head of it.
Another thing I like is that when a dog locates and trees, you can see what they're doing. Both these females got to the tree and any excursions after that seemed to be limited to around the base of the tree. If they had been off more than a few feet, it would have been obvious.
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12-21-2007 03:42 PM
