Most middle-aged hunters have some degree of hearing loss, and deeper-toned bells are more easily heard than those with higher pitch.

Both beepers and bells vary widely in tone. After listening to dozens of tones over the years, my recommendation is to get the deepest tone you can find.

A few years ago, my lanky friend John Palmer and I were cruising back from a successful hunt chasing Huns, when my Brittany, Powder, who had been meandering around in front of us, slammed into a point. Powder was off to my side and John didn't notice her.

When her beeper started sounding off, I waved at him, trying to get him to walk in on the point. But John, it seemed, wanted nothing to do with her.

Palmer's a committed anglophile, and his obvious disdain for my dog's point was beginning to irritate me. I could certainly understand his fondness for English side-by-sides and English setters--I love English setters, for Pete's sake--but refusing to go in on a pointing Brittany was taking it a bit too far. I finally gave in and walked up the birds myself.

Turns out he'd never heard Powder's beeper, never seen me wave.

Palmer's former job as a cop required him to teach machine-gun handling, and in the process he lost the part of his hearing that registers high tones.

Shrill beepers and small bells are simply beyond his ability to hear; he depends on his friends to tell him when their dogs are on point. Luckily for him, he's been able to locate a deep-toned beeper for his own dogs.

I am approaching old age like a cat approaching a bath, but many of my hunting buddies are even more geezer-like than I am and hearing problems of the sort Palmer suffers are by no means uncommon.

My hearing, so far, is holding up better than the rest of me. Even so, the deep tone of a No. 6 Swiss cowbell is far easier for me to hear than the tinkle of a bell half its size. Incidentally, running two dogs with slightly different sized bells makes it easier to tell them apart, even when you can't see them.

In 10 years (or less), most of the foregoing discussion on bells and beepers may seem like ancient history. The reason is the new Astro 220 GPS dog collar, which I've been using now for two seasons.

I'm not a tech junkie. I've been writing on computers for 20 years and I still hate them. I intensely dislike working on cars, programming video cameras and digital stereos, or whatever the hell they're referred to these days; and I can barely make my automatic coffee maker work.

But I love my Astro.

With my Astro in hand, I know where my dog is, where he's going, how far away he is, and whether he's on point, sitting, or treeing a coon. (Okay, the treeing part is a bit of overkill, but it's one of the functions I haven't figured out how to turn off.)

These days, I strap my GPS collar right behind my dog's e-collar, which is then attached to an accessory beeper. My poor dogs are running out of head space. The solution, of course, is simple: engineer a dog with a longer neck.

Maybe that's something those accountants at the beeper-collar companies can work on.