In the pointing dog world, GPS dog collars have become ubiquitous, and rightly so: Pointing dogs are built to put distance between themselves and their handlers, and to cover a great deal of ground. A big running dog can eat up several hundred yards quickly in the piney woods or out on the prairie, and a dog frozen on point in rolling cover can become a haystack needle, even if that dog is equipped with an aural locating device like a beeper. With the advent of hand-held GPS tracking units, the pointing dog game has changed indescribably, liberating handlers from reliance upon line-of-sight or auditory communication, and/or the locating services of a beeper or bell. In this modern era, it is conceivable that one might never again lose track of a pointing dog on the ground, provided batteries are charged and the dog is within the couple-mile range required by most GPS units.

The implications of such technology’s arrival in the pointing dog space are myriad. With GPS contact, one can take a beeline to a dog on point from well over a mile, provided the birds stick around and the dog is steady. Additionally, a handler can keep track of a dog’s direction of travel virtually and can correct a dog away from hazards like roads, train tracks, or property lines. Finally, suppose a dog gets injured, incapacitated, or tangled up in some obstruction out of sight of the handler; in the event of such a catastrophe, a GPS can literally prove itself a lifesaver, as precious time can be saved locating a dog who has, by all other indicators, disappeared into thin air.

GPS Dog Collars on Flushing Dogs

Flushing dogs, however, inhabit an entirely different landscape. Among flushing dog folks, spaniels especially, the convention, even the aspiration, is to run a dog with no collar at all. There is a measure of showmanship in running a collarless flusher, as doing so implies the dog is so mannerly, and the connection between handler and dog is so strong, that the dog will quarter systematically in front of the gun on a predictable line, and will routinely come back toward the handler for a check-in. Indeed, in a perfect world, a flushing spaniel will do just this and will remain “sticky” enough and patterned enough in its movements, that the handler can infer the whereabouts of the dog without maintaining visual or aural contact. But as we know, hunting is an imperfect and unpredictable art, and hunting with a dog is less predictable still, which is why I remain in the small minority of hunters who like to run my flushing spaniels equipped with a GPS collar.

My personal commitment to running GPS units on flushers stems from a confluence of factors that include how I hunt, where I hunt, and the level of anxiety I maintain as the steward of dogs who’ve become, ostensibly, members of the family. I live in northern New England, where we hunt grouse and woodcock in cover so thick that the old timers claim “you’d be hard-pressed to throw a dead cat through it.” In the early season, the density of stem growth, both woody and succulent, is compounded by heavy leaf cover, making a dog on the ground virtually impossible to see, even if he is right in front of you. Conversely, dense cover makes it very hard for a dog to both keep track of the handler visually, and to maintain a sense of forward linear direction. Visual obstructions can make it quite hard for dog and handler to stay “joined up”, as there is little possibility for steady visual contact.

In an attempt to keep better track of my flushing dogs, I could easily equip them with a beeper or bell, which in turn would at least give me a sense of their location in thick cover. For the most part, I do in fact run a light bell on my dogs in the early season for this very reason. That said, most Swiss bells or beepers on run mode are loud, and positioned next to the dog’s ear. By design, handling a flusher is quite interactive, and largely dependent on nuanced, regular whistle communication. The whistle in effect becomes the handler’s voice, and a dog with a loud bell or beeper in its ear, alongside the sound of panting and movement through cover, renders the whistle nearly impossible to hear. I’d imagine that many bell- or beeper-wearing flushers consider the handler’s whistle much like Charlie Brown and his cohort considered their teacher’s voice: muted at best, and easy to ignore. The GPS dog collar, even if only as an occasional locator, allows a handler to keep track of a dog without interrupting or hindering the line of “verbal” communication between dog and handler.

GPS Dog Collars Give You Your Dog’s Location

Honestly, the overarching reason that I run GPS dog collars on my flushers is that I am nervous, and I am a bit of a control freak. I also am a fair to middlin’ dog trainer, so my dogs are not perfect, and do occasionally range bigger than I’d like. I am saddened to say that I have had dogs get hit by cars and have also had them injured in preventable accidents in the field. For these reasons and more,  I like to know EXACTLY where my dogs areat any given time. I feel it my responsibility to do all I can to keep them safe, and I also want my moments afield in pursuit of my dogs to be enjoyable. Even minutes spent trying to locate a dog gone rogue are minutes fraught with anxiety, and anything but enjoyable.

Using GPS Dog Collars for Safety

I remember a day several years back when a mentor of mine, a seasoned spaniel guy named Dave, showed up at our Massachusetts hill farm with a couple of young prospects, and a couple of seasoned dogs, in the box. The idea was to give the pups a good run through the field edges and brushy meadows, really just a workout wherein we might get a better sense of how they hunted, and how they might react to unfamiliar terrain. Dave mentioned that the pups were pretty green and pretty rangy; as a precaution, he put the first dog down with a long, light piece of flat webbing attached as a check cord, the idea being that if the pup proved less-than-responsive to a recall, we could still catch up to him and grab hold.

For his part, the pup did nicely, and quartered through the first brushy meadow quite well, keeping well within range and sight. But when we hit the edge of the woods, he got a wild hair and took off on a beeline into the deeper cover. We waited, we called, we whistled, but all to no avail. We went looking all over for him and found nothing. We went back to where we started and got an older dog in the hopes he might lead us to the lost pup. But still, nothing.

In the end, it all turned out ok. The pup’s cord had gotten wrapped on a sapling in a cluster of young pine, and, unable to get anywhere, he had laid down to wait for his salvation. We found him as you’d find that haystack needle I mentioned, largely by chance, and I cannot express how relieved we both were. There were some lessons to be taken from the experience, but honestly, the whole thing was little more than a fluke; Dave had done the same thing a thousand times before without mishap, and on this one occasion, a sapling presented itself to a fast-moving check cord, and things quickly went south. My takeaway, however, was to do whatever I could to ensure that I’d never let a dog get hung up in the woods, and to take advantage of any tools available to keep track of, or locate, a dog on the ground.

GPS Dog Collars for Hunting

And so, I run GPS dog collars on my flushers. That said, I run the simplest ones I can, as my interest is largely squared upon range and direction, little more than a reference as to where my dog might be at a given time. I rarely run more than two dogs at a time, and long-range units are rarely required. I like the Garmin Pro 550 Plus or the Garmin Alpha 10, with appropriate paired collars. Both units are simple and intuitive to use, though each has a slightly different configuration. The Pro 550 Plus has a small screen embedded in the barrel of the handheld unit, with an arrow that indicates direction and a readout for range. The Alpha 10 is a bit more involved, and has extra features, but it is also small, light, and easy to use. Both have training/stim features as well as GPS screens.

In the end, I don’t spend an awful lot of time staring at my GPS units in the field, primarily because I don’t have to. Usually, my dogs and I are in regular touch, and I can see or hear them without tremendous effort, just as they can see and hear me. They generally stay in range, and they generally check in. But in those odd moments when we do lose contact, I like knowing that a GPS locator is near at hand. Moreso, however, I like knowing that if my dog were in danger, or headed for danger, I could quickly take action, and either steer them or find them at a moment’s notice. This sense of security makes hunting with my flushers all the more enjoyable, and simply safer for all involved.