Having owned 5 Vizslas and trained/worked my current bitch Ruby as a deer dog I "foolishly" took on a Teckel puppy in August to bring on a blood tracking dog. Thankfully, I had only ever lost one deer before I started stalking with a dog but I always now work the vizsla onto a shot animal every time as training for the arguably inevitable loss. Whilst Ruby is outstanding (video), she's an air-scenter and on occasion struggles when scent conditions are poor, hence the move to acquire a Teckel. Let's leave the discussion about how they can be absolute sods to house train and their other less than favourable pecularities and turn to their renknowned "forgetfulness" of command when prey drive kicks in. Having had discussions with @Keith Edmunds on here, I followed up on his advice and acquired a Garmin Alpha 50 handheld tracker and a T5 Mini collar for the dog. With assistance from others off this site I changed the frquency to work within OFCOM approved ranges, loaded better UK maps and activated Garmin's Birdseye aerial mapping. Until yesterday, I had never needed it in anger and candidly, I was beginning to wonder whether this very expensive piece of kit (£700) was actually worth having. That changed forever yesterday whilst out stalking across my normal ground. It's largely open heathland with patches of gorse/coniferous plantations set in heavily rolling countryside. The grass is still very high and its currently extremely wet underfoot so I was stalking with my quad. The area holds roe and muntjac and yesterday, I was after a muntjac or hopefully two.
After a frustrating and fruitless chase to a rapidly moving muntjac buck that went to ground in a particularily thick section of gorse and then proceeded to bark at me, I moved on to foot stalk another known favourable muntie hotspot in a small wood surrounded by gorse on a convex slope. Within a minute of setting off I spotted a roe doe kid stood well out in the open off to my right (point A in the second image). As we still have a lot of doe kids to take on our cull plan I thought why not
The animal dropped to shot at 60m (catastrophic damage from 80gr .243 TTSX - heart shot through and through but the ballistic shock ruptured the sternum) and I worked Ruby onto the animal as usual with the Teckel (Wiggy) following at heel. Whilst inspecting the animal, I was conscious that Wiggy had wandered about 10m away in the direction of the valley bottom off to my left. I called him and set off dragging the animal back up the slope towards the quad, wholly expecting him to follow this nice trail I was leaving him in the grass. You've guessed it - the little sod didn't follow but I pressed on, thinking he's got his tracker on To conserve battery life in the handheld I do not routinely turn it on but the dog's collar is always on whilst stalking (the T5 Mini battery's life is outstanding). On getting back to the strike site A (see second image), I turned on the handheld. (The second image shows the subsequent download from the handheld which I've annotated with markers to describe what happened). The handheld track is the red line, the dog's track is the green line with white edges and white tracking speed dots. Note, the straight line portions of the red and green lines flying in from the top left are the tracks from where I had last used the units on a game shoot off to the NW. The real tracks start at A for me and B for Wiggy. As you can see from the image, I was playing catch-up from the "get-go". Instead of the dog being off to my left as I had expected at the valley bottom Z, he had gone back up the slope and through a gap in the gorse. His route then goes from B to C to D, E (where we had foot stalked the previous muntie buck) to F where I could finally see him and shout at him. He returns to heel at G. There's a 50m scale at the bottom right - I reckon he had travelled approximately 700m in a trajectory I would have never guessed, doubling back on himself! He's only 6 months old and is quite small - unless he was standing on a track, seeing him in the grass was virtually impossible! It goes without saying that I am now convinced of both the value and quality of the Garmin trackers! There is minimal cellphone coverage in this area and radio tracking was the only practical way of being able to track him - I have wondered occasionally whether a small helium balloon might work but that's not really a practical stalking solution
It was a foul day to be out as the other pictures show - we had rain, clag and then snow. But I did manage another muntie at point H, barely 100m from where I had gralloched the doe kid
Please excuse the "censor" blocks from the image but you will appreciate why I do not want to show where this ground is located.
If anyone wants to know more about my acquisition/setting up of the Garmin, please do feel free to drop me a PM.
After a frustrating and fruitless chase to a rapidly moving muntjac buck that went to ground in a particularily thick section of gorse and then proceeded to bark at me, I moved on to foot stalk another known favourable muntie hotspot in a small wood surrounded by gorse on a convex slope. Within a minute of setting off I spotted a roe doe kid stood well out in the open off to my right (point A in the second image). As we still have a lot of doe kids to take on our cull plan I thought why not
The animal dropped to shot at 60m (catastrophic damage from 80gr .243 TTSX - heart shot through and through but the ballistic shock ruptured the sternum) and I worked Ruby onto the animal as usual with the Teckel (Wiggy) following at heel. Whilst inspecting the animal, I was conscious that Wiggy had wandered about 10m away in the direction of the valley bottom off to my left. I called him and set off dragging the animal back up the slope towards the quad, wholly expecting him to follow this nice trail I was leaving him in the grass. You've guessed it - the little sod didn't follow but I pressed on, thinking he's got his tracker on To conserve battery life in the handheld I do not routinely turn it on but the dog's collar is always on whilst stalking (the T5 Mini battery's life is outstanding). On getting back to the strike site A (see second image), I turned on the handheld. (The second image shows the subsequent download from the handheld which I've annotated with markers to describe what happened). The handheld track is the red line, the dog's track is the green line with white edges and white tracking speed dots. Note, the straight line portions of the red and green lines flying in from the top left are the tracks from where I had last used the units on a game shoot off to the NW. The real tracks start at A for me and B for Wiggy. As you can see from the image, I was playing catch-up from the "get-go". Instead of the dog being off to my left as I had expected at the valley bottom Z, he had gone back up the slope and through a gap in the gorse. His route then goes from B to C to D, E (where we had foot stalked the previous muntie buck) to F where I could finally see him and shout at him. He returns to heel at G. There's a 50m scale at the bottom right - I reckon he had travelled approximately 700m in a trajectory I would have never guessed, doubling back on himself! He's only 6 months old and is quite small - unless he was standing on a track, seeing him in the grass was virtually impossible! It goes without saying that I am now convinced of both the value and quality of the Garmin trackers! There is minimal cellphone coverage in this area and radio tracking was the only practical way of being able to track him - I have wondered occasionally whether a small helium balloon might work but that's not really a practical stalking solutionIt was a foul day to be out as the other pictures show - we had rain, clag and then snow. But I did manage another muntie at point H, barely 100m from where I had gralloched the doe kid
Please excuse the "censor" blocks from the image but you will appreciate why I do not want to show where this ground is located.If anyone wants to know more about my acquisition/setting up of the Garmin, please do feel free to drop me a PM.
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