A short intro to Andy's post is in order. Andy's love for detailed records of his tracks is well documented on this blog. And it is very impressive. However, very few handlers are interested in maintaining this kind of data. For what Andy does, a touch screen GPS is not an option and he explains why. For many other trackers, it might be a good, inexpensive alternative.
by Andy Bensing
On another forum we were
discussing using smart phones as a gps while blood tracking and the
availability of gloves that will work with a smart phone screen. The main
problem with touch screen gps when tracking is the inability to very quickly
and easily use the screen while tracking in the field. If you just want
to record your path, mark the infrequent waypoint along the way and look at it
on the map as you track along, no problem with a touch screen, but if you want
to mark a lot of waypoints for various reasons along the way and if you want to
individually record each restart you do if you have to pick your dog up and
restart, then a touch screen is very cumbersome, nearly useless in my
opinion. At least for me and I have tried it.
I have a perfect
example of a track I did last night in the rain in rough terrain with steep
hills, nasty briars and a deep stream. Here are the maps that show how much I
marked and all the different restarts. It would have been impossible to
mark all that easily with a touch screen. We got to a deep stream crossing and
while making sure it was correct, I believe Eibe got on a second wounded deer
and found blood and a piece of an arrow and it lead to a second place she
wanted to cross. We had to drive around to the other side and sort it out
over there with several restarts as well on that side. I mark each
restart with a different color track and the dark blue is always where we were
walking not tracking to make the restarts. All that being said, when we
realized we could not cross the deep stream, I whipped out my smart phone,
brought up Google earth, and figured out the best way to get around to the
other side.
Incidentally, we did not get
this deer. He was very lightly opened up across the belly (the hunter
watched him for 15 minutes with binoculars with intestines hanging but very
little blood coming out even where he initially stood 100 yards from the
shot). After almost 4 hours of tracking in the rain and wind and rough
terrain and working 2 different blood lines and taking both slightly over 1
mile from the hit site we decided to give up. This deer will surely die
and may have been already dead (we were tracking 24 hours after the shot) but
the hunter and I had had enough. My dog Eibe on the other hand still was
raring to go.
1 comment:
We have Garmin Astro 220 for our dogs. Its very good to have when the doe runs out of our hunting territory. An accident can happen and you can go directly to your dog and maybe rescue her. I usually analyze the hunting tracks every time.
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