The Tek 1.0 Tracking Collar

There as a time in my hunting career when I thought that I would never own a tracking collar. To my way of thinking they were useful only to people with large running dogs, dogs that were out of touch with their masters for much of the hunt, definitely not my style. This fall's hunting season has changed my way of thinking. On more occasions that I would care to admit although I've been able to hear Emma's beeper collar sounding off on point mode I've been unable to determine in which direction she was on point in. My hearing loss is something that will only get worse with age so I decided to investigate the Garmin Astro and the Sport Dog Tek 1.0 the two leading brands of tracking collars. After learning about all the settings and things that you can and cannot do with each one I decided for what I needed a collar for , locating the dog, that the Sport Dog Tek 1.0 was the best choice for me.

Although the Garmin was a well liked and proven collar I believed it had too many settings that I simply would not need. The Tek 1.0 has a nice "clean" screen with no clutter.  The screen shows a  + which is your position and a  ^  which shows where your dog is located and depending on how the  ^  is pointing if the dog is coming toward you or going away. When the dog is on point or treed (in the case of hound hunters) the  ^  becomes a dot and the transmitter vibrates  It also shows the yardage or mileage of the dogs position. These collars were designed with the hound hunter (bear, coon, lion, etc.) in mind therefore the measurement in miles, something I hope I'll never need to know.
The Tek also allows you to mark the location of your truck and will "lead" you back to it at the end of the hunt. I've only had this unit for a couple of days and have used it once on Emma and once on Thicket so I'm still learning about it, but it seems to be what I was looking for. In Thicket's case after not hearing her bell for a little while I checked on her and found out that she was 241 yards away and moving away for me. I took off in her direction at a fast pace thinking that she had taken off on a deer. After about 50 yards I stopped and started calling her name and blowing the whistle. You can imagine my relief when the screen showed that she had changed directions and was heading back to me. Whether she was on a deer or just lost I don't know but I do know that without the tracking collar I may have lost her for quite a while.
So I'll now add another collar the my dogs neck on every hunt and have the peace of mind of knowing  where they are at all times.