When hunting raccoon dogs, you will regularly find your raccoon dogs out of hearing distance. Occasionally this happens because they run away from the game like a deer. It could even turn out that a raccoon hound separated the trees from others or hunts in a completely different direction. Heck, you might just get turned around and get lost and can’t get back to your truck. Well, this is why the use of collars and tracking systems when hunting raccoons is so vital.
First of all, think about how valuable your raccoon hound really is. Sometimes a good quality raccoon dog is easily worth 4 figures, and 5 figures is not unheard of either. However, if you simply buy a cheap pup and raise and train him yourself, you will no doubt have $1,000 invested in this raccoon hound pup for both training and food and medical supplies. It would be a shame to be literally unable to find your raccoon hound and all your hard work.
If you are a competitive raccoon hunter, you will recognize the value of the following reason. Often when participating in a coon hunting competition, a time-out may be called. When you’re done, you have one hour to retrieve your raccoon hound or you’ll be disqualified from the hunt. There have been many times when I’ve been on a competitive hunt and was able to immediately find my raccoon dog while one or more of my competitors couldn’t and were eliminated from the hunt.
One more reason I think tracking collars are important is because you can leave one on in the truck and be able to find your way back to the truck if you get lost or turn around. This has been helpful to me several times.
Ok, now how do tracking collars work? Well, I am not an authority, but I will share with you the knowledge that I have. They work on radio frequencies and each collar has its own exclusive channel. The receiver is what you use to dial in the frequencies and pick up the signal. This will produce a ‘beep’ and the volume and repetition will vary with distance. How this all works will depend on the necklace you decide to choose. Several tracking systems will do all of this automatically or at the push of a button, while others will require you to do it all manually.
As you can imagine, the cost of the tracking system will depend on the bells and whistles you decide on. However, he’d be surprised at how affordable some tracking systems are, especially when he compares them to the value of his raccoon hounds.