I went deer hunting this morning. On the way out I stopped to check a trail camera. I happened to walk up on a group of does and shot one with my 300blk. She went down right there and was bleeding good. I drug her about 50 yards, hid her out of site, and had my wife bring my GSD pup. i have been working her on trailing since she was 10 weeks old. I took this opportunity to see if she could put it al together. She did good. She started tugging at her lead once we got close to where I shot the deer. Once we got to the initial blood I unsnapped the lead and she slowly worked the track. Once the deer was in sight she slowed down and barked at it. I had to show her it was ok. She finally came around and sniffed it. After that she was fine with it. It was a very easy track, but every dog has to start somewhere. I was very proud of her. Next time we may try something a little more difficult.

Nice!

What kind of collar are you running on her there?

It is just a regular dayglo nylon collar like this one. All of the feed stores locally sell them. It has a name plate with all of my contact info on it. I ran her off lead yesterday since I knew where the deer was and was fairly certain she was going to work the track slow. I did however pick up a 35' tracking lead from Permatak so I can work her and my GSP with a lead on. That lead is a silicone type material that you can drop and let the dog drag through the woods as they trail. It won't snag on trees or underbrush and makes it much easier to follow them than working them in a short, or even long lead in thick brush. As long as you are within 35 feet of the dog you can grab it to stop them or slow them down.

Excellent. I have two tracking leads. I don't do any tracking work but I use them to make the transition to the e-collar on my dogs. Have you considered doing any e-collar work?

I have, but so far she hasn't needed any. I have the Garmin Alpha GPS/Training collar. My GSP doesn't have the food drive that the GSD does, so I use it with her. My GSD will do about anything you want if you reinforce it with a clicker and a treat.

Ooooh, Garmin Alpha--top of the line!

I have an older Dogtra 1700NCP I use with my 7.5 year old female Akita. She inherited it and a Garmin Astro 360 collar (DC40) from my previous Akita. My 11 month old male Akita pup sports a DC50 collar for the Astro and an E-Collar Technologies K9-800TS.

Like most Akitas they are not highly food motivated so the E-Collars help a lot with the off-lead training. But of course, as you know, you have to do everything on-lead first. It took both of them longer than my older dog to figure out the E-Collar but now they've got it wired I thought about going for a two-dog setup but I decided I like having the two separate controllers so there is less chance of a mistake when working both at the same time. Also, the E-Collar Technologies folks are apparently a bunch of people that split off from Dogtra. I decided to try their product. I am finding the "funny" round controller to be very ergonomic.

Here's my young pup wearing his collars: