Ever lose a dog?

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benelli-banger

Well-known member
I had male labs run away a lot as a kid, and had one that ran away a bit about 5-6 dogs ago…he got hit by a car and died…he dug under the fence and took off…10.5 year old, bad arthritis…surprised me…just returned from a hunt a day or two before. Never lost a dog while hunting…
 
Yes as a kid my Dad had an idiot gsp that couldn’t wait to get to the end of the field and who knows where after that. Against my hopes and dreams he’d show back up. Also went rabbit hunting with neighbor and his beagles that would take off. He’d leave his hunting coat lay on the ground and come back later. There they’d be.
 
I lost one hunting about 20 years ago. It went after a pheasant that I shot at and missed. E collar battery was dead. Took about 1/2 hour to find him. Started blowing my whistle, tweet tweet tweet, and he finally showed up. Sickening feeling. Carry a whistle now for back up.
 
I had my brother's dog out with my other 2. 5 of us guys hunted a 1/2 section crp at the end of the day. No remote collar on his dog and I was sure he was lost. Hollered and whistled for him for 20 minutes while walking up and back down the road next to the field. Walked back to the vehicles and he was in his crate. I asked the guys how long he was there and they said he came out with them. I was a little peed and asked did you not hear me calling him? They said yes we didn't know what you were thinking?
 
I had a Vizsla that I lost for almost an hour out pheasant hunting. He was down in a ditch in cattails on point on a wounded bird. Being virtually the same color as cattails, he was invisible.
 
Just this year I was hunting with my cousin. His idiot black lab was hunting with me instead of my cousin and I wasn't really keeping track of him. His dog is really aloof. Shot a bird my dog finds it and we head back to the car and meet up with my cousin. He asks where his dog is and I tell him I hadn't seen him for a while and I thought he was with you. Terrible feeling. We wondered around calling for him. Mean while he ended up at the farm near by and they threw him in their car. My cousin finally went that way and found him.
 
Years ago my 3 month weim and I went to the lake to burn energy and swim. I chunked the bumper out first throw and about half way back he flushed some turkeys I didn’t see around the corner and the chase was on. At first I didn’t worry too much, 3 hours later I was in a panic. He ran up a cut and got turned around and panicked worse than me.. I just sat on a rock after a while blowing a whistle and eventually he came back. Got lucky that day!
 
Lost a springer out of the back of my truck one duck season in 1977, found her about 30 days later by calling vets she was about 10 miles from home with a bucket load of stitches in her hip.
My Chessie companion/dead bird/upland flushing dog has watched me too many times pull out the AR and pop hogs, was up on the Salt Fork of the Brazos one day and he decided to run a pack of sows into the next county….5 hours later he found me.
Same dog, We let some amateur rocketeers launch their projects on the farm I lease, Gus ( the Chesapeake) and I decided to observe a rather large example launch (about 8’ of 10” diameter rocket) . It cooked off and I watched it sail off into the upper reaches of the sky and pop a chute…satisfied I’d seen a good launch I looked for Gus…. No joy, asked the rocketeers if they’d seen him and one guy said he saw him hauling ass at launch… put drones up in the search and couldn’t find him, drove all over the country looking and finally found him about 4 hours later in a canal full of cattails, he wouldn’t come to me for a good bit… that rocket was scary as hell to him.
Gus the Chessie again at about 6months of age….we were sitting on the porch at the shop and one of those 30k ft topped anvil headed thunder storms was easing up on us and hadn’t made a sound, but right when the leading edge hit our location, one of those lighting strikes where the flash and the boom are simultaneous, peeled out a ear splitting boom… Gus lit a shuck and it took about a half a day to run him down about a mile away in some thick cover. Amazing how I can shoot around him without any reaction but thunder frightens the hell out of him to this day. He’s 11 this summer and he tends to be within 20’ of me these days!
Picked my current springer Bauer in N Dakota, and stopped in S Dakota to run some pheasants around on the way home…last of the season, deep snow lots of birds…. He drops off in a draw with a bunch of wild plum and cattails in the bottom and just disappeared…. No response from my calling ( he’ll he didn’t know me from Adam) being a started dog and a pricey one at that I got pretty nervous pretty quick… his trainer had explained his positive recall on the whistle, problem was I didn’t own a whistle 😙. After 15 minutes of initial panic I just watched where pheasants were flushing about 400 yards away, caught up with him in about 45 minutes, shot my limit .
One more…. Same springer same week in north Texas hunting bobs (whistle bought). We were walking the edge of a flattop and he was working some brush about 45 yards ahead of me when a bunch of cattle decided to come off the top of the flattop and get a drink in the draw below. They passed between me and him and took about 5 minutes to clear the way for me to advance towards where he was…no sight line with dog so I picked up speed up wind and didn’t see him pretty quick so out comes the whistle… no dog …kept going down that edge blowing that damn whistle for about a mile… finally decided to double back to the point of separation still blowing the whistle. Started calling him by name and after about 10 minutes I’m looking out over the flat top and I see his head popping up over the sage every now and then as he’s pogoing to get a visual on me. He finally gets airborne enough to get a sight line on me and we were reunited.
The next time I hunted with Bauer with the same guys, they had had some yellow bandanas in thier pockets and they started throwing them around like penalty flags… when I blew that whistle ,was a pretty good laugh . Bauer and I are thoroughly bonded today and in our 12th season this year, no whistle required😀
 
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I've never lost one or had a "close call" while hunting. If that ever happened I don't think I'd be allowed back in the house without the dog. "Turn your ass around and go find that dog."

But, I run them off leash on a local golf course in the summer. It's a pretty tight course, built on 160 acres with no houses lining the fairways, etc. It's almost completely fenced in. When my 8 year old was a pup she took off after some geese or shore birds or something. I didn't have my phone, so I had to borrow a phone from a guy on the greens keeping crew to call my wife. She drove over to help me look. I continued to look, without success. About 20 minutes later I flagged down another greens keeper and called her again. She had the dog! I run them there enough that they know their way around. After breaking off the chase, the dog had come back to our normal route to look for me. That route leads to a gate from the golf course to the neighborhood where I live. She was at that gate barking. One of the residents from the houses right there got the dog and called the phone numbers on her tags. I was really worried that day.

Ever since then, they wear their garmins on the golf course or really anywhere they aren't contained.
 
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