Question for veteran players or Admin/Mod about dogs

[Choochit]

Is it safe to bring my dog on deer hunts and have him just laydown next to my blind or stand, or will he spook the deer once they get closer? Thanks

[Alf Tupper]

A dog laid down will not spook in my experience BUT if you take a shot, they will stand up and move so make sure you order them to lay down again.

You can bring a dog into a ground blind as well.

[Choochit]

Thanks Alf. Do I get into the ground blind first and then have him get inside? I know they can get into the duck blinds, what about a regular two man ground blind?

[Alf Tupper]

Yes, get into the blind first. Yes works on 'normal' blinds too - I am sat in one now with the dog.

[Choochit]

Hahaha SAWEEEEEET! Goodluck out there. I'm currently looking to harvest some mule deer. I figured since I have the dog I might as well us him seeing as if you don't put a clean shot on a muley it will run forever.

[Bumblewoot]

The scent hound typically increases the difficulty of a hunt. It is an additional thing to monitor and manage. That being said, I love my scent hound and use her a lot. But it took a bit of trial and error to sort everything out.

The dog GPS was a big debate when that came out. I find it helps a lot though. As when stalking or calling in deer, it is must to have your dog in the STAY command. This brings the dogs spook radius to zero meters. Animals can walk on them and they won't spook. The trick is they can only be so far away from you before it will get up and run back to you. I have not quite figured out the distance, but it appears to be between 120m and 150m apart. At that point the dog will get up and bolt towards you, and quite possible spook the deer.

If you are approaching this 120m mark or so, it is best to call your dog to you in crouched position. It will be slow, but if you are crouched, the dog is in sneak mode and will sneak all the way back to you. Then you tell him to stay again and move forward.

When you get used to it, you rarely need to go further than 120m from the dog to successfully setup a call.

The main benefit of course is the dog can track for you. Most benefit comes from longbow/weak bows on large animals if it is a body shot. It can take 15min-20min for a large elk bull to die from a body longbow hit. It will die, so the dog will keep the track fairly reliably. Allowing you to hunt something else, or go get a snack when the dog is tracking. The dog will keep tracking until about 150m then come back to you. If you are paying attention, the gps wil show where he is, and you can mark the position to continue tracking later or to start the dog again.

The most useful the dog has been for me is a long bow body hit on a large elk bull and they hit the shore or border and bounce all over the place. The dog does not get confused nearly as much as I do with a wounded animal running every which way in and out of the border or shoreline.

A couple additional things to note:

- A dog will get up and come to you after a rifle shot
- A dog will not get up and come to you after a bow shot
- If you are sneaking while tracking a wounded animal, and the dog finds the harvest, it will not bark.
- if you get a bow shot kill. The dog will remain in stayed positon. If you sneak forward and harvest a animal with more animals on the way in, and you go to trophy shot mode to try and sneak a quick trophy shot in before more animals arrive to the call.... the dog will warp to the trophy shot in a flash and spook anything near.

Take care, happy hunting.

[Choochit]

Thanks for the tips man, you too!

[Kinarr]

Here's a similar question, maybe a different answer:
I stay my dog 75m away when I use a tower.
If a deer/hog is attracted to my call,
will it get spooked by my dog ?
What if the dog starts wondering around, or is between me and my prey ?

[Alf Tupper]

Kinarr, I think if the dog is laid down and is not moving it won't spook but if it gets up and wanders then it can spook. In towers I get the dog to lay down by the lafdder then it doens't wander

[Bumblewoot]

Originally posted by Kinarr:

Here's a similar question, maybe a different answer:
I stay my dog 75m away when I use a tower.
If a deer/hog is attracted to my call,
will it get spooked by my dog ?
What if the dog starts wondering around, or is between me and my prey ?

If the dog is lying down in the stay command, it has zero spook radius. In your scenario, we can take the worse case. Say you stay'd your dog at 75m and it happens to be in between you and the buck you called at 150m. The deer will come in to your call and walk right over the dog and not spook. As long as the dog is in 'stay' and lying down.

The dog has 3 other stances.

-sneak (when you are crouched)
-walk
-run

Each stance has a different spook radius for the dog just like the person. The dog copies the movement stance the hunter is in. (except for prone that requires the 'stay' command)

If the dog runs while you are crouched, or runs while you are walking, it is do to the level of the dog and it not behaving. Or there is always the possible glitches and bugs.

The most common problem that people seem to have with the dog is that they 'stay' the dog, then move away 120m+ from the dog. At this point the dog is programmed errrr trained to recall to you as fast as possible. It will get up and run to you as fast as possible. It will spook animals when doing this. This situation is best avoided by calling the dog back to you in sneak mode before hitting this recall mode. There is pretty much no control that you can enact on the dog if it is running to you in automatic recall mode. It will be too far away to respond to any other command but the come here command. Which it is already doing.

[Kinarr]

Good answers.
Thanks.

[Ace Lightning]

another problem with the dogs are ,if you do not let it lay down before you go prone the comands dont work ,you have to be standing or crouched then your dog will move infront of your rifle and you canot shoot at an animal so you would have to crouch then whistle then move (posibly spooking your animal ) and then take your shot (hopefully devs would at some point fix the dogs so they would not go infront of the hunter unless tracking