Cut Vest & Tracking/Trainer collar combination

[HuntingHeritage]

  Does anyone run a tracker/trainer collar on your catchdogs with a cut vest?

  Also does anyone use protective cages/boxes on your gps collars?

  I am looking at modifying my Uglydog Mason's way vest so I can run the training collar on the outside like its supposed to be rigged.

  I know this will require adding longer prongs to the collars.

  I just feel like a snugger fit would be better, Iam green as all outdoors when it comes to hog dogging and wanted to know what yall did and if I was overthinking this whole thing.

 thanks for any and all input

[t-dog]

Being green is ok. If your smart enough to ask questions then there are plenty people on here that can help you. Some of these folks catch so many hogs they are having to wait on more to be born so they'll have something to catch. I run my collars inside my vest for 2 reasons. One, I don't like my dog all bound up and they need that neck flexion. If you put them on the outside, especially with a training collar because it has to be tighter to make a good connection, then it binds them up in my opinion. If it's under the vest isn't as tight so they can maneuver better. They can't catch as well if they are in a body cast. Second, those collars aren't cheap. So if they are inside they are protected more from blows and hooking. The antenna isn't waving around for a hog to jerk on while he's caught either. I put the box to the  top of the dogs neck and buckle the vest so that the unit has a hard time rotating. I don't allow my catch dogs to run over about 150 yards most times if for some reason the hog doesn't get caught. It has happened though where they did get out away from me. I still get pretty good reception with the collar inside. That's how I do it. It's worked for me, hope this helps.

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[Austesus]

I run cut collars on almost everything and just put the straps of the garmin collar through the loops in the cut collars so it is tight around it.

I ran a southern cross strike vest on my Dum Dum dog and it has a removable Velcro patch that you can pull off and then put the GPS collar around the outside, same as with a cut collar, and the prongs go through the hole and touch the dog. I used the standard length prongs and it worked fine, probably would’ve worked a little better with the extended prongs. I only use shock when teaching them to come back when toned. Dum Dum was my only dog that was tone trained, I keep saying I need to work on it with my dogs now but never do. That tone training is awesome. I used it once because he was acting funny about swimming back to me after he had killed a pig on the other side of some water. I hit the tone and he took to the water like a fish on crack, knowing the shock was coming if he didn’t. My buddies got a good laugh watching that one.


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[Mike]

I have a Mason’s Way vest and run the collar underneath the chin flap... just tilt it to the side a little.  On my Devestator vests,  I run the TT-15 in front of the collar on the vest.

[HuntingHeritage]

 Thanks y'all I am going to try shifting the unit off to the side as suggested, that looks better.

[Black Streak]

All I hunt are big catch dogs that are caught for much much longer than a lead in CD.     Sometimes they will catch over a mile out.      I have to have a good working set up to find them and to ensure no snags or destruction of tracking  collar which is also a training collar/shock collar.          I have had a lot of collars destroyed by pigs hooking the collar or bitting it while the dog is caught when running the collar under the neck.       Usually  this results in 1 collar being ruined every 3 or 4 months on average.        I now run a vest that has a protective pocket  built into the side of the neck part if the vest.      In two years I have not had 1 problem with ruining a collar in this vest.      It's a little hard to get your finger in to turn the collar on or off  and not so easy to slip collar in and out with the long training prongs but I have learned little tricks that make this easy.         
     To  make holes for the training prongs I simply mark where the holes need to be then heat a little metal rod with a torch then press the cherry red end of the rod into the collar portion of the vest where I have marked the spot where the prongs will be.      When holes are made I then take a knife or little belt sander and smooth up the inside of the collar from where the material has melted  and created a ridge around the hole you just made for the prongs.   
         I run barknforbacon vests.   Doubt that's the style of vest you would want on lead ins but you can go to their website and look at the plates untill you see the add in feature I'm talking about.       I'm sure other vest makers here in the US have similar stuff but I'm not familiar with them anymore so don't know for sure.     I'm sure you could get one of the makers to build this feature  if they didn't offer it as a common add on if it is something you like and want to try