TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO: Today we're going to talk about dog tracking using the Garmin Instinct e watches. The advantage of the watch from a notification standpoint is that you can strap the watch to your wrist, you can set it up with vibration, it will allow you to receive the notifications no matter the conditions. When I get a notification on my watch, I feel it. My dog's on point, he's seventy five yards this direction.

A lot of folks like to use their watch to navigate to the dog. It gives you the ability to look at your wrist. It's got a direction and a distance. It'll tell you if the dog's moving or if he's on point.

Do you prefer to have your hand free to be able to look at at a watch, or do you want to take your handheld out of a holster, you know, pick it up and look at it? Not only can I track my dog with it, but there's just an insane amount of smartwatch features that you get with the Garmin watches? The the two biggest things outside of dog tracking that I use a watch a Garmin watch for is working out and sleep tracking. I like the heart monitor stuff.

So tracking steps is a huge deal for me. I'm obsessed with it a little bit. And having a watch where I can get notifications for my dog and I can see the location of my dog, That it just adds on top of all the benefits that you get with a smartwatch. The Garmin Instinct e is a great entry level watch if you're wanting to just try one out.

It's a wonderful price point. It's a very simple watch to work with, but it's got an enormous amount of features, especially for the price point. The question is, how do you want to know that your dog's pointed or treed, and how do you want to interact with your handheld? Two different primary handhelds, Alpha versus a Pro five fifty Plus.

The Alpha allows you to have a sound and a vibration. You can do an either or or you can do both, where the Pro five fifty Plus only has a vibration. So dog goes on point with the Pro five fifty Plus, handheld's gonna vibrate. Whether or not you can feel the vibration of a handheld is gonna depend on how that handheld is, you know, on you.

If it's clipped to you, if it's in a holster, if it's hanging off of your clothes, if the weather is extremely cold and you're wearing a bunch of different layers, you're not as likely to feel the vibration. And the dog's still on point, but it vibes and it stops. It's not an ongoing it's not like an alarm that you wake up to. It's going to vibe that the dog's on point, and that's all you get.

Yeah. If they're at a distance, you can't see them. You know? So that's a problem for some, you know, consumers.

To me, and and just picking on the Pro five fifty plus, if we screwed up anything in the design of that product, we neglected to add a sound feature to the the to the unit. For me, that's probably the only thing that's missing. So alphas have a similar problem in that same thing, you can set it up where it's makes a sound when the dog you know, for a dog alert. And this includes all of your alerts.

This is not just limited to a pointed or tree. You know, it's lost notification. It's if you've geofences set up, any any satellite issues, any notification that you get, the watch is gonna pick up on that. It's not just point indicator, treat indicator.

The the Alpha is similar in that it has sound and it has vibration, but depending on how you wear and carry the unit, you may miss that. The sound part of it, even though the Alpha does make a sound for a notification, the problem with that is that we run into folks that can't hear they just can't hear.

And then there's some of them that just can't hear the sounds that an Alpha makes. I've got a buddy of mine that I've hunted with for years. I know his dog's on point before he does because he can't hear it. As a general rule, if you've lost your hearing, you lose it on the higher frequencies first. And so typically with somebody that's having a hearing issue, you want to use lower tones. And there's a bunch of different sounds on the Alpha, so there's things that you can pick from.

But, I know guys that they just can't hear it. So, the advantage of the watch from a notification standpoint is that you can strap the watch to your wrist, you can set it up with vibration, and I typically do mine with vibration only. When I get a notification on my watch, I feel it. Either look at my watch and it'll tell me dog's on point, and and if I have the the widget turned on, I can see the direction and we go to the dog.

Or I fill a notification on my watch, I go to my handheld. Notifications are part the issue, but they're not the only thing. Once again, depending on what device you're using, Alpha versus Pro five fifty Plus, a lot of folks like to use their watch to navigate to the dog. It gives you the ability to look at your wrist.

It's got a direction and a distance. It'll tell you if the dog's moving or if he's on point. It depends on where's your hand held, do you prefer to have your hand free to be able to look at a watch, or do you want to take your hand held out of a holster, pick it up and look at it. The watch does a couple of things.

It will allow you to receive the notifications no matter the conditions, and and that's something that I think people miss out on. If the wind's blowing twenty five miles an hour, you know, in in a normal situation, you may hear your handheld just fine, but if you're in a windy condition, you know, you may not. Some of the folks that are grouse hunters like the watch from the standpoint that they're working in really tight cover, and they don't want to be holding their handheld. You know, they want to have their hand free so that they have, you know, quick access to their shotgun.

Typically, they're gonna wear their watch on their, you know, offhand. I'm right handed, so I've got my my Garmin on my left hand. That way I can look, but I don't have to worry about my handheld, you know, so I've still got my, my forearm free. So that's an advantage of the watch.

My dog I got a notification my dog's on point. He's seventy five yards this direction. That's all you need to know. Using a Garmin watch to help with your tracking allows you not to have to interact with a handheld.

And some people spend way too much time looking at their screens. And so the watch, you know, kinda takes a little bit of that away so that you're not having to interact with a handheld as much. You know, you're not gonna miss a notification with the watch. Just because you get a notification, that doesn't mean that your dog's on point.

But the majority of the time that your dog's on point, you know, you're gonna get a notification, and your watch is gonna allow you to know that. It it just it just frees you up. It frees your hands up, and it's just one less thing to have to worry about. We started working with watches back in in when I was running an Alpha one hundred, so it's been a long time.

My my situation's a little different than some folks, that I'm working in more open country. If I haven't seen a dog or received a notification over a certain period of time, I'm going to, you know, check my handheld. Yeah. I like the watch from the standpoint of as I'm moving in on a dog on pointe.

That's that's what I prefer. Generally, in really tight cover, but it allows me that. And I like the notifications. I I run both, you know, an Alpha and a Pro five fifty plus, so I'm a little bit different from that standpoint.

And I typically have my my Alpha here, and I can hear them. I I I've had some hearing loss, but I can't hear them. I'm not the primary customer for it. Find it handy in a lot of situations, having my hands free.

So we run into a lot of people that are interested in the watch but don't necessarily want to invest a lot of money in it. They're strictly looking for something to add on for notifications. I think that's the vast majority of the folks that we get. They're looking for that notification thing.

What I like about the Instinct watches is that they have a lot of the features, but they are on the price wise, they are on the lower end of the market for Garmin. Garmin watches that'll dog track from a retail pricing, it's generally in the three hundred dollar range up to two, three thousand dollars. You don't need to buy a three thousand dollar watch to track your dogs.

So we have a lot of folks that are just interested in trying it out and the Instinct kind of fits that for folks. Instinct e, especially when it's on sale, is a wonderful deal. It is crazy how many different watches Garmin has. I mean, it's absolutely insane.

And people kinda get a little bogged down in it when they're when they're trying to figure it out. So I I use my watch for a bunch of different things. The two biggest things outside of dog tracking that I use a watch, a Garmin watch for, is working out and sleep tracking. Now, I'm a little odd in that I run too.

There's some medical stuff that I like how Apple does versus what Garmin does. I kinda treat it like some people wear like a watch, a smartwatch, and they wear like a whoop strap or they wear one of the Oura rings. I kinda do it that way. There's things that my Apple Watch does that my Garmin Watch won't do.

There's things that my Garmin Watch does my Apple Watch won't do. Like most of the electronics in my life, I tend to be overkilled. The sleep tracking is probably the part that that that I'm most interested in, and you can't really do that with an Apple Watch because the battery life is horrific. It's different for every watch.

Battery life is one of those things where it just kinda depends. Garmin has some watches that depending on what features you're using, you know, that will eat up battery life. But my watch using everything kind of mode, I get eight days off of a charge.

And I can get a full charge, I think in like less than an hour, you know, so it's kind of crazy.

I get a day out of an Apple Watch if I'm lucky. My Garmin, I might charge it once a week. Some of the more high end watches, some of the Phoenix watches, they can go three, four weeks on a single charge. To make it simple is I have a charger in my truck, and a lot of times, I'll just, you know, stick my watch on when I'm driving.

You know, I know I'm gonna be in the car for thirty minutes, take my watch off and stick it on the charger, and it's done for the week. Battery life is a gigantic deal as far as watches. You've got folks that that that's the main reason that they're running, you know, garments. So tracking steps is a huge deal for me.

I that I'm obsessed with it a little bit. I like the heart monitor stuff. I I keep up with my heart rate, you know, and and it it it'll track that. It's a little crazy what the watches will do.

You kinda need to look at what your other activities are. And that's one of the reasons why we we sell the Instinct watches, especially the Instinct e. It'll do a lot of stuff, but it's an inexpensive dog tracker. You know, you're looking for a watch that does any outdoor activity that you have, Garmin's got something for it.

You know, if you're big into golf, they've got golf watches. If you like to scuba dive, they've got scuba dive watch. If you're really big into fitness, you know, the Phoenix watches have some some things.

We have a playlist. We have a playlist on our YouTube channel that is set up videos for the watches. They're not terribly complicated, but there are a few things that you have to do. A couple of things to keep in mind with the watches is that a watch ties to one handheld.

It does not track multiple handhelds at the same time. When you're setting a watch up, you you don't want to have a bunch of handhelds around because it's gonna it's gonna reach and grab. I typically like to have one handheld that's turned on and my watch when I match them up together. And that's designed so that it locks into one handheld.

And that way, you know, if you've got multiple handhelds broadcasting in the area, it's not going to pick up other dogs. It'll just stay on your handheld. Now, the downside of that, that once locked into a handheld, that's the only handheld that's going to track. If you decide to switch handhelds or you decide to get rid of a watch, you have to go in and and remove that handheld from the watch.

And I've got a I've got a tutorial on how to do that. That's easy.

But once the handheld is is attached to the watch, then, you know, you're gonna get your notifications. At at the press of a button, you're gonna be able to turn on your dog tracker and see it, you know, on your watch.

The part that people need to understand is that the watch is not actually tracking the dog. The watch is receiving information from your handheld. So you have to have the handheld within range.

It's a Bluetooth connection. There's communication between the handheld and the watch. You don't necessarily have to have it on you, but you have to be close to it. I know some guys that like to hunt out of a buggy, and they they like to leave their handheld in the buggy, and then they get out of the the buggy to to their dog's on pointe.

That works as long as you're within range, a hundred yards away from your buggy, and, you know, it's not gonna pick it up. So I I typically am I'm gonna say you need the handheld on your body. So you can have it in your vest, you can have it in your pocket, and you don't have to, you know, attach you don't have to reach for the handheld to get the signal on your watch.

Alright. There are two Garmin Instinct e watches. We've got the forty five millimeter and the forty millimeter. Forty millimeter is smaller than the forty five.

I can't wear a forty. It's too small for me. It is a smaller watch than this, so you need to look at the band size and check your wrist measurement just to see. Some people like size of the face of the watch, and they're looking for something on the smaller side. The forty covers that, but you need to make sure that it will fit your wrist where the forty five is gonna fit most of the average men's wrists.

Do you know what time it is? One of my favorite features of the Garmin watches is that not only can I track my dog with it, but there's just an insane amount of smartwatch features that you get with the Garmin watches? And having a watch where I can get notifications for my dog and I can see the location of my dog, that it just adds on top of all the benefits that you get with a smartwatch.

The Garmin Instinct e is a great entry level watch if you're wanting to just try one out. It's a wonderful price point. It's a very simple watch to work with, but it's got an enormous amount of features, especially for the price point. The cool thing about our Garmin watches is that you can buy them and try them.

And if it's not the right thing for you, we've got a thirty day money back guarantee. We expect you to use that watch in the field. If you're not happy with it, send it back for a quick easy refund. One more.

So if you're dog tracking with any of the Garmin watches, it doesn't matter. You need to tell the people that you're hunting with that you have a watch and you're dog tracking with it. It is the worst looking thing in the world. When you're out in the field and your your dogs are running, everything's nice and peaceful, and you're just having a good time, and there's somebody that's constantly doing this.

Every time you look, they're doing this. Every time. And if you don't know what they're doing, you're gonna get this, have you got somewhere else to be sort of feeling. It's one of those things where, like, I'm sorry.

Are we keeping you from something more important than bird hunting? And you're just looking at your watch constantly. So I recommend that if you are using a Garmin watch to track your dogs, that you tell everybody, hey. I got my dog.

I got my dog on my watch here. I can see my dog. So I'm not in a hurry. I'm not checking the time.

I'm tracking my dog.