Raccoon-hunting equipment, modern and old school

Mike Marsh

February 01 at 7:00 am  | Mobile Reader | Print 

Mike Marsh

David MacCallum uses a GPS tracking collar to keep tabs on his dog’s progress during a raccoon hunt.

The collar helps him tell whether the dog is moving back and forth, — casting for scent — or has become stationary, indicating it has treed a raccoon. It also helps in recovering dogs that go silent or in catching them before they move across a property line onto an area they don’t have permission to hunt or they can cross a dangerous highway or a stream that cannot be forded by hunters wearing hip boots.

According to the tracking collar — a Garmin 200, which costs around $600 and can be purchased with integrated Google Earth maps — his dog, Queen, trailed one raccoon 1.9 miles before treeing it.

Like all dedicated raccoon hunters, MacCallum wears a "miner" type helmet with a rechargeable battery to power the helmet’s headlamp. The helmet deflects branches that might scratch an eye and will not snag in the briars. The light is bright enough to spotlight a raccoon hiding high in a tree.