Wondering if some experienced houndsmen could help me out. I work for the NJ Division of Fish and Wildlife, specifically as a Wildlife Tech. with our Bear Project. Our team basically conducts all of the research and data collection, on the states bear population. As well as handles all of the nuisance bears in the state. In a typical year our team traps and handles around 250-300 bears a year . Either through den work, research trap lines, and nuisance captures. (yes we have lots of bears in NJ, yes i said NJ
)We currently use Curr Dogs in our program to help us adversely condition "problem" bears, as well as help us out with live capturing research bears, and also use the dogs to help us euthanize "category 1" problem bears. (these are bears that pose a threat to public safety) very aggressive bears, home entry, live stock kills, etc.
Over the years of working on the team, We have identified some weaknesses with the dogs that we currently use. As our dogs have aged, and some have had to be put down, we our looking to get some new dogs for the program.
Some of the situations and conditions we face:
many times we will get called out in very developed or urban settings and need to track or locate a bear that had broken into a house or killed a pet. In these situations the track maybe several hours old by the time we get the call and respond, many times the homeowner will call the local Police Dept. first. the PD will respond may or may not attempt to look for the bear prior to calling us. So by the time we get there the track is cold and there have probably been a bunch of officers traipsing through the woods.
Sometimes the Local Police Dept. will respond and the bear will still be on scene and give them an opportunity to euthanize the bear themselves. However, lots of times this results in us getting a call to track a wounded bear.
In these situations it would be great to have a good tracking dog, that is capable of Cold trailing an old track or a blood trail. On a lead, as many times your trailing the bear through a residential neighborhood with lots of traffic and hazards that could pose a serious threat to a dog running off a lead.
Many times we will also "free range dart" bears that are either a nuisance or for research purposes, depending on the bear's metabolism it can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 15 minutes for the drug to take affect on the animal. In that time the bear can cover a great deal of ground before it goes down. In these situations we use a transmitter dart so we can track the bear with a telemetry receiver, how ever these darts do fail on occasion or depending on where the bear was hit with the dart, the animal will sometimes pull the dart out, or the dart will get snagged on brush and get pulled out.
In these instances we need a dog that can track a hot trail and hopefully lead us to the sleeping bear, in either residential areas or also in more remote wilderness areas.
Other occasions we may need to target a radio collared bear in order to remove or replace its radio collar.
In these situations we will typically pin the bear down in a thicket using the telemetry gear, surround the thicket with shooters cutting off its escape routes, and then need a dog or dogs that will go in and run the bear out and hopefully run it past a shooter, or run it until it trees or bays the bear. Once the bear is treed we go in and set up nets under the tree and dart the bear out or the tree. or if the bear is to high or in an unsafe location (IE above a huge stone row) we will pull the dogs off, hide a shooter or two around the tree and wait till the bear climbs down and then hopefully get a dart into it.
Sorry for the long post, but if there are some houndsman out there that can help me out with some recommendations on dog breeds or a mixture of dog breeds that would best fill the role in some of these parts, it would be much appreciated
feel free to email me or post here - email is joeburke1@earthlink.net
Thanks for your time
