Hunta now supports Garmin watches and Alpha dog trackers

3 min read
If you hunt with an Alpha, your Garmin watch sends your dogs to the team. Everyone in the hunt sees them on the map in Hunta, and when a dog goes on point, your phone tells you.

Your dog on the team's map

Each dog gets its own colour the first time the hunt hears it, and keeps it all day. Everyone on the team sees the same colour, and the trail is drawn as the dog moves.

When a dog goes on point or trees, it turns yellow on the map, with how long it has held. If the handheld loses contact with the collar, you see where the dog was last. If the collar loses GPS or runs low on battery, the map shows that too.

What you need

  • A Garmin watch with Hunta. Hunta is in the Connect IQ store and runs on more than a hundred Garmin watches, including fēnix, epix, tactix, quatix, Enduro, Forerunner, vívoactive, Venu and Instinct 3. See Hunta in the Connect IQ store.
  • Garmin Connect on your phone. The watch sends through Garmin Connect, as it usually does.
  • An Alpha 100, 200 or 300, or an Astro, with your dogs set up on it.

How to connect the watch

  1. Install Hunta on the watch from the Connect IQ store, and open it. The watch shows a QR code and six digits.
  2. Scan the QR code with your phone's camera, or go to Settings and Garmin watch in Hunta and enter the digits.
  3. Tap Connect. The code is valid for ten minutes.

The dogs join the hunt

Turn on «Broadcast dog data» on the Alpha handheld. If the watch has its own dog tracking, forget the handheld in the watch's own settings first. Keep Hunta open on the watch, and stay within 10–15 metres of the handheld.

When you are in a hunt with your team, the watch sends your dogs to the team's map. If you hunt alone, they are not sent.

When you tap the dog

Tap the dog on the map to see how far it has run, how long it has been out and how fast it is moving now. Below that is the day as a strip, showing when it ran, sat and held. With Follow the dog, the map stays on the dog as it moves.

The figures are worked out from what the watch sends. The distance can come out a little lower than the handheld's own.

Alerts

Under My dogs you choose what your phone tells you:

  • when a dog goes on point
  • when contact with a dog is lost
  • when the watch stops sending
  • when a dog is more than 1 km away

The first three are on from the start. You can also tell the team when one of your dogs goes on point, so the others in the hunt get an alert.

Who sees the dogs

What the watch sends goes to Hunta, not to Garmin. The dogs are shown to everyone who sees the hunt on the team's map, and the trail is saved with the hunt.

Update Hunta, and find Garmin watch under Settings.