I have always used a bell and for the last 10-15 years included a beeper collar set on point mode. My hearing is worse than my shooting these days and the bell is hard to hear. The E collar has a locate function but that can be hard to hear as well. As others have mentioned picking the direction of the bell, beeper, or locate function can be problematic.
My grouse hunting is in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is both big country and wolf country. I think by keeping your dog as close as possible and the combination of the bell and a locate function it might keep the wolf at a distance.
In another post I mentioned a perfect storm of failures. My hearing aid batteries died, the E collar died and it was snowing and very windy. Ike who was just a year old at the time disappeared for a couple of hours and horrible things went through my head. At that given moment I'd have given $1000 for a GPS collar to know where he was.
I hunted him on a pheasant preserve where I could keep him in sight more and didn't use the bell. He hunted closer and was more attentive. Did the absence of the bell allow him to hear me better? I don't know.
I'm not a tech person but I'm going to look for a KISS (keep it simple stupid) GPS collar.
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There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter...Earnest Hemingway
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