Gentlemen, thank you one and all for your contributions. I believe deep inside that this is a flukey kind of thing that Gabe and I will work out. After reading your posts I am heartened that this is possible.
By the way, I'm taking him out tomorrow morning with a woman who owns his sister. The 2 dogs are peas in a pod except his sister doesn't remotely have his hunting genes. Even though they've walked together and played together several times, whenever they hunted together Gabe was strictly a solo act, so there's no worry about them paying attention to each other instead of the job at hand.
Carol (the other hunter) wants it to be a short hunt (hour and a half - 2 hours)due to other obligations. It will be in a different place which is also a factor. The best part for me is the ticks are NOWHERE near as bad as where I hunted yesterday (47 ticks off Gabe, 4 off me).
I'll be sure to report back.
