Question for yoderjac

Crimson n' Camo

5 year old buck +
I read in one of your past posts where you were talking about finding dead deer with a handheld thermal unit…….How long does a deer put off enough heat to pick up an image on something like that??......Seems like you would have to be on them pretty quick.....I've thought about trying to use a thermal drone for deer recovery but I'm afraid its going to be limited
 
I am in the north, with cold temps, but after 24 hours, it was still glowing like a light bulb.
 
I am in the north, with cold temps, but after 24 hours, it was still glowing like a light bulb.
This may be a dumb question but does it work during the daylight hours just the same or would you be limited to night use??
 
This may be a dumb question but does it work during the daylight hours just the same or would you be limited to night use??
Yes, it just differentiates temperatures.
 
This may be a dumb question but does it work during the daylight hours just the same or would you be limited to night use??
Let me know if you decide to take the plunge. I got a few hookups in alabama for thermals
 
Let me know if you decide to take the plunge. I got a few hookups in alabama for thermals
Will do......The idea of using one on a drone sounds like it would be awesome.....but I just dont know about the real world practicality of it.....And "taking the plunge" aint gonna be cheap lol!.....I really want to KNOW for sure before spending that kind of money
 
Another question I'm asking myself too is.......How much better would you be at assessing hits and recovering deer having a thermal drone and dogs.... versus only having dogs??? Would it be worth it to have one beyond just the cool factor?? Would it be possible to fly up and inventory any deer around the hit site and check them with the dog??
 
There are a million factors on how well a heat signature shows. The temperature of a spot (animal) is measured against it's surroundings, the temperatures are displayed as color changes on the screen. At a time the surroundings happen to be the same temperature of the animal, the animal would not stand out. When there is a large temperature gradient. between the animal and it's surroundings it would stand out. So, many factors come into play including air temperature, shade vs, no shade, type of surface in the background, etc. I fly a drone for law enforcement, thermal is a great tool, but like most things, it works best for trying to find a moving object, it catches the eye. Also, thermal only reads the surface of things, it does not penetrate. For example, you can't use it through glass to see what's inside. So, a tree canopy will obscure things below.

It sounds like a great idea, but I think you would be disappointed. Also, many of the lower end thermals are useless for about anything. (Mavic 2 Dual). You have to have enough resolution. That said, I can see a rabbit in a soybean field from 200' on the right nights. In my opinion, daytime usefulness is very limited.
 
Will do......The idea of using one on a drone sounds like it would be awesome.....but I just dont know about the real world practicality of it.....And "taking the plunge" aint gonna be cheap lol!.....I really want to KNOW for sure before spending that kind of money
I’ve got two. Let me know and you can borrow one or come check it out anytime.
 
There are a million factors on how well a heat signature shows. The temperature of a spot (animal) is measured against it's surroundings, the temperatures are displayed as color changes on the screen. At a time the surroundings happen to be the same temperature of the animal, the animal would not stand out. When there is a large temperature gradient. between the animal and it's surroundings it would stand out. So, many factors come into play including air temperature, shade vs, no shade, type of surface in the background, etc. I fly a drone for law enforcement, thermal is a great tool, but like most things, it works best for trying to find a moving object, it catches the eye. Also, thermal only reads the surface of things, it does not penetrate. For example, you can't use it through glass to see what's inside. So, a tree canopy will obscure things below.

It sounds like a great idea, but I think you would be disappointed. Also, many of the lower end thermals are useless for about anything. (Mavic 2 Dual). You have to have enough resolution. That said, I can see a rabbit in a soybean field from 200' on the right nights. In my opinion, daytime usefulness is very limited.
I have had almost the exact opposite experience.
 
I have wants a thermal for coyotes and for this finding lost/wounded more than anything. Seems so neat. Can’t imagine how cool the drone would be for determining bedding areas too. Anyone around southern ohio or western NY with one?

My buddy just went on a hunt in NE Ohio. Shoots a smasher but the hit looked iffy. Guides come with a thermal as they don’t like dogs on this particular piece. 20 minutes in they say they found the deer laying in the middle of a field the opposite way my buddy said it went. They wandered out to a big rock. After some teasing they did the hands and knees blood trail and found the buck. High lung but didn’t go 100yards. I would be the guy spending a bunch of money (as I’ve heard the cheap ones are worthless) to find hot rocks. Lol
 
I read in one of your past posts where you were talking about finding dead deer with a handheld thermal unit…….How long does a deer put off enough heat to pick up an image on something like that??......Seems like you would have to be on them pretty quick.....I've thought about trying to use a thermal drone for deer recovery but I'm afraid its going to be limited

The last deer I used it to recover was a doe. Just as my brain told my finger to pull the trigger on the crossbow, she stepped forward. I could not stop, and hit her well too far back. I knew it when I released the arrow. She ran off hard and I made a mental mark as to where I saw her last. I waited a bit and snuck down out of the stand to check the arrow and confirm the hit. I shot her at about 4 pm. I then backed out and went back to camp so as not to push her.

I went out about 0800 the next morning to look. There was no blood trail at all, so I started where I last saw her. I walked in the direction I last saw her running. I'd walk a few yards and scan in all directions with the FLIR. She had run up a a mild west facing slope in pines that had canopied, so there was little ground level vegetation. I just repeated the process of walking a few yards and scanning. I picked her up with the FLIR at about 70 yards from me after a a dozen walk-stop-and-scans. She stood out clearly with the FLIR. It was a fairly cool morning and the sun had not yet hit this slope to heat up the trees. This allows for greater contrast in the heat signatures.

She was stiff when I found her, so I would guess she died within a few hours of the paunch shot. The rage expandable had put a pretty good size hole through the paunch and one of the blades had hit the liver. So, lets be conservative and say I shot her at 4PM and she was dead by 8PM. She would have been dead a good 12 hours and I had no trouble picking her up with the FLIR.

On the FLIR OTM thread (https://habitat-talk.com/threads/flir-otm.15038/), someone asked about "seeing through" vegetation. You might want to read my response to that. You do need direct line of sight to the heat source. You cannot really look through stuff. The FLIR is pretty much seeing what you can see with the naked eye. The difference is in what your brain recognizes in the picture. While you may be able to see brown patches of deer lying on a mottled brown back ground through openings in vegetation, your brain does not distinguish the scene well. When you look at that same scene in the infrared spectrum, the difference in contrast between the "hot" pieces of deer behind the "cool" vegetation lying on the "cold" ground stands out. You may not recognize it as a deer. It could be a log that the sun has heated up, or a pool of water that has retained heat after dark, but it gets your attention to investigate. When you look at the same scene with regular vision, it looks pretty much the same as the scenes in all other directions. How "hot" the deer is, and how "cool" the surroundings are, do play a role.

If I had waited until noon to look for that deer, the deer would have been 4 hours cooler and the sun would have hit that slight west-facing slope and heated up the trees. It may have still stood out in the FLIR, but it would not have stood out as clearly.

Thanks,

Jack
 
This may be a dumb question but does it work during the daylight hours just the same or would you be limited to night use??

It works fine during day time use, but as I said in my previous post, it is a matter of degree. The sun heats up inanimate objects like trees, the ground, rocks, logs, and such. Each absorbs and reflects heat to a different degree. So, when you look at a scene with a FLIR, you see the reflected heat from each object during the day. As the sun fades, either from clouds or as it gets lower in the sky, the heat that was previously absorbed become dominate. That defines your background. Body heat is coming directly from the animal and is fairly constant.

So, a FLIR works both day and night in warm conditions and cold. It works better when the background is cooler and the animal is warmer.

Thanks,

Jack
 
Not sure if you have tic toc but there is a guy posting. Deer recoveries with a thermal drone. Pretty impressive.


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Will do......The idea of using one on a drone sounds like it would be awesome.....but I just dont know about the real world practicality of it.....And "taking the plunge" aint gonna be cheap lol!.....I really want to KNOW for sure before spending that kind of money

I've been mulling that idea over myself of using one from a drone. I don't think it would help much in my environment for deer recovery. Most of my recovery issues are with archery shot deer where the exit wound is not low enough in the chest to leave a blood trail and blood just pools in the chest. During our archery season, leaves are still on our hardwoods and of course the pine canopy on the pine farm is there all year. I'm not sure the IR view from above would be of any value for deer recovery. I was think of using it more for deer surveys in the winter and spring. If I conducted them at night, I would guess that in our environment, most deer would be out in the open fields feeding where the FLIR from above could easily pick them up. It would also probably be effective in our hardwoods in the winter with the leaves down.

I'm not sure the current regulatory environment would allow me to do what I want. I think most hobby level stuff has to be line of sight controlled by the user. For this to be effective, I would want to program a gps track in memory and have the drone follow the same track each survey.

I haven't talked myself into it yet given cost and the potential need for a license to do what I want to do.

Thanks,

Jack
 
Another question I'm asking myself too is.......How much better would you be at assessing hits and recovering deer having a thermal drone and dogs.... versus only having dogs??? Would it be worth it to have one beyond just the cool factor?? Would it be possible to fly up and inventory any deer around the hit site and check them with the dog??

For deer recovery, if I had access to a tracking dog, I would not need the FLIR. A good tracking dog can differentiate between individual deer (as can deer) let alone a wounded deer. A good tracking dog for deer will follow the scent left by glands in the hooves not air scent like a bird dog. They are very effective.

Of course, I don't need to feed and water the FLIR each day or board it if I travel. I have multiple uses for it. I uses it to make sure no deer are around when I get down from my stand. I uses it for off season deer surveys, and I use it for deer recovery. The dog would only fill one of those niches.
 
I hunt Northern Wisconsin, during deer hunting temps are usually pretty cool,or frozen, so finding a dead deer is pretty easy to spot, day or night, as long as the deer is still warm. I have to say, it sure is a nice tool for recovering deer.
 
I read in one of your past posts where you were talking about finding dead deer with a handheld thermal unit…….How long does a deer put off enough heat to pick up an image on something like that??......Seems like you would have to be on them pretty quick.....I've thought about trying to use a thermal drone for deer recovery but I'm afraid its going to be limited
There is a guy on tic toc that has a recovery service using drones. It is pretty cool. If you are on there do a search and it should pop up.
 
I've been mulling that idea over myself of using one from a drone. I don't think it would help much in my environment for deer recovery. Most of my recovery issues are with archery shot deer where the exit wound is not low enough in the chest to leave a blood trail and blood just pools in the chest. During our archery season, leaves are still on our hardwoods and of course the pine canopy on the pine farm is there all year. I'm not sure the IR view from above would be of any value for deer recovery. I was think of using it more for deer surveys in the winter and spring. If I conducted them at night, I would guess that in our environment, most deer would be out in the open fields feeding where the FLIR from above could easily pick them up. It would also probably be effective in our hardwoods in the winter with the leaves down.

I'm not sure the current regulatory environment would allow me to do what I want. I think most hobby level stuff has to be line of sight controlled by the user. For this to be effective, I would want to program a gps track in memory and have the drone follow the same track each survey.

I haven't talked myself into it yet given cost and the potential need for a license to do what I want to do.

Thanks,

Jack
As a hobbyist you don't need a license. Even if you did obtain a Part 107 certificate, it still would not allow you to operate beyond visual line of sight. I obtained a Tactical Beyond Visual Line of Sight (TBVLOS) waiver for our Sheriff's Department, that allows us to fly out of sight, but only in certain instances and for emergency. The first utility in the Country just obtained a TBVLOS for powerline inspection, the FAA is reacting to the need for less regulation as they realize the potential for trouble is relatively low, but they are slow to change. A Part 107 certificate does allow for night operation, with a beacon with 3 statute mile visibility.
 
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