yoderjac
5 year old buck +
That was my point. I would want to program the thing to follow a prescribed route which would be way out of visual LOS. This requires a license. One reason I haven't taken that plunge.
Question for yoderjac
- Thread starter Crimson n' Camo
- Start date
PatinPA
5 year old buck +
I think I saw the same guy. He used thermal and then had a zoom camera that he could see if it was a deer or not. I think one of them I saw they found a dead buck that wasn't the one that the person had shot. They could tell it wasn't the right one from the camera.
DJN
5 year old buck +
Yes, guy is from DroneDeerRecovery (TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube as well as a website) from down the road in Dover, OH. Says his unit cost $20k, and charges $450 to come out (30 mile radius + $1/mile beyond) and $100 more if he locates your deer, dead or alive. Allots roughly two hours to search and says he can cover around 500 acres in that time. Seems to have a very good success rate.
Crimson n' Camo
5 year old buck +
I got a black mouth cur that can handle that part of it ;)For, perhaps and extra $500, he can shoot the deer for you from the drone. Don't ever have to leave your couch!
bigboreblr
5 year old buck +
A few concerns with flying drones and thermal vision. It can be a bit hard to see branches in tthermal mode at times. You really need 2 people on a thermal cam drone. Also, if your thermal camera flashes across the sun in the lens, it can be really bad for it. The FLIR I use at work has survived a sun hit once or twice, the other section of my utility permanetly burned a spot in their FLIR camera.
Good lenses for the thermal caemra are very expensive and can be heavy too, so you need a pretty hefty drone. I use the T860 at work for looking at stuff in stichyard and genrating units for the utility I work for. About a 30k basic camera and another 25 or so for the better lens. I dont play with the drones as much as the other guys. But, we use a pretty fancy nokia 6 propeller one. 9/109 it is used for either FAA tower inpsections or looking at cable splice and insulation connections to the tower in regular mode. Much of the thermal imaging on power lines is still done with a helicopter.
That T860 can see deer in the right of way for 300 yard easily in 4ft or so brush. The deer at my pumped storage plant sit in the pines right across from the switchyard.
Good lenses for the thermal caemra are very expensive and can be heavy too, so you need a pretty hefty drone. I use the T860 at work for looking at stuff in stichyard and genrating units for the utility I work for. About a 30k basic camera and another 25 or so for the better lens. I dont play with the drones as much as the other guys. But, we use a pretty fancy nokia 6 propeller one. 9/109 it is used for either FAA tower inpsections or looking at cable splice and insulation connections to the tower in regular mode. Much of the thermal imaging on power lines is still done with a helicopter.
That T860 can see deer in the right of way for 300 yard easily in 4ft or so brush. The deer at my pumped storage plant sit in the pines right across from the switchyard.
Crimson n' Camo
5 year old buck +
DJN
5 year old buck +
That I don’t know, but that guy (believe his name is Mike) is looking for others to get drones (possibly a “franchisee” of sorts it appears), so it might be worth contacting him if you’re interested in any information about the equipment
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swat1018
5 year old buck +
What I'm saying is it isn't even possible with a license. The FAA won't issue a TBVLOS to an individual. You can map areas within sight, and stitch them together. UAV mapping is an expertise of mine, I map some large areas without losing visual line of sight.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
They will issue one to a company. Point is, there are way too many issues for this to be practical for me. Much depends on the terrain and vegetation and altitude when it comes to LOS. I can't make a solid case for it. My experience with it is non-hands-on non-commercial larger UAVs operating where licensing is not an issue. My exposure is enough to let me know that in my case, it is just not practical. Vegetation (pine farm canopy) limits the value of overhead FLIR. I can see where in more open country with less canopy where it may have value. If you can get good data using LOS operation as a hobbyist, it might be worth it. I'm sure there are ways for me to make it work, but given the percentage of pine canopy, I don't think it would be worth the effort. For example if I got on high ground and used a man-lift to get above most of the canopy, I could probably get LOS. That would let me operate as a hobbyist, but it would be a lot of cost and effort for limited quality data in my case.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
This whole concept make me uneasy. Seems like some ethical lines could easily be blurred with this technology but I guess the genies out of the bottle now
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
That has been true for every technology applied to hunting. I remember when the evil compound bows first came out. As a kid I was admonished against using a scope so I started with a peep sight. It wasn't that many year's ago when the evil crossbows were legalized in my state. When that debate went on, one argument was that "crossbows are a poacher's tool" and should not be legal.
It is not the technology, it is how you choose to use it. In my case, I use a FLIR for 3 things. Only one is even close to my ethical line; Making sure I don't spook deer when climbing down from my stand. I see no ethical issues with using it for out of season surveys as long as you are compliant with any regulations. For deer recovery, for me, it would be unethical not to use any means legally at my disposal to recover a deer I've shot.
One can use most technology in a way that violates their personal ethics. If you are "uneasy" about using any technology in any particular situation, I'd make sure you can look your self in the mirror the next day and feel good. If not, skip it. That goes for methods, technique, equipment, and such in addition to specific technologies.
Thanks,
Jack
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Correct. I would pass on it but ethics and morals are self identified so to each their own. The only case I can make for a gray area is animal recovery efforts.
hillrunner
5 year old buck +
I agree, there are plenty of ways to abuse this.
I was watching the drone deer recovery channel. It's very cool and I have no issues using it in that way. What I noticed though is that he could find all the live deer as well, even in the timber. The deer didn't hardly react at all. It would be real easy to locate all the deer on a property with that thermal. Then he can switch over to the non thermal and zoom in close enough to see exactly what deer he was looking at. He could literally just go locate a target buck at any time, day or night.
Howboutthemdawgs
5 year old buck +
Yeah it’s gross. We aren’t going to stop until the outcome is not even in question anymore. The idea of hunters being woodsman is disappearing as fast as the land we love.
This isn’t a knock on people wanting to use all means to recover a hit animal, it’s the idea of using it for other means. At the end of the day we are hunting an unsophisticated animal, we are the most superior being that the universe knows of…we need to check up on some of this crap.
PatinPA
5 year old buck +
I thought about that too. You could pinpoint a certain buck and surround it and drive it out with a group or at the very least follow it and get a sense of the direction it's heading and get out in front of it. If the price tag is $20K I'm not worried about seeing too many around though.
omicron1792
5 year old buck +
I don’t think we are there yet, but modern drones can be programmed to fly a specific grid based on gps coordinates. Surveyors use them all the time.
Buddy of mine started a drone company to carry medical samples around a city. It was recently bought by ups.
Buddy of mine started a drone company to carry medical samples around a city. It was recently bought by ups.
