Drone recovery??

There are already drone deer recovery services offered in TN. There are also YouTube videos in TN of this very thing. TWRA hasn't prosecuted the guys doing it in my county so I'm surprised to see that it isn't in law yet.
 
I know there are folks offering this as a service now, and drones are illegal to use in attempting to kill a deer. If I understand it right, if the drone finds the deer and it is not dead, the hunter cannot then slip in and finish the deer off during the over night period, but can recover a deer found deceased this way. I think they have to leave it alone if it is decided to not be a fatal injury, and there may be a chance the next day to slip into the area the deer was marked to verify and or recover the next day. Not certain on what the ethics of the later are, but recovering one that is dead already I think is a good thing.
 
Drones are to game cameras as smokeless or straight wall cartridges are to black powder rifles. Sooner or later we will move to use them for scouting and recovery efforts.
 
These will be used to find the bucks that hunters want to shoot ahead of time and property lines won't matter. They may even be used to drive deer in some instances. How are they going to stop them from doing it? A little black tape over the lights and your good. One of the worst poachers in our county has one. It's not like they have to worry about the punishments in our state anymore. Especially if they can afford a thermal drone.
 
so, how long before the use of "pods" on the shafts are legal again (Fred Bear recommended them), and arrows that stay in the deer with a GPS beacon in the shaft... a hit in the body anywhere with a pod will kill an animal. :(
 
Wooden Arrow said:
so, how long before the use of "pods" on the shafts are legal again (Fred Bear recommended them), and arrows that stay in the deer with a GPS beacon in the shaft... a hit in the body anywhere with a pod will kill an animal. :(
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I think they have fallen out of favor- only legal
In Mississippi now i believe (and shouldn't be legal anywhere). Poison pods for deer are a terrible look for hunters
 
TNGunsmoke said:
I know there are folks offering this as a service now, and drones are illegal to use in attempting to kill a deer. If I understand it right, if the drone finds the deer and it is not dead, the hunter cannot then slip in and finish the deer off during the over night period, but can recover a deer found deceased this way. I think they have to leave it alone if it is decided to not be a fatal injury, and there may be a chance the next day to slip into the area the deer was marked to verify and or recover the next day. Not certain on what the ethics of the later are, but recovering one that is dead already I think is a good thing.
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The drone deer recovery dont bother me. It will probably spare a few deer of more painful death . Cheaters gonna cheat but i dont think it is a big threat to deer hunting. And if the deer can snuck up on and finished (most likely with a bow) it was probably in pretty bad shape anyway and finishing it off was a blessing
 
Wooden Arrow said:
so, how long before the use of "pods" on the shafts are legal again (Fred Bear recommended them), and arrows that stay in the deer with a GPS beacon in the shaft... a hit in the body anywhere with a pod will kill an animal. :(
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Still the comcept of using poison in a hunting situation is very odd to me
 
deerhunter10 said:
I saw someone on Facebook advertising doing a deer survey with a drone.
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I would be very interested in how they are doing this. Back when deer censuses using FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) were all the rage, we tested some of the collected data and found it severely lacking. Will the drone censuses be using Infra-Red? What time of year are they doing these censuses?
 
BSK said:
I would be very interested in how they are doing this. Back when deer censuses using FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) were all the rage, we tested some of the collected data and found it severely lacking. Will the drone censuses be using Infra-Red? What time of year are they doing these censuses?
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Good question. It is my understanding thermal drones don't work in areas with thick canopies. They work well when the leaves have dropped.
 
BSK said:
I would be very interested in how they are doing this. Back when deer censuses using FLIR (Forward Looking Infra-Red) were all the rage, we tested some of the collected data and found it severely lacking. Will the drone censuses be using Infra-Red? What time of year are they doing these censuses?
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Unsure just saw a post didn't go in depth with it. He was a recovery guy so not sure he even knew how to conduct any kind of survey or what to do with any of the data he collected.
He was advertising it towards the end of the season. I just took it as a month grab.
 
FLTENNHUNTER1 said:
Good question. It is my understanding thermal drones don't work in areas with thick canopies. They work well when the leaves have dropped.
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Except in evergreens, like pines or cedars. In addition, IF they are using IR, buck's antlers won't show once velvet has shed (they have no blood supply, hence aren't warm enough for IR to pick up).
 
BSK said:
Except in evergreens, like pines or cedars. In addition, IF they are using IR, buck's antlers won't show once velvet has shed (they have no blood supply, hence aren't warm enough for IR to pick up).
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I listen to a podcast the other day that hinted at that. They can tell you generally if it's a buck but can't tell anything about it. They also can tell the difference between a turkey and a Buzzard is what they said.
 
I think it depends on the environmental conditions. Most of the time you can't tell anything about the racks after velvet but i have seen their racks before after velvet using those. They don't glow like the body but you can faintly see them at times. You can sometimes tell bucks from does just by looking at their bodies. You can tell possums, skunks, and coons very easily from one another. You can just use you're other technology that you have on you if want to see their racks clearly and get a crystal clear picture of whatever it is you are looking at after you know the location of the glowing animal. That's how my rifle scope is.
 
I'm certainly not trying to dissuade anyone from paying for such a drone census, or providing such a service as a business, but one word of caution. Unless the aerial census is run several times over several weeks' time, the numbers generated aren't going to tell much of the story. Deer can move around a lot, especially over the fall months, when you have to figure in buck movements during the rut. Even if an aerial census could be run that was absolutely perfect, accounting for every deer on the property, that census is still a moment in time - a snapshot of who is there at that moment. That WILL change day to day and month to month. And some properties see significant movement of bucks across the seasons. My property is a prime example. An accurate census run in August might find just 5-10 bucks using the property. However, a census run in November might show 20-40 bucks using the property.
 

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