I am in search of the Helicopter Pilot & Shooter that shot two solar panels on our lease located 10mi SW of Concan, TX.



Any help with this you can provide would be deeply appreciated.

Dang....

First person I would call is Alan Armistead with Wildlife Services in Uvalde. He would more than likely know all the helecopter operators in the area and maybe even when they were in the air. Sorry I don't have a good number for him around here right now.

That is f'd up - I hope y'all find them.

Do those panels move with the sun or are they stationary? Ones I have seen like that sometimes articulate using tubes filled with freon. As one side heats, the freon shifts, thus aligning the panels.

Hope you catch the shooters.

one place you could look is the FAA. I know all private planes must broadcast ("squack" they call it) a beacon code from their airplane unless it is a super duper small plane like a kit built plane. I would assume any helicopter would be doing the same thing, helps the Air traffic controllers just know where things are in the sky at any given moment. They may be able to confirm there was something over the sky in the general area of your ranch when this happened, then it would be a matter of detective work to find out where that came from as they might have a flight path as well...

Not sure if that will help, but couldn't hurt either.

If you know the date range check for LOAs in that area. My guess is it was with shotgun. Only a few helicopter pilots in that area.

Good luck!!!

With a metal detector he should be able to easily find the rounds used. Those solar panels can take a hail storm up to a certain size. Bird shot or larger buckshot lofted and raining down would not cause that kind of damage.

I worked at a summer camp in college that had solar panels like that. Some idiot kid threw a rock at one, very hard. It cracked the panel but did not go through the whole thing.

Rifle fire looks like the culprit here. A buddy with a metal detector could find bullet fragments in short order.

Wow

Any pigs in the area? Notice any dead ones Layin? May have been a pig hunt from heli?

Poaching & property damage...

Thanks for the feedback.

These panels are fixed and do not move to follow the sun.

We do have a lot of wild hogs in the area and I suspect that the shots fired came from one of those operations wanting a large enough target to shoot at and be able to see exactly where rounds were impacting.

I am not the ranch owner, I am only the hunting lease manager. My lease members have no access to a private helicopter (other than a charter svs.) AND no motive to destroy the solar pnl for one of our three very important wildlife watering stations. However, I am affraid there is a good chance that my hunters will get the blame for this if I cannot produce the shooter.

That sucks for sure! Our camp water is supplied by a set up like that. We would be without water if something like that happened at our place. Hope you catch em.

In order to legally fly a deer survey or to kill hogs, coyotes or other predators they would need an LOA(Land Owner Agreement) filed and on record. A lot of helicopter pilots use a shotgun to kill hogs and other predators when flying. There are only a few in that area close to you. If you know the time frame when it happened you can narrow your search down.

Hope you find out who did that

Yup

If any self respecting pilot saw his shooters do that he should have set the chopper down and beat their a$$

I bet they did it because the solar panels were blinding them from the glare.

We used to have some aholes out in west Texas that would fly their heli around and chase the deer off. I saw them predator hunting over on the neighbors ranch and they didn't have permission to be doing that, neighbor wasn't happy.

I would check youtube also. People are dumb, hope you get them.

That just irritates me to no end. Hope you get them.

Only half true about the code. If they were flying inside of a controlled area, like a big city, then yeah they would have an identification code an be under radar observation.

In a rural area, there would most likely not be any code or communication out of the helo, nor would it be required. A lot of times those type of helos will even operate off a trailer as well.

More than likely they'll be back. Have the neighbors and anyone else out there keep an eye out. You need the tail number off the heli. It should be visible and starts with an "N". That's the number the FAA will need to track down the owner/operator.

Sucks that happened. Hope you're able to get it made right.