Definitely!

I own Sky Hunter TX a thermal drone wildlife survey company here in the Texas Hill Country. We get asked all the time to do this. I won’t risk my permits and licenses to do a 650 dollar drone deer recovery. However I do think it’s stupid it’s illegal in Texas. It is legal for us to use the drone to aid in hog hunting and coyotes. I have some incredible footage of us using the drone last night to push a coyote in to a field. I get these calls for high fence ranches that predator control is a must.

I did see a comment above that said game wardens are not enforcing the law in regards to using the drone to find shot animals. This 100% false. The Williamson county game warden busted a guy and charged him with 99 counts, confiscated all of his equipment.

That’s my 2 cents.

[img]http://www.skyhuntertx.com [/img]

Yes - it's stupid to waste game if technology can help!

I can see drones flying around and if checked by the GW, everyone just making the excuse that they’re just looking for a wounded deer.

I'm still trying to find an affordable drone to spread corn in areas that I don't want to walk into or are very hard to access.

'Gotta agree - human nature of the "good ol' boys." If licensed and monitored closely, I can see them being a real asset, but any dweeb with a drone hiring out, I can see the hunter getting too excited and pushing the guy to fly over neighbors' property without so much as a phone call. Full disclosure: I had a bad experience with a neighbor hiring a drone to look over our property in Grapetown. (He wanted to buy it in the worst way.) He knew my mother had died and that my brother had just died from AML. I was there meeting with financial guys. They left and I hear a buzzing. It's pretty dang infuriating to walk out and see one of those piss-ant things hovering 30' over your house. I couldn't get the rifle loaded quick enough. It high-tailed it back the direction of his house. We sold to a nice couple out of Austin. The pompous car dealer neighbor didn't get so much as a sniff of the place.

Treat it just like a tracking dog. Only allowed on the property you have permission to. If at some point the wounded deer ran onto someone else's property, landowner permission would be needed to fly it above their property. Otherwise, it should be considered trespassing, and the operator/hunter would be held liable. Based on videos I have seen, with the technology and camera developments, you could hover over the property you have permission to and possibly see the deer from a long way off from a high hover point. The camera quality and zoom capabilities on some of them is outrageous.




I am on board with these rules, save for maybe the first one. Tracking dogs are not regulated to people with permits. I don't know what all is needed for the permit mentioned but I could get behind a simple registration system where the state has the operator's info and drone info, for the people that would perform this service (and maybe that's all that permit requires). The second rule would also be dicey, as the hunter can obviously see and hear the direction of the drone. Maybe make it to where the process has to be recorded, and the recording sent to green jeans within so many hours after the fact, along with the operators aforementioned registration info and location of the hunt. Point being, I think there is a way to do it that makes sense and contributes towards ethical recovery of a wounded animal.

The argument that it could open doors for bad actors is a moot point. Its currently illegal to use drones for many things and people still do it. Thats like saying we should enforce people to fill out tag data and harvest logs, so the tags aren't used again...oh wait. Laws only work for people that follow them. They don't magically turn a bad person into a good person.

You beat me to it, on every point.

Call your neighboring land owner and ask for clearance to fly over his place, don't just do it because you are in the air.

It breaks my heart for wounded game animals thar ultimately die, that were never recovered. I would rather myself or someone else have a clean miss with an arrow or a bullet.

The inability to embrace available, good technology just baffles me. "The way we've always done it." Is never the right answer.

I like a lot of this.

Individuals should be able to do it on their own. A stipulation for only those that use electronic license/tagging. This would be necessary for notification if you needed to deploy the drone. A simple modification to the app could allow for a $5.00 additional license fee. If and when and if you sent the drone on a hunt you use the app to make notification. I know with a pretty high degree of certainty that the game wardens can monitor notifications in real time and could drop in.

That’s a good idea. Revenue for the state with a nominal fee and a simple check box for drone deployed. Maybe a couple of boxes where drone make/model/SN and date/location have to be input. Hit submit. Completely automated and simple for everyone.

I don't mind the GW dropping by, anytime. During bow season he showed up an hour or two after submission of harvest. That 1% chance that the GW would show up would keep it honest, and if during patrol or surveillance if a drone was seen and not submitted, boom.

If only TPW listened to good, common sense ideas.

They did in 2012 for the use of suppressors on Game Animals.

A friend found a lost hunter on his ranch. He put the guy in a tree stand to bowhunt. He was told not to leave the stand until picked up. He got bored and climbed down, walked around and got lost. 900 acre ranch. The drone was deployed and he was found pretty quickly.

Lost on 900 acres? I don’t believe I’d tell that.

Mesquite flats and overcast?

GPS is a great thing. I also carry a compass. The compass does not have batteries to die.

The first time I went to my buddy's 20 section ranch, in Sanderson, I figured out which way to go if I had to punt. The entire ranch is south of US 90. So, if I had to punt I knew to go north.

This might have already been covered, but is it illegal to use drones to locate non-game animals like pigs and coyotes?

Reminds me of this story.

https://people.com/country/kane-bro...-police-after-getting-lost-own-property/

Only thing worse than his sense of direction is his music.

I understand how the game warden wouldn't want to be personally notified every time someone wants to use a drone for deer recovery. One way to circumvent this is make use of the Texas Hunt and Fish App that is already in use for harvest reporting, and add a function for drone use reporting. If TPWD wanted to make sure your use was legit they could make you use one of your tags. So if the caught you using a drone, they could see if you reported on the App, and you already had your tag filled out. Then all would be well. Forcing you to use a tag would help with fraudulent app use because no one wants to waste a tag, and if you are concerned enough to make use of the drone, the deer was probably worthy of one of your tags in the first place. This may help with someone taking an unethical 450 yard shot at deer, (with their skill level that maxed out at 100 yards) thinking they can just blast away, and fire up their drone and get back to the big city ASAP. If they can't find it, its no sweat off their brow because they have plenty of tags left and they're coming back next weekend.

Yeah just like speed limit laws keep you from speeding and gun laws keep people from getting killed. Set rules or laws and punish people that break them. Jeez it ain't that hard and is a valuable tool for those that follow the laws.

Unfortunately the only drones that are able to do that at the moment are $20k+ and designed for agricultural applications. You'll also need a pretty serious FAA license in order to drop anything from a drone.

No sir! That is completely legal. We help landowners all the time control their pig and predator problems using our drones.

Nice thread!

I have seen the quality thermal drone stuff, and the imagery really is amazing. I'm going to a ranch in SE Oklahoma this week to participate in a drone deer survey. Overseeing the scientific side, not the drone.

But anyway, I also have ran tracking dogs for 20 years and been on a plethora of tracks with hundreds of recoveries. There are a jillion tracking dogs in Texas, and plenty that are good and experienced with quality handlers. So it's not like if TPWD doesn't allow drones for wounded deer recovery that all the deer are going to waste. Call a dog. After lengthy discussions with the drone group in Oklahoma that conduct wounded deer searches I've arrived at the following points.

1. In Texas, dispatch of a mortally wounded animal is legal. Deer that are not mortally wounded don't hold a bay from the dog, so we quit. I can't imagine how far a runner (i.e. broke leg deer) might go if pursued only by the drone and hunter on foot. Or how can the drone "test" the condition of that deer? The poor Oklahoma guys can't dispatch and the dog has to leave, or the drone has to land, before the hunter then tries to sneak in for the coup-de-grace.
2. In order to reduce the chances of a runner, I wait 12 hours after the shot if the hit location is unknown or back. This gives the deer time to either expire or feel so bad that its not up for an escape attempt. The problem this creates for the drone, is that the body of a dead deer looses heat, especially up here in the Panhandle. The drone guys adapt by trying to get out to the site as quickly as possible, which means they may find a deer that is not dead...yet.
3. Distance the deer traveled. I have little doubt that if a deer dies within a 1/4 mile and the drone is there within 10 hours that it will find that dead deer. No dog needed. But if the hunter went and tracked and bumped the deer and/or altered its direction of travel, which is usually the case, then that deer can go much farther. I collected data from 11 years of our tracking (325 tracks). On average, we recover 93% of deer hit "back" at an average distance of 671 yards and range of 135 yards to 2.8 miles. For broken legs, we recover (dispatch) 84%, including those that escaped onto neighboring property (yes, call the dog back) and the average distance to dispatch is 1.5 miles with range of 700 yards to 6.3 miles.
4. I charge (in the TX Panhandle) $250 to track plus $100 if recovered and I'll add mileage if over a 2 hr drive.
5. The dog follows the actual path the deer took. Not search an area like a grid. So while deer will typically pick a direction (after about 200 yards) and stick with it, there is a sizeable portion that loop back or make unexpected directional changes.
6. In the Panhandle low humidity (<25% RH) is a major limiting factor for the dog. A drone does not suffer from that.

All that said, I'm not against drones being legal for recovery in Texas. It's stupid to make laws that only limit the lawful.

TopofTexas, great insight. Really appreciate it.

Seconded, appreciate your insight! Very thoughtful responses to a bunch of the different factors at play.