Anybody heard of using drones for scouting?

Interesting you should say that. I just bought one this past week - DJI Phantom 4. That is one bad drone and easy to use. Down here, any electronic device is illegal to use as an aid in hunting. But...for feral hogs during the off-season I'll be using it to try and locate them without having to drive all over the property. I'll post up some pics in my land thread after this weekend.
 
Unfortunately I don't have 3C's money. So, no. But I would if I had his jack. If I had his, I'd burn mine. LOL
 
Unfortunately I don't have 3C's money. So, no. But I would if I had his jack. If I had his, I'd burn mine. LOL

Tommy...I bought it with the money I'm saving by buying bare root seedlings from you instead of 7 gal trees from the nursery! What I should have done was used the money to buy that cultipacker from you. Been thinking about that thing since I saw it. But...it won't fly as high.:D
 
I think your going to find that eventually they will be banned for most things unless your licensed to operate one. In my line of work which is Engineering/Land Surveying; they are quickly being governed, and now you need to have a license to operate one beginning the first of September.
 
Tommy...I bought it with the money I'm saving by buying bare root seedlings from you instead of 7 gal trees from the nursery! What I should have done was used the money to buy that cultipacker from you. Been thinking about that thing since I saw it. But...it won't fly as high.:D

I hear ya buddy.
 
I have no problem as long as they stop on your side of the fence but 1 foot over my place and it turns into drone season! Cool toy but regulation is ramping up as has been mentioned...
 
That's going to be a big problem I see with these. Your neighbor can stand on the property line and check out your whole place at 50 ft up and nothing you can do about it. It's all free air space.
 
That's going to be a big problem I see with these. Your neighbor can stand on the property line and check out your whole place at 50 ft up and nothing you can do about it. It's all free air space.

Not necessarily. I had a Radio controlloed plane airport as a neighbor. Another neighbor was an attorney. She didn't like them flying over her farm. She successfully sued them and was granted an injunction stopping them from flying over her. They ended up having to shut down and move, because they only had an acre, surrounded by her.
 
The ones I have been around are fairly noisy - they are NOT going to sneak up on a deer. Now weather the deer perceive it as a threat or not I have no idea. I can see using them to be able to see if deer are using a plot, but I am not sure they will have the resolution to be able to pick out a particular buck. I'm sure with enough $ anything is possible. The ones I have seen have had limited range as well. The rules/regulations with them will change and need to be addressed as far as what is legal and what isn't. I prefer boots on the ground for scouting because I firmly believe it's the details that you need and I am not sure a drone is going to give that to you - at least no more than say a trail cam in a food plot. True "scouting" takes more info than that as I see it.
 
My friend flies his ultralight airplane over my land when he is in the area. Nice to get an idea of what the deer are doing on the other side of the property line. The air space above a persons land is not his property.
 
I don't like them myself. One has to go to court ($$$$$) to get one's neighbor to stop flying over their land? The burden is then put on the one who is wronged. I resist the impulse but find myself echoing Okie's sentiments: it's going to take on fire. Not because they're "my" animals, but because it's a noisy nuisance.
 
All I have to say is fly it over our place at your own risk...I will throw the remains over the fence...

Agreed. I ain't flying my drone over my neighbors property...period. I wouldn't like someone flying a drone over my cabin and I know for sure he wouldn't like it. Can't imagine anyone that doesn't have a lot of room to fly these wanting one. As far as registering them, I registered mine yesterday with the FAA. You register as a recreational user or commercial use such as real estate, surveying, etc. They are quite amazing. The range is now up to 3 miles with an unobstructed view. It's about a mile to the end of my property on the south end and I've flown it to that location with ease. Pretty much bomb proof. Use an iPad to see what drone sees and pics are 12+ pixel. Hit home button and it flys back avoiding obstacles and auto lands where it took off.

As for uses for a landowner - Bout the only thing I see so far is taking great aerial photos and video. Got areas on the south end of our property that is in wetlands that we've never set foot on. Will be interesting to observe this area from birds eye view. I flew at about 200 ft this past weekend as it was my first time. Drone has built in obstacle avoidance but didn't want to test it by flying below tree top level.

Here's a pretty cool pic from the lower lower plot looking back up toward the cabin. I was at the cabin which is about 4,000 ft from this location, maybe a little more. One of the beaver ponds to the right and cabin in in the small opening at top left of pic.
DJI_0008.jpg
 
Laws passed in WV two years ago restricting their use for hunting. Can't be done during season. Doubt my deer would pay much attention to one seeing as how they have F16 s traveling Mach 2 barely over my treetops on training missions. Watching one make a barrel roll to keep from hitting my hill side while another is right on its tail makes a drone pretty boring stuff but livens up my spreading seed on the ridgetop.
 
Air space isn't owned but I do have a privacy issue. Every one of the drones has a camera on it and flying over my land is an invasion of my privacy. I wouldn't take too kindly to it. I fall into the Okie group.

With that said, my boys have a drone and I love the thing. Unfortunately, it's only calm enough in Kansas to fly about 10minutes a month.
They are being used in the cattle industry to check fence and keep tabs on the herd. Send it out on a programmed route and watch from your cell phone or computer. Know if a watergap is out, tree fell on fence, head count, birthing issues, find dead loss, etc... All without driving through the gate. Very well could be used to see deer, scrapes, aerial view of trails, find a dead or wounded animal. Could be very useful.

I suspect they will be fought against for a while (for deer hunting/scouting purposes). But like compound bows, electronic calls, bait piles, trail cams, and now crossbows were all once "cheating", now are all widely accepted hunting practices.

Here is a short video of our place with my kids' Walmart cheapo toy. All I did was fly it straight up and spin it. If I had flown it around I could have gotten some really good video of our habitat.
 
I wonder if they could now, or in the near future, be used to push deer in a general direction? Say, off my neighbors food plot on to my side of the fence? Could they be used by someone from roadside or neighboring areas as a way to interrupt hunters?
 
I wonder if they could now, or in the near future, be used to push deer in a general direction? Say, off my neighbors food plot on to my side of the fence? Could they be used by someone from roadside or neighboring areas as a way to interrupt hunters?

Probably yes on all those. If you watch the cattle video's you can see the cattle look up at the drone when it flies over. They don't go unnoticed!
 
Heck, lets just mount a turret on it and hunt from our house :rolleyes:

Like I said, irregardless of the law if someone not serving in an official capacity flies over our place with an unmanned drone low enough to observe myself or my family I consider that an invasion and I will take evasive action...

Tax assessor flew one over "Home 10" this past spring because we have a locked gate and then all of a sudden I get a big tax increase letter for the Garage and Big deck on our house...The garage is a small storage building of 6ft x 10 ft and our big deck is 6ft x 8ft. I called them up and asked what in the world were they assessing to jump our taxes up over $200 and she told me and told me how they determined what we had. I told her a big deck is something you can have a party on and not something 3 people can'rt stand on at the same time and that our "Garage" might hold a lawnmower!
 
We have 1200 acres and use a DJI Phantom 3 to check cows when the weather is bad or it's muddy and we're expecting cows to calf, etc. Has already saved us once when we spotted a cow having problems calving and was on the back side of the place. The Phantom 3 is loud and I can't see a deer staying in one place for very long with that thing buzzing overhead. By law, you can only fly up to 400' in altitude but you can still hear it. Hogs, on the other hand, are a different story. I have used it to locate them and scout where they are staying on our property. They usually scatter when you get down close and it's fun chasing them. We fly ours with a ipad and even with the bigger screen it's still hard to see sometimes especially when the sun if bright. It's very hard to pick out something as small as a hog or deer too. They almost have to be moving for you to see them. The cameras on these drones are so wide angle that it makes everything appear to be out a lot further than it really is and there is no zoom feature. So to see something up close you have to get really close to it. By that time, you've ran it off.


Matt
 
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