Anybody heard of using drones for scouting?

I have a DJI phantom 3. I bought for work but took it to property a couple months ago to scout.

It is cool! Was able to explore a big swamp that could not be explored otherwise. Will do again this winter when leaves are off.

Some asked about it spooking wildlife. I've experimented around a little, most animals don't pay it any attention until it's 20' or less above them. Using them to drive deer in a direction, as someone asked, could probably be done in open prairie, in wooded habitat it would be impossible.

I'll admit, I did fly around over neighbors place a little. It's not any different really than looking at google earth images of your neighbors land which we've all done. If you are using it to check out someone's house or camp... Obviously that's a problem.

Shooting a drone out of sky would be really hard if not near impossible and I'm pretty sure it would be illegal in most places. If my neighbor shot mine down i would be asking him to buy me a replacement.

Unless you feel like a drone is spying on you for some reason, you shouldn't shoot one down. Most likely just someone flying it around for fun.
 
A friend tried to use one last Nov to see if he could see any deer. We are almost all woods and despite the leaves being down
I told him he was wasting his time. Well he crashed it and it took a couple of hours to find it. The damage to one rotor housing was significant
so he learned his lesson and will not be flying over the tree tops again.
 
I have a DJI phantom 3. I bought for work but took it to property a couple months ago to scout.

It is cool! Was able to explore a big swamp that could not be explored otherwise. Will do again this winter when leaves are off.

Some asked about it spooking wildlife. I've experimented around a little, most animals don't pay it any attention until it's 20' or less above them. Using them to drive deer in a direction, as someone asked, could probably be done in open prairie, in wooded habitat it would be impossible.

I'll admit, I did fly around over neighbors place a little. It's not any different really than looking at google earth images of your neighbors land which we've all done. If you are using it to check out someone's house or camp... Obviously that's a problem.

Shooting a drone out of sky would be really hard if not near impossible and I'm pretty sure it would be illegal in most places. If my neighbor shot mine down i would be asking him to buy me a replacement.

Unless you feel like a drone is spying on you for some reason, you shouldn't shoot one down. Most likely just someone flying it around for fun.
I'm pretty handy with a shotgun and .22 rifle. A drone stops for a second it's not gonna be hard to hit...

A drone flown over your plots is gonna clear the plot. I am gonna be pissed if that ever happens...your fun isn't my fun...

Btw - why would you fly over your neighbors ground?
 
As a pilot of a real plane, I would side with the drone owner on this one, unless they were flying near a house or camp and being really annoying, or if they were purposely clearing a plot, which, in that case, it would be hard for me not to blast one also.

I have flown low in a real plane over our hunting property which was probably way more annoying and scary to the local residents...your property lines do not extend into the air unfortunately.
 
I am just going to leave this here...

I can see no GOOD reason for a person to purposely fly a drone over another person's property in an unofficial capacity unless they are up to no good. Nobody can give me any good reason why some yokel can fly his drone over my place for fun while videoing everything I own. A plane can't stop an hover over something and typically flies at a height that still allows privacy. I know a helicopter can but not a plane.

I stand by everything I have said.

If I had a drone it wouldn't fly past my property line and it wouldn't video toward the neighbors...

I will post no more on this thread...
 
I'm pretty handy with a shotgun and .22 rifle. A drone stops for a second it's not gonna be hard to hit...

A drone flown over your plots is gonna clear the plot. I am gonna be pissed if that ever happens...your fun isn't my fun...

Btw - why would you fly over your neighbors ground?


Why? Well in the case of flying it around where I live, I live on 6 acres. The thing flys a mile! I not only fly it over neighbors property, I fly it over hundreds of neighbors' properties! So if people are gonna be jerks and shoot it out of sky (which I don't care how good you think you are with a .22, it will be very hard to do) they would be coughing up $500 for me a new one.
In the the other case of flying it over a neighbors hunting property, I would say it's not any different than google earth. I can see lay of his land, where deer would be likely to cross, if he has food nearby that deer from my side might travel to to feed. I can see swamps, creeks, roads, etc. If someone is flying over your wife laying by the pool, shoot it, if they are attempting to herd deer, shoot it. If they are being dangerous, shoot it. But just because it's over your property doesn't give you the right. I know high tech stuff is scary sometimes but we don't need to be all paranoid about everything!
 
if you built a rocket that took out the google earth satilite, I'm fairly confident you'd spend rest of life in jail.

Shooting a drone probably won't get you jail time but I'm sure you would be paying however much it costs to replace (which can be thousands of dollars) and paying a fine.
 
Your property/boundary lines most certainly do extend into the air, just not to infinity like our forefathers originally determined. This elevation/height can vary by location. For example; downtown Manhattan (high rise skyscraper) compared to rural America (grain silo).

Here is a good read on the subject. http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/how-much-sky-you-own-180959133/
Regardless of how high they go - property owners have no control over who flies over in a drone, or a plane. Someone could hover in a helicopter at the same height as a drone and there is nothing anyone could do about it. I've actually been in the woods (not hunting) and helicopters fly over at tree top level, so close that I could see the face of the pilots. Shoot a helicopter? Going to jail for a long time.

The thing that does worry me is the potential for a drone/airplane collision, it will happen eventually.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk
 
Your property/boundary lines most certainly do extend into the air, just not to infinity like our forefathers originally determined. This elevation/height can vary by location. For example; downtown Manhattan (high rise skyscraper) compared to rural America (grain silo).

Here is a good read on the subject. http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/how-much-sky-you-own-180959133/
Excellent read...

"The drones are coming! But before they can start flying low over private property to deliver packages, their owners might have to navigate a legal doctrine established in a quirky case involving chicken farmers and an iconoclastic U.S. Supreme Court justice.


In 1934, Thomas and Tinie Causby bought 2.8 acres next to a small airfield near Greensboro, North Carolina, and started raising hens (to produce eggs) and young chickens (to be sold as fryers). At the time, the airport was, in Thomas’ words, “just a little old landing field,”and his business prospered.


But after World War II erupted, the United States leased the field as a military airbase. Four-engine bombers and other airplanes flew over the Causby property day and night, descending to as low as 83 feet—a mere 67 feet above their home—on the glide-slope to the runway. “They would swoop down so close to the house that it seemed they were taking the roof off,” testified Tinie Causby.

Besides unnerving the Causbys, the flights terrified the chickens. “They would jump off the roost, get excited and jump against the side of the chicken house and the walls and burst themselves open and die,” Thomas Causby said. “I have taken out as high as six or ten in one day.”

In 1943, after liquidating their chicken business, the Causbys hired Greensboro attorney William Comer. Had the airplanes been flown by civilians, the Causbys would have an open-and-shut case of trespass and/or nuisance against a citizen, but since the aircraft were military, the doctrine of sovereign immunity seemed to shield the government from lawsuits. So Comer came up with a brilliant alternative!

According to the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution, “private property [cannot] be taken for public use, without just compensation.” Comer filed suit in the Court of Claims—a court established specifically to hear monetary cases against the government—arguing that the military flights had rendered the Causbys’ property uninhabitable, thereby constituting a taking.

The Court of Claims sided with the Causbys. The government, fearing the ramifications this precedent could have for other military airfields, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In May 1946, after contentious debate, the justices ruled 5-2 in favor of the Causbys.

At the time, the laws regulating air travel were still murky. The ancient legal maxim of cujus est solum ejus usque ad coelum—essentially, whoever owns the land also owns the sky above it—had been superseded by the Air Commerce Act of 1926, which declared the air free. Meanwhile, the Civil Aeronautics Authority, a predecessor of the Federal Aviation Administration, had claimed all airspace above 500 feet—the minimum altitude for daylight flying—as public domain.

William O. Douglas was assigned to write the majority opinion for United States v. Causby. At 47, Douglas was the youngest justice on the court, and he was a prolific if mercurial scholar “who was better known for speed than for meticulousness,” according to author Stuart Banner in Who Owns the Sky? His colleagues expected him to craft a narrow opinion, but for reasons still opaque today, Douglas issued an opinion that revolutionized the regulation of air travel.

Instead of limiting the Causbys’ claim to the taking of their land, Douglas extended it to the air above their property. “We have said that the airspace is a public highway,” he wrote. “Yet it is obvious that if the landowner is to have full enjoyment of the land, he must have exclusive control of the immediate reaches of the enveloping atmosphere. Otherwise, buildings could not be erected, trees could not be planted, and even fences could not be run.”

A New York Times headline crowed, “Chickens Upheld in Plane Decision.” The Causbys ultimately were awarded $1,060 for the decline in the value of their land, plus $375 for the dead poultry. Douglas’ opinion didn’t set any boundaries for how high a landowner’s airspace extended. “We need not determine at this time what those precise limits are,” he wrote.

Eventually, a consensus was reached in disputes between property owners and airports: Each case would be decided on the basis of what circumstances applied where the issue arose. But the exact parameters of Douglas’ “precise limits” were never established. That could be a problem for drone operators in the future. And it’s going to force them to grapple with constitutional law fashioned before the dawn of unmanned flight.
 
I think it is going to be very interesting to see what kind of laws are passed as the drone market continues to grow. I think there will be some growing pains with cases such as mentioned above with drones becoming a nuisance and people shooting them down before certain laws are passed.
 
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