
Hunting is both a way of providing sustenance to your family as well as a sport. That is to say, it is a way of gathering food by your own hands from the wilderness as well as a form of outdoor recreation to help keep people grounded in nature.
Hunting regulations try to find a balance between man and nature, seeking to allow the safe and ethical harvest of game while also not causing over-hunting of a game population that could lead to its extinction. These laws and regulations may go too far in some people’s eyes by restricting the freedom to gather food to such an extent it becomes nigh impossible, while others don’t think certain regulations go far enough to protect our animal populations.
I’m not here to debate the overall ethics of hunting, and to be clear I am a hunter myself. Albeit an absolutely terrible one. The thought of waking up early to go sit in a duck blind while it’s pouring rain and 40 degrees sounds like some sort of torture you’d find in SERE school, pretty much every deer I’ve harvested in my life has been a fat and lazy buck raised on a diet of rice and almonds found wandering around my farm, and I find far more enjoyment in yelling at the hundred of turkeys on my farm than I do spending an hour plucking them once I’ve shot one.
No, I’m here to talk about the ethics of technology use in hunting, specifically, drones.
Technology and hunting have had a long history of butting heads. For instance, the punt gun was a highly used firearm in the mid 1800’s that could bring down many birds with one shot, leading to massive depletion of waterfowl populations and it’s banning for usage in hunting in many states across America by the 1860’s. In Alaska it is illegal to use radio communication during your hunt, as well as hunt the same day you fly in to avoid spotting animals from the air. Many states ban the use of night vision, laser sights, and Forward Looking Infrared Devices, otherwise known as Thermal Imaging Cameras, during hunts. These devices remove many of the challenges of hunting, which also removes much of the sport. Against wireless communication, thermal imagers, and aircraft, the wild animal populations have little protection.

On my DJI Matrice 30T, I have a suite of tools at my disposal that would violate almost every one of those regulations I just listed during a hunt. I can have a personal wirelessly controlled aircraft up and flying in seconds, with a 4k resolution wide view camera, a 200x digital zoom camera that can lock onto and autonomously track subjects, a laser rangefinder good up to around 2500 feet horizontal distance that not only will tell me just how far my target is from the drone but will also give me it’s altitude in Above Sea Level as well as it’s exact GPS location, and of course a powerful thermal imaging camera that essentially doubles as night vision while making any speck of body heat glow from a significant distance away.
The fact I'm able to have this power in the palms of my hands at all is nuts.
Let’s do an exercise. Can you spot the animals in this overgrown weed patch? I guarantee you there’s at least one in here.

Now let’s switch on the thermal. It's on White-Hot setting. See em now?

Let’s zoom in on that heat signature in the top.

Well would you look at that, it’s a wild pig. Seen as either a pest in some states or a legitimate game animal in others. And right next door to it, just a short distance down and to the right on the infrared photo is a coyote.

I never would have spotted either animal from the ground due to the dense weed cover and curvature of the land, but with a drone I stumbled across them completely by chance during a random recreational flight.
With my M30T I am not only able to spot these animals incredibly easy from a long distance away completely negating their cover, camouflage, and concealment, I can give a range from the drone position to the animal along with the GPS coordinates. I could easily guide a hunter or myself in, have my rifle ranged immediately, and know the exact position of where to shoot without once ever having actual human eyes on the animal.
As a thought exercise, I'm planning to do a video in the future showing how easy this is. Maybe I'll even stream it. Start the timer from the moment the drone is in the air and hit stop as soon as I spot an animal that you can hunt. Depending on where I decide to film this, my guess is I can find a game animal and have it's coordinates in under five minutes. And that's me being generous.
I know it will take far less time than that because I often times just enjoy flying my drones over my orchards, especially at night, just to see what sort of beasties are wandering around. The amount of times I've lifted off, done a 360 degree scan, and spotted moving heat signatures half a mile away within about 30 seconds is innumerable. It's especially easier when using the thermal during the winter months, but I've still found plenty of animals in summer. Having that eye in the sky is just so incredibly powerful of a tool to have. So much so that I honestly need to call it what it is: Unfair to the animals.
So if you're carrying a rifle or bow and have a license and tag during season, leave your drone at home. I hear the fines are pretty stiff and have no desire to find out myself. Just looking over the Airborne Hunting Act of 1971 is enough for me.
Drones provide far too easy of a way to spot game and guide hunters into them, and as far as I know they’re illegal in most states for hunting because of it. With this, I have to say I actually agree with the government. A sentence that nearly makes me vomit to speak aloud.
I decided to talk about this topic due to how many people who, while seeing me demonstrate the powerful capabilities of my drones, have told me they needed one of these for their annual mountain hunting trips and about how easy it would make things. Several of these people have also balked when I ask how they feel about boat mounted side scan sonar and powerful fish finders used in ice fishing that allow you to see every movement under you directly on your phone screen. They’ve told me that it removes so much of the sport of fishing, and turns it into “a video game.”
To their credit, most of these fellow hunters see my point of view when I compare the two. And I’m not here to chastise anyone who uses this powerful equipment in fishing, Lord knows I could use it. I’m a far worse fisherman than I am a hunter, and if the regulations allow it by all means use the tools at your disposal. But as it pertains to drone usage in hunting, I firmly agree with it’s ban.
There is a separate use for drones in hunting operations that I do think drones shouldn't just be allowed in, but celebrated and encouraged. And that is assisting with the recovery of a game animal once it has been taken. That is, once the animal has been shot. No ethical hunter wants their quarry to escape after pulling the trigger especially in thick vegetation or dense mountain forests. The feeling of taking a life of another living creature only to not be able to recover it and thus leaving it’s body to rot away is an awful, soul crushing guilt that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I myself shot a deer when I was a teenager and it ran off into several hundred acres of scrub brush. We searched for it for two days, and only found it’s mummified body months later during a random adventure through a nearby overgrown creek during the winter time. I think about that awful experience every time I set out on a hunt, and strive to never let that happen again.

Some states allow the use of drones for recovery, while others ban them from even being flown during hunting seasons in certain areas. The company Drone Deer Recovery, based in Ohio, operates solely to help recover game animals post hunt. In California, drones may be used for recovery as long as you have a special use permit. To be honest, until doing the research for this I hadn’t realized California had relaxed those regulations. It used to be an outright ban until semi recently I believe. So, good job California!
Excuse me while I go puke again.
While special use permits are definitive step in the right direction, these come with increased fees and knowing you need to have one. Which I as an avid outdoorsman and professional Drone Pilot didn’t know existed until writing this. What I would instead like to see, and this could work alongside the special use permits, is the formation of a standardized certification process for Drone Pilots to assist with recoveries. At the state level, it could be administered through the State Fish and Game agency. If we wanted to go so far as to have someone be federally certified, it could be an endorsement on the Pilot’s Part 107 license issued by Federal Fish and Game that could be filed with the FAA. Similar to having endorsements on a Driver’s License for motorcycles and commercial trailer types.
Were I in charge of creating this program, it would look something like this. Let’s call this position that we would be filling as a “Game Recovery Specialist.” You would need to have both a current and valid Part 107 Pilot’s license as well as have passed a Hunter’s Safety course if not having a current and valid Hunting License. You would apply with these credentials and pass a background check, then take either an online or in person exam testing your knowledge of airspace regulations, Drone usage, and ethical hunting scenarios. Finally you would receive your license or endorsement, that upon signing or receiving you would agree to not engage in any hunting operations while enacting your duties as a licensed Game Recovery specialist. Meaning you would not carry any weapons capable of taking game at a distance while in the possession of an Unmanned Aerial System during hunting season and assisting a hunter in the recovery of their game. All pertinent licenses will be in the possession of the Game Recovery Specialist and handed over for inspection to any Game Warden that requests them.
During the recovery, every portion of the operation would be documented. From takeoff to landing, the camera on the drone should be recording. This way if there are any questions as to the legitimacy of the hunt and recovery, there will be footage available to prove everything about the operation is above board. Further, if I was acting as a Game Recovery Specialist I would honestly prefer to have a Game Warden with me to certify the recovery directly after the hunt. Budget and personnel restraints could hinder this request, but those are fine tooth details that could be ironed out as we go. Maybe if I'm lucky one of these days I'll get a chance to chat with the guys at Drone Deer Recovery and see exactly how they handle all of this.
As Drones become more commonplace in all facets of our lives, rules and regulations will need to be crafted and updated to properly account for them. There are plenty of regulations surrounding drones I agree with, and others I vehemently don’t. I’m looking at you BVLOS rules. Finding a good middle ground between draconian rules and total anarchy is a 2 way street, and I feel as though complaining without solutions is counter productive.
These are all just ideas that can easily be tweaked and finessed, but I think something like these scenarios I just laid out would strike a great balance between ethical hunting and adhering to the rules and regulations that protect our wildlife from over hunting and abuse. As always, I am happy to be told how I’m wrong or why these ideas wouldn’t work. I only wish to have a conversation on the topic in a calm and rational manner, and maybe give you something to think about whether you’re in the field chasing the buck of a lifetime, in your patrol vehicle chasing a poacher armed with a drone, or behind your desk screaming at the screen as I try to assign you more work at your already overworked agency.
Thanks for reading. Happy Hunting.

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