Drones in scouting? Pros and Cons

[flatwater bill]

Exactly...............FWB

 

[IdaRam]

I don't get the argument that longer seasons will kill off all the wildlife. The insanely short hunting seasons in the US are asinine. Using drones? I am guessing the same arguments were made by old timers back when scopes were readily adopted for hunting. I am guessing the same arguments about "technology" and "unfair advantages" were made.

There is a finite and absolute number of game animals anywhere at any given time. The more effective “we” are as hunters, the higher success percentages are, the fewer hunters we can have with tags.

I don’t see where anyone said longer seasons will kill off all the wildlife, but I agree with you @markferrigno , some hunting seasons, especially for mule deer, have been shortened to as little as 5 days. It sucks.
The higher the historic average success rate the fewer the number of total tags issued. The longer the season, the higher the probable success rate. Game departments use season length to “manage” success rate.
Put another way, if the harvest objective is 200 animals, the game dept can issue 300 tags if the success rate is 66% or 600 tags if the success rate is 33%. The higher the success rate the fewer the number of tags issued.

There may have been those same arguments made about technology like rifle scopes, but I don’t remember hearing them. It was a different time back them. For the most part people just bought a license or tag and went hunting. No lottery, no cap on tag numbers, more land access...

 

[markferrigno]

Well, I will say I have a different perspective. I learned to hunt in Europe (late to the game) where the landowner/lease holder owns the game. If the quota is 200 then you hunt until you take 200 or the season ends, it is simple. For example, in Germany Roe Deer Buck season runs from 01 May to 15 Oct. If the quota is 15 then you hunt until 15 are taken, if happens in July then the season is over. Red Deer season runs from 01 August to January.

The "let's give out 300 tags so maybe we can take 200" is dopey, Give out 200 tags and make the season a reasonable length. If under 200 are taken give out some extra the next year. What is accomplished by giving out 300 tags? More revenue? More people get to "hunt" so everyone spends 5 days walking all over each and not seeing anything because there are 300 guys out there pressuring the daylights out of animals. Let private landowners manage their own game, then the animals have value. When the "public" (government) owns the animals they have no value to anyone, including the government.

I am not advocating for drone use for hunting, but it def. would have value tracking wounded game. Again, if the animals have value the incentive is to find them.

 

[IdaRam]

I agree with a lot of what you say Mark. It is frustrating when hunters are stumbling over each other. The biggest difference I see between hunting in places such as Europe and hunting in the western U.S. is public lands. Much of the hunting takes place here on public lands, so the landowner is “us” the taxpayer. This conversation rapidly turns into a deep and complex discussion well outside the topic of Drones, but I’m not sure I would like to see the European style of game management implemented here any time soon.

 

[sheephunterab]

I own a Mavic Pro drone that I use for some professional projects (40mph/65kmh top speed, max range 2.5-4mi/4-7km, 20min flight). I never used it for hunting, but I did some area scouting and shoot some videos of animals while traveling, so I can write my experiences. Also in Croatia, it would be illegal to use for hunting as far as I know.

The first thing that you will notice is the amount of noise that drones produce. They are quite loud. I can hear it even at 100m altitude.
I guess animals can hear it from miles.

The second problem is wide angle lens that is standard on drones. Things become very small when you get to flying altitude (above tree line). Bear in mind that live feed video resolution that you watch on your phone or tablet is much lower than 4K that is written on SD card. And even on a tablet pixel are very small
In my experience, it is hard to spot any animal while flying (relatively low resolution, small targets). The only time that I was able to shoot nice videos of animals was when I spotted them with binoculars and then flew my drone to them.

Even if you manage to spot them, it would be in clearings with a contrast between animal and surrounding color (light brown on light green, dark color on snow, etc.).

There is one more thing you need to check - drone flying regulations in your country. For now, I am allowed to fly above nonurban areas without special permits in my country. I have a feeling that this situation will not last very long. Soon we will need to report every flight. Check it before you buy a drone.

This guy knows his stuff!!!!!! Most animals are quite spooked by the noise and even when using a large viewing screen like a tablet it's hard to see what size anything is if you see it at all.

 

[markferrigno]

I agree with a lot of what you say Mark. It is frustrating when hunters are stumbling over each other. The biggest difference I see between hunting in places such as Europe and hunting in the western U.S. is public lands. Much of the hunting takes place here on public lands, so the landowner is “us” the taxpayer. This conversation rapidly turns into a deep and complex discussion well outside the topic of Drones, but I’m not sure I would like to see the European style of game management implemented here any time soon.

But even the public lands in Europe are leased out the Forestry services, mainly to hunting clubs. Yes, people would balk at this, it does not seem feasible, esp. in the Western US. But I would argue some change is needed. Hunters waiting 20 years to draw some Elk units in Colorado is insane.

Drones were not allowed for hunting use while I was Europe.

 

[1dirthawker]

This is going to be an increasingly volatile subject...
Has anyone else heard of hunters out in the hills hunting or scouting, only to have a drone buzzing around? I have and I think I would be as unhappy as they were.
How about people using them to push game? Onto or off from private land? It’s happening.
Outfitters with high dollar clients paying big bucks for big bulls (elk). Drones are a force multiplier.
Some states are drafting legislation against their use for hunting. Sounds like an enforcement nightmare.

I agree with Idaram,

a volatile subject, and a difficult one to manage and/or enforce. actually, most of the real technological advances i have seen in the last 30 years have generally lowered not improved the hunting experience in opinion.

kind of a drift off drones, but, sat phones. they have a place, but people get dependent on them and lazy with planning because they can call and get bailed out at any time. same with cell phones which get used like radios, to contact and use the info to hunt game. of course the inline muzzle loaders, long range rifles, game cameras that call you ant tell you an animal is at the bait in real time, etc. etc.

i dont believe we should all fall back to spears and atyl atyl, but, hunting is just that, hunting. NOT killing. drones would be very difficult to enforce compliance of not using for hunting.

my 2 cents

 

[siutis]

Not for me. You are taking the Sport and fun our of hunting

 

[Eric Anderson]

trophy hunting, no, culling/meat hunting I am on the fence on.

 

[CTDolan]

Back in the day aerial footage was hard to come by, the best option being USGS aerial images (at about $100 a piece), often used in conjunction with topographical maps. Therefore, some guys would literally rent a plane (and a pilot to fly it) and have a ride over their hunting area so as to better understand its features.

Now, we've Google Earth, for instance, an immense amount of information at the finger tips, and all from the comfort of home. Throw in apps like onX Hunt and such and you're damn well armed. In the last century a drone would've been nice, to get to understand a massive plot of land (especially where I tended to hunt, in the heavily forested regions of northern Minnesota), but today it's much less necessary (and a potential nuisance).

 

[Mr. 16 gauge]

I guess it depends (for me) as to what you mean by 'scouting'......are you trying to locate game so you can immediately go chase after it and kill it? Then no.......I dont like the idea. If your talking about checking out certain areas to maybe eliminate them from scouting on foot (i.e. checking out a remote marsh area to see if there is water in it, as opposed to spending precious time to march in on foot and become disappointed). Like most everyone else, time is a precious commodity for me now a days.......I did some preliminary scouting prior to turkey season to eliminate some spots using google earth; however, I did burn some shoe leather (quite a bit of shoe leather, as a matter of fact), scouting the areas that did look good. Some of them didn't have any turkey sign whatsoever; others had some sign or I did find some birds. So I don't think it's just a simple matter of "should we be using them", but "how should we be using them".

 

[IdaRam]

I think the biggest difference is that with Google Earth no one else need ever know I am using it.
Lot's of good discussion. Our world continues to become more and more complex...