Deer recovery service helps hunters find lost trophies

By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill

With deer hunting season under way in many states across the country, a number of hunters are confronting a common problem: tracking a wounded deer that may have wandered into a heavily forested area or into the middle of a farmer’s corn field.

Championing the use of drone thermal imaging to help find these animals is the work of three-year-old start-up company, Drone Deer Recovery. Michael Yoder, founder of the Winesburg, Ohio startup, said Drone Deer Recovery has grown rapidly since he launched the company in 2021.

The company’s origins spring from a conversation Yoder had with a friend, who operated a business that used thermal-equipped drones in roof inspections to detect leaks.

“I told him, I had thought about getting one to try to find deer,” he said. “I went home and bought a baby drone, paid $8,000 for it.” He shot a video showing the use of the drone to track deer that had eluded hunters after being shot, and showed the footage at a local outdoor show. “My booth was the most talked-about booth at the show. So, I knew that it’s going to be something that the sportsmen would support.”

Yoder began offering his drone recovery services to hunters in his area, while developing Drone Deer Recovery as an online clearinghouse of information for hunters wanting to learn more about the use of drones to recover lost deer.

“I bought a good drone, for $22,000, and started creating YouTube content showing the world how you can utilize these thermal drones to help hunters recover lost game, and it’s just been going crazy since,” he said. In the first four months of posting video content on his web site, Yoder said the site got between 3 million and 6 million views per month.

“What Drone Deer Recovery actually ended up being is a content creator showing other people how they can do the same thing,” Yoder said. Businesses that offered deer recovery services similar to Yoder’s began springing up across the country, with Drone Deer Recovery providing a central hub for spreading the word about their services to hunters in their respective areas.

Yoder said he helps would-be entrepreneurs get their own deer recovery businesses get off the ground. He also sells them the equipment, the same equipment that he uses in his own operations.

“I help them with understanding how to operate the drone. And then that pilot can list his thermal drone business on the Drone Deer Recovery website,” he said. Between 30,000 and 70,000 people visit the website every month looking for thermal drone pilots operating in their area.

“There’re people all across the country listed on my website with the same type of business, where they help hunters recover lost game,” he said. At last count hunters from 28 states could go on his website and find a deer recovery service in their area.

Yoder sets a high standard for listing drone deer recovery services on his website. Qualified operators should possess the equivalent of a DJI Mavic 30T drone, equipped with thermal-imaging and standard visible-light cameras, to be capable of spotting a heat signature signifying the presence of a wounded or dead deer hidden beneath a forest canopy or agricultural crop, as well as cameras capable of capturing an image of the animal’s location.

In a typical scenario, in which a hunter calls on Yoder’s services or those of one of his affiliated service providers, the hunter shoots but fails to kill a deer and is unable to track his wounded prey.

“They have either lost the blood trail, or it rained … whatever the case may be, they can’t track down their deer just with a normal blood trail, like he was hoping to do,” Yoder said. “Rather than calling in a dog or getting a bunch of buddies to do a grid search of the whole property, they will hire a thermal drone,” Yoder said.

The drone operator drone will come out to the site, and flying his UAV at an altitude between 200 and 400 feet above ground level, will use its thermal camera to look for hot spots. “Once the hot spot is located, we use a 200-times zoom camera on the drone, zoom in to see the deer, and to identify if it’s the buck that they shot.”

Yoder recommends that hunters who have been unable to track the deer they have shot contact a recovery expert in their area as soon as possible after the hunt. “That way the deer doesn’t have as much time to move out of the area. If the deer is walking two miles per hour and three hours go past, he could be six miles away from where he was shot,” he said.

State laws vary regarding the use of drones in hunting, but Yoder said he has been advised by attorneys that using drones to recover lost animals is legal in most states. However, other states expressly forbid this use of drones.

“There’re definitely states that have put their walls up and say, you absolutely can’t do it, states like Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania,” he said. “It’s like the states that have seen this content come out, they got scared because it is new technology. And so, it’s a lot easier just to say it’s not legal than it is to figure out how to allow it to be used.”

Since launching his deer recovery service, Yoder’s drone-related business projects have expanded.

“It went from a service-based business to a full-blown drone retail business,” he said. His current operations include the use of agricultural drones to spray crop fields, and the manufacture of trailers to transport the heavy-duty agricultural drones.

“It’s been a rapid growth. To try to keep up with building a team fast enough has been hard,” he said. “It’s been challenging, but it’s been fun. Never did I think that I would be having a business of this size.”

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Read more:

• Does Michigan’s Ban on Drones for Hunting Apply After the Game is Downed?
• Innovative UAV Patent Aims to Protect Wildlife from Becoming Roadkill
• University of Kentucky Secures Grant to Develop Drone Technology for Cattle Management

Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.