Technological advancements continue to change the universe at warp speed – even in the hunting world. Smartphone hunting apps and computer mapping programs make scouting relatively easy, and trail cameras have become so advanced that some states have started limiting or even banning their use for hunting. And now, here come the UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), better known as drones. 

Drone technology is rapidly advancing, prices have come down, and availability has increased to the point where drones equipped with pretty sophisticated photographic and video capabilities are both affordable and readily available. Most hunters agree that using drones to locate and kill game is unethical, and states are beginning to regulate, and often prohibit, their use both as a scouting tool, or at any time during hunting season.

One controversial use of drones is as a way to recover game that has been shot but not recovered. On November 18, 1971, the Airborne Hunting Act was adopted by Congress. The act “prohibits shooting or attempting to shoot or harass any bird, fish, or other animal from aircraft except for certain specified reasons, including protection of wildlife, livestock, and human life as authorized by a Federal or State issued license or permit.” The act states that “the term ‘aircraft’ means any contrivance used for flight in the air.” In today’s world, that also means drones. Even for game recovery.

Ohio entrepreneur Mike Yoder disagrees. His company, Drone Deer Recovery, offers to locate wounded deer in more than 15 Midwestern states using thermal imagery taken from drones. In a nutshell, Yoder claims near-100 percent recovery on wounded deer using a minimally intrusive drone flying some 400 feet above the ground. He’s also filed a federal lawsuit making the argument that it is a violation of his First Amendment rights to not allow him to collect and disseminate information on dead or wounded deer he has located with a drone.

Without getting into the weeds, the lawsuit came about because in Michigan it’s illegal to use drones for recovery, with stiff penalties for those who do. And in December 2023, Pennsylvanian Joshua Wingenroth, who owns Wingy Drone Services, found himself the subject of a Pennsylvania Game Commission sting operation in which a PGC game warden called Wingenroth, telling him he’d wounded a deer and needed help recovering it. According to the PGC, in that state hunters may track downed game after dark, but must first notify the agency. He was convicted of multiple wildlife violations in February, a conviction he plans to appeal.

Mission Creep?

It's easy to understand any state’s position that using drones for locating and harvesting game should be illegal. No argument there. But to help recover wounded game? At first blush, this use makes total sense. But then you start to see the mission creep, where abusers, poachers and shady characters would use this same drone technology to illegally locate, then kill, game. If confronted, they’d simply claim they were searching for a wounded animal that one of their cohorts would swear that he shot but could not find. But given wounding rates — defined as deer that were hit but never recovered — on whitetails by bowhunters, which studies have shown can be as high as 20 percent, and the fact it is both the moral and ethical thing to do everything we can to recover all animals shot by hunters, Yoder and Wingy both make powerful arguments that drone use should not only be permitted, but encouraged.

The states are beginning to come to grips with drone use for game recovery. Right now state regulations are a mishmash. The National Deer Association (NDA) asked state and provincial wildlife agencies if they allow the use of drones during deer season, and if so, the types of activity they can be used for, including scouting, game animal recovery and/or with the addition of thermal imagery. In a nutshell, 18 of the 45 states responding to the survey allow the use of drones during deer season. Of these 18 states, 11 allow them for scouting purposes, 13 allow their use for animal recovery, and 13 also permit the use of thermal imaging equipment. (Click here to see the NDA’s 2024 Deer Report, and check out page 32 for more information regarding drone use during deer season.)

The primary argument against drone use is, of course, that some unscrupulous hunters would use them to locate, and kill, game under the guise of searching for a wounded animal. But there’s more. What if a bigger buck is found by the drone while attempting to locate a wounded deer? Could this information be used to hunt that buck? That would certainly be unethical, would it not? And what if the drone finds the wounded deer, but it is not yet dead? Do you keep tracking it or call off the search? And if it’s not dead, does the drone operator tell the hunter where he last spotted it?

This is where, to me, the line gets very murky. While I am an old school guy when it comes to hunting, believing that we should not make the harvesting of our magnificent and precious wildlife easy, I also believe hunters should use every tool at their disposal to recover an animal they have shot — and that includes drones. Will there be abusers? Of course, just as there are scumbags who bait deer where it’s illegal, shoot deer with spotlights after dark, use a crossbow during archery season where they’re illegal, and kill game out of season. These people aren’t hunters, they’re lowlife poachers, and should be shunned by all ethical sportsmen and prosecuted to the ends of the earth.