Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All right, welcome back to the Drone on Podcast. I'm Mike. I'm excited to bring today's episode, Henry, where we were on the road, we were actually at an expo, and I started chatting with Henry. I was like, hey, would you want to sit down and have a podcast and talking about your experience getting into thermal drones? So I thought it would be very helpful for people that are thinking about getting into the thermal drone business, even though there is a lot of competition right now in the thermal drone space. We're gonna sit down and listen to Henry's story as he made the decision to buy a thermal drone drone deer recovery business. Okay, guys. Mike, with drone deer recovery, we're sitting down here at the Columbus Deer and turkey Expo, talking with a drone pilot that you were walking by. You tell me that you bought the whole drone deer recovery kit from me, and your ultimate goal was just to pay the drone off. Tell us a little bit. Why did you get a thermal drone? But before you do that, how old you are? What made you get into it? And your name?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: I'm Henry Ho Stettler. I am from Brinkaven, Ohio. That's where I grew up. Born and raised there. I'm 24 years old and very fascinated with aviation. So I watch airplanes fly always. If I can be a pilot someday, I want to be a pilot.
[00:01:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, you can't. You could be a pilot if you really wanted to.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: It felt like I wasn't able to. Right.
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: Especially like it was at the moment. And so I. One of my buddies got a little drone, like one of those little flip drones, and they got to playing with. I said, man, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. But I couldn't. I couldn't afford it. And so I kept working on a farm, and eventually I saved up enough to where I could get one of the little dji. The Mavic Min. And that's what I started messing with. And I had it for about six months, and I really. I started seeing drone deer recovery videos.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: And I was like, on YouTube.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: On YouTube.
[00:01:45] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: YouTube. First found it on YouTube. Someone sent it to me, was like, hey, you should start doing.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Okay, so see, that was gonna be. My next question to you is, how did you get introduced to drone deer recovery? A lot of people say, oh, I was just watching a hunting show, and then it was recommended maybe in. In the section, but for you specifically, somebody said, hey, check this out.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Yeah, they said, check this out. Because they knew I like drones.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:02:05] Speaker B: And so it took no convincing. It took a little time.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:02:09] Speaker B: And I said, that's my goal. That's what I got my sight set on. So fast forward. I, you know, wait, wait.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: I'm going to slow you down. So how long did you watch Drone Deer Recovery before you were like, you know what? I'm going to buy myself a drone deer recovery kit.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: It was probably about a year.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Okay. So you watch the videos unfold me doing recoveries, and you're like, okay, I'm going for it.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Yep, absolutely. And I started. I listened to podcasts, and somehow I found out Dennis was in it. So I called Dennis, I said, dennis, like, what's going on here? And I listened to a podcast where he was in it. And I was like, dude, this is. This is like next level. I love this type stuff. I love being out at night anytime. And so.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Because you were a coon hunter.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Because I was a coon hunter.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Okay. So earlier when you walked past, you and I had talked and you said, you're a coon hunter. And.
[00:02:55] Speaker B: And so I felt like this would be a fit, like nighttime, you know, perfect.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And I.
[00:03:00] Speaker B: And so I literally bench watched. I went back after I talked with Dennis, and I binge watched for probably a week and a half straight.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Of YouTube videos and podcasts.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Trying to learn.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Or.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Or just.
[00:03:12] Speaker B: Just because the. The entertainment. And also I wanted to kind of learn what it was. And then I. I seen you guys at the booth.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: I.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: It still was like, I don't know if I could ever do that.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: And then I came down here and I. It was. I talked to Kevin at the booth. You weren't here last year. And I was like, well, I know him. And so we got to talking, and I was a little shyer. This. I didn't. I didn't talk a whole lot. I went back home and bench watched the videos again. I mean, the guts out. But watched everything. I mean, you name it. Like, you start your video. I knew what was. I, you know, the whole spiel, everything.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Nice, nice.
[00:03:47] Speaker B: And it just got me fired up. I was like, this is. This is cool. And somewhere. No, that was the first I ever seen it. And so I, you know, I went online and I said, look, I'm gonna order the whole thing. So, you know, I had the sales special, ordered everything, got the whole thing. And Christmas came, unpackaged it and started flying. I mean. Cause I. I had the dji, so I knew. I knew little about it. So I started messing around with a little bit, and it Just fueled the fire even more, because that was last spring. And so now I had a goal. I said, okay, now I've got to be ready till deer season.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:19] Speaker B: And my original goal was I gave.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: It two years to pay it off.
[00:04:23] Speaker B: To pay it off. Because, I mean, it's.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: I forget what it was, like, 25 grand.
[00:04:26] Speaker A: Why did you think it would take two years?
[00:04:28] Speaker B: Because I had roughly done some math, and I'm thinking, like, because people don't know it. I'm a new pilot. You know, why would they choose me? You know, like, why would they have me come over? Why would they have me come look for the deer if they can have Mike come look for the deer?
[00:04:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: And so I'm like, I'll just, you know, I'll do what I can here.
[00:04:44] Speaker A: Let me tell you why I think that they would have you come do the recovery. Some people might hire you based on experience, but most hunters, they're just like, you got a drone. Oh, you're 15 minutes out. Boom.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: And that's exactly what happened. I. I got, you know, got my license, and I got on. Onto the. The find a pilot near me app. The. The drone deer recovery website. And the first night. No, it was second night because season came in Saturday and Monday night, I got my first call.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: No way.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Did you find it? Because it's hard.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: It was early season. And I told him, I said, look, I don't know. And they were like, come out. Anyway, so I'm getting everything together. They called me back like, 20 minutes later. We just walked on. Oh, nice. I was like, ah.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: I tell you what, if somebody starts drone deer recovery in the. In the spring in Ohio, do. Do not judge the first three weeks of the season. How your past, like, how the future is going to go, because it is so hard.
[00:05:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:41] Speaker A: I tell somebody that, you know, normally, if it takes me 10 minutes to find the deer with the leaves off, it's going to take me 40 minutes with the leaves off.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so that same week, I got two more calls. Now, this was for the outfitter, and one was luckily in a CRP field. He's like, I think I gut shot it. Let's just wait until tomorrow morning. Perfect. I'll be there first thing in the morning. We flew up, took three minutes. I mean, flew the drone. I said, there's a deer. And he was just like, whoa. Like, he couldn't believe it. In the meantime, we found that deer. There was another 12 point about 60 yards from that deer that what was shot or no. Was going into bed. And I looked at him, I said, listen, if you would have went and grid searched. Because he was like, I was just going to go grid searching. If you would have grid search this.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: You would have burgered your future.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: I see.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: We knew exactly where that deer was at. We knew how to approach that deer to not. To not bust the rest of the deer out.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: And later they ended up not shooting it. But later they sent me a picture of that buck that I seen that one morning on the drone 15 yards from a tree stand they had a shot at.
[00:06:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So basically it not only helped them recover that deer, but it also showed them a way to get in there so they wouldn't have busted out that deer and potentially never seen him again.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Yeah. That's good that you, that you shared that because that's like one of my very first deer that I went and looked for was a big 200 inch deer. 201 inch. And they had a dog on the property. But they were just like, I'm not going to go in there unless I know that the deer is dead for sure. And luckily they had me come out and the deer was still alive and they would, they would have busted them out.
[00:07:13] Speaker B: And I had so many, so many instances like that, I can't even tell you. That same morning I found my second one as I was on a roll.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: Oh, right.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: I mean, I found two to one morning, I'm like, man, this is where it's at. And then it just snowballed from there and it was like call after call and then this person heard of it and I started, you know, taking pictures of it and posting it and posting it and all before I knew it, it was. I was doing six a day.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: And it was. I'd say on average, if I were to average my whole season out, I did probably two to three a week.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Which.
[00:07:46] Speaker A: That's crazy.
[00:07:47] Speaker B: I can't even. That is be. It is so much beyond my expectations.
[00:07:52] Speaker A: And you're kind of in our area, so that's to say like, okay, you'd had that many calls and I still had hundreds of calls. So guys asked me how many we did. I say between 150 and 200 this year. But you still had a good season even though you're in the area where drone day recovery got started. So that, that tells me that if somebody is wanting to get into it, yes, the market is becoming more saturated. More and more people are doing it. But that doesn't mean that you're not going to be able to pay your drone off. It might just take a little bit longer. But it didn't take you as long as you were thinking.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: No, it took. It took me till ever again exactly what the date was, But I think it was, like, January 5th or something like that. It was around the 1st of January when I sat down, and I was looking at all the numbers because I have, you know, tracker where I'm keeping track of it. And my wife was like, we're on top. Like, we're zero.
[00:08:41] Speaker A: Cool. Like, nice. And I was like, so now. Now come this season, it's gonna be.
[00:08:46] Speaker B: Well. Well, we still had season to go.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:08:50] Speaker B: So we were still in January, and I was still getting calls.
[00:08:53] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: And. And so I was like, okay, well, this is nice. And so it literally. This is what it is, because I do construction. And I told my boss, I said, you know, I'll help you what I can, but I want to do. I want to focus more on deer recovery.
[00:09:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:06] Speaker B: And so that's what I did. And. And it paid enough to where. I mean, if I wasn't on a call, I could go help him out here and there. But if I was focusing my nights doing drone calls, it allowed me the next day to go hunt.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: So just talking with you, the attitude that you have is exactly the attitude that I want people that are listed on my website to have is like, you want to do this with a passion. You want to find those deer. You're not just here to take a guy's 400, $500. You want to really, truly find that.
[00:09:39] Speaker B: Absolutely. And. And there was. I mean, there was many occasions where that. Where that happened, where they were like, yeah, I don't really know. And I said, look, like, I know the drone. Yeah, I. I absolutely know the capability. I know me as a pilot. I know we can find this deer. And there's one guy, he's like, I give you a 2% chance of finding this deer. We busted it three times. And I came in and found him like, this was similar to your guts out, but, like, he hit him back, and there was literally guts lobbing out. And he's just strolling around. And I told him, I said, he'll probably bed in there somewhere. We'll find it in the morning. Back next morning, no deer.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: No deer.
[00:10:11] Speaker B: And he's like, I would have paid you $5,000, sit here all night and watch that deer. I was like, okay, well, that's beside the point. I know the deer's here. We've got to find the deer. I looked until about noon. Thermals, you know, sun started hitting. I couldn't do it. Went back that night and I searched until about 10:00. Well, found him way over on the neighbor's property right beside the house.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: Oh my.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: And again he was just like, okay, yeah.
[00:10:34] Speaker A: I'm telling you, if. If guys put in work and they're not just there for the dollars and they truly. Passion. Have a passion to help people find their deer. The tool is incredible.
[00:10:45] Speaker B: It is. But, but you're right, it's going to take a passion because there was, there was many nights I was out till 3, 4 in the morning, got back and I was helping an outfitter, got back and I had to be up at 5:00 to take my hunters back out.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: And that's a grind.
You're the type of guy that needs to get into the spray drones because it's a, it's a little bit of a grind.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: That's what I gotta do. That's what I'm looking for. But I, I mean it was just, I can't, I can't describe. Like for me, I like shooting a deer, but the adrenaline of flying a drone and having this hunter say I've looked for it for who knows how.
[00:11:19] Speaker A: Long, haven't found it and basically giving up.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: And basically giving up. And you come across there like that one buck that he had given me a 2% chance ended up being like a 168. Eight point.
[00:11:30] Speaker A: Wow. Big.
[00:11:30] Speaker B: You're talking big deer giant.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:33] Speaker B: And in the meantime that same thing found another giant on the property where they didn't, they knew he was around, but they didn't really know what he was doing. Prevented him from boogering him.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: And so it's just that's, it's so fired up. Like I can't, I can't even. I can't tell you how excited. And there was, there was a couple pilots who. Or a couple hunters that I flew for who were like man, I, I would never have thought the pilot gets as excited as the hunter when they found the deer.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So have thought I was like, like bull crapping like my excitement and stuff. No, that is how I feel. Like dude, you were with me. I screamed so loud my voice went horse. I was like, like I could not. Oh man. Well, thanks so much for sharing. There you go guys. Just another story of somebody that wanted to get into thermal drones. Wasn't sure how long it would take to pay his drone off. And it's looking good. So maybe the. And maybe next time we'll talk to you. You have a whole new way ag Complete drone set up, and I hope.
[00:12:32] Speaker B: Because that's what it is. But really, to anyone looking to get into it, it's there. If you're willing to work it, it's there. That's the bottom line. Because I'm still getting calls. The other day, like, a week ago, I got a call for a dog.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:12:43] Speaker B: And the work's there if you're willing to go through it. I mean, it's really not that much.
[00:12:47] Speaker A: To get your license.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: I mean, you go sit down, do your schooling, do whatever it takes. Be legal and be smart. Don't be doing dumb stuff, but do your homework, know what you're doing. And if you're willing to work the system. The system.
That's the end of the story.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: There you go. I couldn't have said it any better myself. All right. Appreciate it.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: All right.
