Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the drone on show. It's also going to be a drone deer recovery show today if you're watching on the drone day recovery channel. Appreciate that. If you guys are watching or listening on the drone on show. This is talking more about our drone deer recovery business. It's where we use thermal drones to find hunters or. Yeah, find hunters find help hunters find lost game.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: And I did look for a hunter once that was lost, showed up, hunter's friend was gone. So I. It was ended up being from a deer search to a hunter search.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: Did you find him?
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: And I come back.
[00:00:32] Speaker C: I remember that.
[00:00:33] Speaker B: Yeah. But the, the, the. The crazy thing was, is so the police department was out there. They had a drone team out there. And I searched for two hours. And I said, this guy is nowhere around. Like, he either does not want to be found because he's. He's hiding. It's not like he's passed out somewhere because I would have found him.
[00:00:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:48] Speaker B: And it's like he does not want to be found. Like he went into a shed or something or he just said, see you later. Like, I'm out of here.
[00:00:55] Speaker A: Didn't he, like, walk off and was down town.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And then two days later, he.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Exactly what I'm talking about. These are the untold stories.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Anyway. Yeah, so, yeah, so two days, two days later said, yeah, about 40 minutes away, he was found in Kashocton hitchhiking. And just. He.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Wait, wait, was it the hunter?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: He was actually hunting hunter's friend. So what happened was the hunter and his friend were out tracking a deer and all of a sudden, lost blood trail. And so the hunter told his friend, you stay here. I'm going to go up to the house and call drone deer recovery. And so he called, got a hold of me, and I came out. Never said anything to me, but apparently when I pulled up, there were the cop cars were there. And I was like, oh, man, do I want to get involved? Like something shady going on here, whatever. And he's just like, oh, I'm so glad you're here. He's like, my. My friend's missing. And he's like, after I went and called, you went back down to where I told him to stay there.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: He was gone.
[00:01:57] Speaker B: He was gone.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: That is strange.
[00:02:02] Speaker A: What, was he just there? It seems like there's more to the story. Why did the dude randomly walk off? Was he waiting that long for his friend to get back?
[00:02:10] Speaker C: He was like, I'm peace and out.
[00:02:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know all those details or whatever. All I know is just that. That and actually found the deer as I was searching. It was still alive, but found the deer.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Okay, so you were doing double duty.
You were doing.
[00:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:25] Speaker A: Looking for a deer itself and then looking for a hunter.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:29] Speaker A: Or not really. Hunter. Was he?
[00:02:31] Speaker B: Well, hunter's friend. I don't know.
[00:02:33] Speaker C: What was the name for the tracker?
[00:02:35] Speaker A: Viviana. Mom Missing. Gilga Fuddy.
We're interrupting the show as little Viviana is wanting to help.
That is crazy. What a perfect way to start off the. The podcast, because that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk those untold stories, the. The stuff we haven't put on the drone day recovery channel and really where thermal drones have. Have taken us. So I'm Mike, we got Jason and we got Austin helping produce the show. I just thought that. I think this would be an interesting podcast to talk about some of those things because sometimes people just want to listen to stories just like that story. That's a pretty interesting story. Randomly showed up to do a deer recovery and now you were looking for a hunter. That's pretty interesting. There's got to be more stuff that happened that I haven't even heard from you. You did a lot of pet recovery stuff in the beginning. You were using your thermal drone to do pet recovery stuff. What were some of the craziest things you've seen there? Was it like homeless people? Did you ever find homeless people in the woods, something like that?
[00:03:36] Speaker B: That's a good question. I feel like there was a time. Okay. Yeah, there was one time that we stumbled upon this, like, just almost like this ghetto trailer park. Like it wasn't just one homeless person. Like, it looked like a park.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:50] Speaker B: It was a multiple party, multiple people.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Were you in la, perhaps? Yeah.
[00:03:54] Speaker B: No, no. Ohio still has some pretty interesting places, for sure.
[00:04:00] Speaker C: You weren't close to Springfield, were you?
[00:04:02] Speaker B: I have no idea.
[00:04:03] Speaker A: What's the joke on that?
Wasn't that.
[00:04:06] Speaker C: I've never heard of Springfield until about what, four months ago? And then all of a sudden it was in the news.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: They were saying they were eating cats or something. Eating cats?
[00:04:14] Speaker C: I guess the Haitian community down there, just like they literally brought about 20,000 Haitians into like a little community.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: So there's like a community of like 40,000 people. And then all of a sudden it's just injected with 20,000 migrants and wasn't there.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:28] Speaker B: For them. And so they were like.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: So you find this homeless camp or community, Right?
[00:04:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Nothing sketchy. Nothing.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Nothing really sketchy. It's just like, you just see things from the air, you know, in different ways. And I'm already thinking of a couple stories of, like, things that I've observed by deer, like watching deer and wounded deer.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: That are just like, whoa, what's going on here? That we'll. We'll get into.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: But that. That make. That makes me think you brought up Lost Hunter. Did you see the stuff going around on social media right now? I guess there's two hunters missing either in elk Hunters, Colorado, I heard Colorado.
[00:05:06] Speaker B: Oh, really? No.
[00:05:07] Speaker A: I would want to go help, but I'm sure there's 100 thermal drones there, and if there's not 100 thermal drones there. There should be.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: But I also don't know if it's national forest, but would that even apply if you're looking for.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: I bet it doesn't. I mean, you could probably have an emergency.
[00:05:23] Speaker C: I'm sure you could get into contact with search and rescue there.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:26] Speaker C: But it's been. I think it's been like two weeks, hasn't it?
[00:05:29] Speaker A: Oh, geez.
[00:05:30] Speaker C: It's been a little while. So I'm like, I was talking to Dennis about it the other day, and at this point, I mean, coyotes could have ate them. I mean, they're probably dead.
[00:05:39] Speaker A: You think so?
[00:05:40] Speaker C: Like, two weeks out.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Two weeks.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah. But don't you have a weapon? Wouldn't you, like. Like, like just kill whatever you need to kill to survive?
[00:05:48] Speaker C: I mean, you would think so.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: I mean, surely, like, as far as, like, eating.
[00:05:53] Speaker C: I told Dennis, I'm down. Let's go. Like, I'll go out there and look for him.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: I just wonder. Yeah. What the efforts have been so far. I just know.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: I know.
[00:06:01] Speaker B: I just know from my time out there in Idaho, you do have some difficulties with, like, a lot of the rocks.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: You know, I was going to ask.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: You about that, but as far as trees.
[00:06:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:12] Speaker B: Like, the canopy is not an issue. Like, you could. You could.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: In certain areas.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, in most. I mean, if it's Colorado. Yeah. You're. You're already having. It's mostly Aspens.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: Oh, dude. I just thought about it.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: We need the speakers on the drones to let them know, hey, we're looking for you. Make sure you are standing out in a wide open area. Right. You could blast.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Okay. That actually happened when we went.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: I got goosebumps. Cause I'm like, I think we could do this.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: We actually happened. We went to Idaho to do the search and rescue training. We were going to go at 3 o' clock in the morning and wake up the campers to go do some of the scenarios.
And I forgot to pin the location of where they're camping, where their camp was. And I thought, well, I'm just going to fly the drone out there and find them. Well, they were all in their tent. There was no. And this was 3am There was no heat. I flew that thing up and down. I could not find them. This is like. This is embarrassing. Like, we're here to use.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: No, this is a practical thing, you're saying.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And. And, and so all of a sudden we were like, well, let's use the speakers. So we said, attention, cadets, you have five minutes to report to base tent.
And I mean, the thermals just lit up because we use a speaker to wake them up.
[00:07:33] Speaker C: So when they were in the tent.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Couldn'T find them when they were in the tent. Yeah, because the. Well, they had.
[00:07:38] Speaker A: It must be like insulated.
[00:07:39] Speaker B: Yeah, they were insulated.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:07:41] Speaker B: From that. So you could.
[00:07:42] Speaker C: So if these hunters have little tents and they're laying in the tents, they.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know about tent. So they were pretty primitive in what they could use. So they only were using tarps. So they were using like really thick tarps for their. Their, their.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that. But that makes sense to me that it could have a barrier, that the tent itself isn't hot.
[00:08:03] Speaker B: Right.
[00:08:04] Speaker A: It's hot inside the tent, but not the material. Not the material itself.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: So that's where, you know, you would just have a speaker and you would just have it on a repeat set. You know, if you hear this move to open area where we can, you know, easily see your thermals or, or, dude, take. Take clothes off. Or. Or, you know, just.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: We. Yeah, if we would have a big, big speaker. Not just the ones that go on the M30T, but the stuff that goes on, like the M350 and the M400. Surely. Yeah, we get. We got to think about this. Somehow we got to get in. The biggest thing about doing search and rescue and, you know, probably more about this than I do myself, is connecting with the correct people. Because if there is an organized situation going on, Right. They're doing a search and rescue. You don't want to interrupt. Right. We don't want to have our own group over here. And all of a sudden we're random flying our drones. And now they're like, well, who's that flying? We get. We got stuff flying over here, but is. Is to organize with the correct team.
[00:09:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:09:02] Speaker A: So maybe, maybe we should reach out to them, because I think we'd have the tools to get it done.
[00:09:07] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely.
[00:09:09] Speaker A: The other big thing about mountainous stuff, I've never done a lot in the mountains of that. That size of a mountain is just this sheer mass of land that you have to go across.
[00:09:21] Speaker C: Yeah, it's kind of like Catalina island, but way bigger.
[00:09:24] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's something. We never told people what we did in Catalina. But the other thing I'm thinking about right now, do we. Well, we don't have to dissect this now. I wonder if they have cell phones, and if they do, we could test that cell phone thing.
[00:09:38] Speaker C: Well, I thought about that, but at this point, if they're out there for two weeks, cell phone's probably dead.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: But surely they took, like, little.
[00:09:45] Speaker C: I don't think so. So I think they. What I heard, I don't. I've never read into the story, but what Dennis told me is they. They found their truck. All their. A lot of their gear was in their truck. So they think that they might have spotted an elk and they just want to go after it quickly. So they left most of their gear in their truck and went after this elk, or they went into the mountain and they were never heard of after that.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:10:08] Speaker C: So I don't know.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Okay, so they could be. Yeah, they could be without what they needed. And maybe they got disoriented. It got night, you know, nighttime came or rain. I don't know what the story is, but maybe we sh.
[00:10:21] Speaker C: I mean, we should check into it.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I had somebody send something to me. Maybe we should check into it. That. That's pretty interesting how that transitioned into.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: That story, but, yeah, that wasn't.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: The thermal drones are capable with the speakers, with the lights and just what they can do. And on like a mass scale like that, it have to be organized. Right. If you're going to send multiple drone teams out and we could do that. We. We have Starlink run it through DJI Terra, set it up just like we do the herd census stuff.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And we're. We're getting ready to actually release Asar's training course that. That was built for having anybody that has a thermal drone how to integrate with other search and rescue groups to. How to actually be helpful and not a hindrance.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Maybe. Maybe we should get the company to pay for this. And we go out there and we.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Yeah, because like, like, so, like, take, for example, like, search and rescue, they use sartopo to help. It's a. It's a mapping Software that helps them integrate not only the contour of the land, but also dealing with lost person behavior. So you're not going to do a lot of grid searching when you do these type of searches. You're going to do more like people are not going to just be like climbing randomly rock faces and all these things. They're going to be on, on anything that resembles a trail along waterways.
You know, they're, they're probably going to more likely go down, not up. Like just these different things that it actually has these algorithms and things based into it that are going to help you narrow down search areas and identify.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: And you're teaching me so much. Why don't we just go there and you show me.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: And then it's nice you can, you can, you can identify all this stuff and you can set up all of your, you know, annotations and stuff and then you can just export that as a KML file and upload it right into your control, that is. And you have all that information.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Do you know why we haven't done it? I think if you're going to do this type of stuff, you got to kind of have a heart for it or a passion for it. Not that I don't want to find people. It just isn't something that's on my mind to do. Although I would love to help and this would maybe be the opportunity to get involved. Maybe if I do it once or twice, I'd be like, dude, this is my.
[00:12:35] Speaker C: I think it would be way more rewarding to go out there and find two hunters that have been lost for two weeks and to go out and find a big buck.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: If you were the guy that took a drone and found guys and they were alive after two weeks of missing, you found them with your thermal drone. Do you imagine the dopamine rush that you would have for probably weeks on that is true.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Just just to see what we experience when we help a hunter find, you know, their buck dog gun it.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: If you go out there and find two hunters that's been out there for two weeks, oh my gosh, that'd be.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Well, maybe we have to check the conditions, see if the conditions what those look like and organize something because I just don't know that daytime thermal stuff is going to do us any good.
[00:13:15] Speaker B: No, you'll be way faster doing all of it at night.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: But we could tell them even with the speaker in the daytime, we could still fly those drainages and let them know in the speaker, hey, we cannot see you with thermal currently.
Make sure you're out in an open area. Tonight we are going to be coming through those same areas looking for a thermal signature. That's good.
[00:13:35] Speaker B: It's just, it's just so hard to imagine what's all going on with two people. I know one person, you know, somebody could get trapped, somebody could fall, somebody, you know, whatever. But two people, man, that's.
[00:13:45] Speaker A: That is crazy. That is crazy. Yeah.
[00:13:47] Speaker C: And yeah, they obviously had guns or, or bows maybe. I don't know. Is it bow season or gun season out there?
[00:13:52] Speaker A: It depends where they're at. Yeah. Sad. Hopefully they find them. If, if, if, if it works out, we'll go out there and see what we can do.
[00:13:59] Speaker C: Yeah, I think there's a $10,000 reward if you find them.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah. What, what's one of the stories that you think about? You know, when we first started doing drone de recovery from a recovery standpoint. Right. Some of the recoveries that you did weren't necessarily on the drone recovery channel. And there were definitely times where I sent you out on doing a recovery.
[00:14:19] Speaker C: Yeah, the very, the very first one that sticks out is so before I even had a thermal drone. I don't think you were around then, but your drone was here and you got a call for a recovery as about 45 minutes from here.
And I went out and I had very, very little experience flying the drone. Like I had come over and I flew it around a little bit, but very little experience.
[00:14:38] Speaker A: Tell me all the details because my brain is trying to figure out where I would have been.
[00:14:42] Speaker C: I don't know. I think you might have been in. You went out west the beginning of the very first season. In the beginning. You went out west right at the beginning of the season here.
And I, I think it was at that point anyhow. But I went out, I was freaking nervous. I. This was my very first recovery.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Did you tell me you didn't know what you're doing?
[00:15:00] Speaker C: Not really.
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Did I. Did I even do recovery at that point?
[00:15:03] Speaker C: I don't think you had up to that point because I don't think the season. I think you left right before the season started.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: No way.
[00:15:08] Speaker C: And it was like two days into the season.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that does ring a bell. I remember.
[00:15:12] Speaker A: No way. So I was thinking I was in Colorado on that big elk hunt.
[00:15:16] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. I think it was at that point.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah. I remember you saying like you basically started the company.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: Oh, no. And then you were here opening. You started flying drones that early?
[00:15:28] Speaker C: Well, I. Cuz I barely did, but I went anyhow. I went out and Showed up and there's like five guys standing there. And they had shot the deer the night before.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Couldn't.
[00:15:36] Speaker C: They had tracked him a little while, but they couldn't find him. Anyhow, I take the drone off. I'm out there flying. And I had actually taken Brantley with me and local here.
Yeah, I was up close to Ashland.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Okay.
Oh, it's starting to ring bell, I think.
[00:15:52] Speaker C: And anyhow, I'm flying. I can't find him. Can't find him. And finally I find. Well, I found a couple big bucks, but it wasn't the one he was after. Finally, right at the edge of the field or edge of the timber there, I found a buck that was laying and I started looking at him and I found a big blood spot running down his back.
And here he had shot him right in the. I don't know, no man's land, I guess what you would call it, right below the spine you're going to get.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Some people say there is no such thing as.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: Well, I have found two of them now. Exact same thing where the one was killed after the fact. And it was like literally not even a quarter inch above the spine where. I mean it was blood running down the side of it and it looked bad.
[00:16:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: But anyhow, that deer. I found him, I was looking at him. He actually ended up getting up and walking and you could just see the blood just pouring off the side of him. But I don't think they ever found him. I don't think he died.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: So they. They didn't call you back to do like a follow up on that thing.
So you would have been flying my M30T when I was somewhere else, huh?
[00:16:54] Speaker C: I believe that was. Yeah, I think that was the case because that was one of my very first ones. And actually that day I did three of them. So I went and found that one. And I mean, I got pretty pumped up about that. I found that one. Then I went down south.
Oh. Oh, yeah. It was the same day. So I went down south. And this was in the very beginning. Didn't have. Didn't know the.
What is that setting?
I forget.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Was it the mode setting? Yeah, it was different. Or are you talking about the.
[00:17:21] Speaker C: The one they just added to the M4T.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Oh, inspection mode.
[00:17:23] Speaker C: Inspection mode. We didn't know about inspection mode. So I go down south and I think it was at a place that you had maybe previously looked at you had.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: You had been there at some point. This is starting to. This was season two. Then maybe that. Because I did everything my first season, remember I had to freaking talk you into, like, let's do thermal drones.
[00:17:42] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:17:42] Speaker A: So.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: Yeah, that would have been the second season.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Yeah. So 2022 was my first season and I hammered it hard and made a lot of money. And I was like, jay, like, I think we could do this. And you were still doing the anywhere tree care thing and. And you weren't convinced. And then.
Yeah, we're just going to get into that story and then we'll pick up where he left off. But I had to talk you into, like, forget about the trees. Like, come fly thermal drones if you're not. I remember you were sitting out on my driveway here. Remember that was the first time you ever flew a thermal drone. You never flew a drone and then you're like flying it. I showed you just some basics, like fly it with the sticks and this is how you turn it. And then you sat out there for a long time starting to fly.
[00:18:24] Speaker C: Yeah. It was hard to try to get your. Like to fly sideways.
[00:18:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:28] Speaker C: And look at one position or like one object to fly sideways to go around it and like keep your drone.
[00:18:32] Speaker A: I remember you were asking me, like, mike, how do you like, spin it? And still.
[00:18:37] Speaker C: Yep. Because like up here at the top of the hill, there's a bank.
[00:18:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:40] Speaker C: And if. If you just fly over top of the bank, you can't see the side of it.
[00:18:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:44] Speaker C: So if you got to look from the side and just kind of. Yeah. It was. It was kind of hard to.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: That's all figured out. It's interesting to bring that up because, like, now that you and I have flown thousands of hours, you just.
[00:18:54] Speaker C: It's common sense or just comes naturally.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: But. But when you think back. Yeah. When you think back to that, it's like we have to start somewhere.
[00:19:02] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:19:03] Speaker A: Okay.
That whole story of like getting you to be convinced that this drone business is going to be thing. Because if you guys don't know, me and Jay and Kevin are partners within this business. But it took me a while. I had to talk. I had to talk Kevin into being a business partner. I told him this is going to be big. Kevin's kind of the techie side of it. Like knows automation build that. The website thing does a lot. Right. It couldn't all have done just been done by myself. It had it to be me, Kevin and Jay. Because Jay, you're like a hands on, like hammer it, get. Get it figured out. You're doing the trees at that time and you were still doing that. And I was trying to convince you to now quit the trees and do the drones. And you weren't convinced?
[00:19:48] Speaker C: No, it took a while. Like, that was. Honestly, I think that was the hardest decision I ever made. Legit. I think so.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Because you were. You were stepping away from something that was.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: Yeah, we made good money.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: Worked eight, eight months out of the year. Made really good money. Made enough money in eight months that you could take three months off.
It was our business. It was doing very well. Like, there was nothing wrong with the company to try to, like, just leave that or sell that and jump into something that I didn't really know anything about.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: And you did have to take a pay cut. I was like, you'll have to take a pay cut for. To start with, but I promise you it'll get better.
[00:20:23] Speaker C: But, yeah, I mean, at some point. I mean, the more I got into the drones, the more I seen, like, oh, my gosh, this is. This is going to be huge. Like, in the beginning, if you're not into it, it's like, okay, yeah, you don't really know that many people are, or you don't know everything that can be done with drones, and it's just hard to see it. But once you start getting into it, it's like, oh, my gosh.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Yeah. The possibilities are it literally leads to the next thing. It's like, you know, we started with thermal drones, and that was really our niche market, but then we. We stepped into the ag.
That's a whole nother deal. We're talking about untold stories of drone day recovery, but agricultural stuff. Like, you guys were both on the phones here because you're. You're doing customer service side of troubleshooting and stuff. You had a warranty thing with agricultural drones, and you were like, man, is this. This thing's going to blow up? And it's already blowing up, like, on the agricultural side of things. And then you had a thermal drone guy. I'm. I'm looking over to Austin. If you guys are listening and you can't see me pointing, I'm looking over to Austin because he also.
Your role. Now, what would you consider your role in the company?
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Just shop manager, I guess. Yeah, just.
[00:21:28] Speaker A: And a lot over there.
[00:21:29] Speaker C: Podcast producer.
[00:21:31] Speaker B: I don't know. I really enjoy it because it's like, I feel like I know enough to dabble in each kind of department of the company, but I don't fully know, like, just one thing. Like, I'm not. My. My. My knowledge is like, this wide, but.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: Only this, you know, and so if I go based. So you know how wide this wide is? It's about 36 inches with in.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: And about 12 inches deep.
[00:22:01] Speaker B: Where a lot of people, you know, maybe only have this wide, but then they're this.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: You know, so. But yeah, it's been fun to just bounce around, help the company out. Company out wherever needed.
[00:22:11] Speaker C: But you have a little bit of knowledge about everything, I guess.
[00:22:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That. That's company stuff. Back to that recovery. So you. You found that first one?
[00:22:21] Speaker C: Yep, found that.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: I. I remember the one you're talking about now because I went down there and was looking for a deer for them. Could not find it because of the rocks were just disgusting. Like, if I would have that point. Like, one of the first questions you're going to ask somebody if. If it's still early season and the sun was out all day long is, are there rocks in your woods? Because that could make it a little bit more of a challenge.
[00:22:42] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So after that first one, I went down, down south to that other location. And there I took the drone off and started flying into the OR towards the woods. And dude, it was just lit up red lit everywhere.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: I remember. I think we used some of this footage for training because, you know, it showed the dedication that you had is like you didn want to give up, but you have to look through all those rocks. Now, I do think if you do.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: That, if I would do it now with inspection mode, I don't think. I. I mean, it would be a lot easier. Yeah, I think the. The rocks would probably still be an issue, but it would be a lot easier. But, yeah, I flew there for probably two and a half hours and I have flown over top of the deer and the deer looked exactly like the rocks. Like, I found that buck with luck. Like, yeah, it was.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: It was lucky.
[00:23:28] Speaker C: I just. I looked at that rock and it was a freaking deer.
[00:23:31] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think that dji, when they introduce that inspection mode, and I. I wish I would understand what that mode actually does because whatever algorithm they use to adjust the colors.
[00:23:44] Speaker B: Just inspecting the air, man, it's just.
[00:23:47] Speaker C: It's narrowing your range. Your range. Yeah, yeah, it's more. It's more precise.
[00:23:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:53] Speaker C: Like, it's picking up actual heat versus, well, that the deer was probably 110 degrees. The rock was maybe 60 degrees.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah, well, that's. That's the first thing that we noticed when we unboxed the M4T. I updated all the software and I went to click on thermal or inspection mode. I was like, this Thing needs inspection mode. Didn't have it. So I quickly reached out to the DJI engineer. I was like, guys, we need inspection mode now. And within 30 days, they updated the software and we have inspection mode on the M4T.
Same thing happened with the 4 TD. The. The dock version, the one that I. I really like is like, dude, inspection mode. We need to have it. Did you see the new mode on inspection mode, you can actually change the contrast.
[00:24:36] Speaker C: I haven't.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So in inspection mode, you can actually adjust if you want the gray colors to be brighter or the red colors. Right. Depending on what palette.
[00:24:45] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:24:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So now it'll even throw it out in a little bit different. Yeah, that's cool. Anyhow, inspection mode totally would have.
[00:24:51] Speaker C: Oh, my gosh.
Dude. I flew two hours. Finally the guys were like, they're just going to go in after it and see if they can find blood again. And I just kept flying. And they were walking through the woods. They were probably about 200 yards from the deer when I actually found him. And so I got a hold of him real quick, and they came back. Deer wasn't dead. He was.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Did he die?
[00:25:09] Speaker C: Nope. Never found him again. Nope. He got up. There was a huge, huge woods behind them, and I don't know. I don't know where he went. I dropped a pin on him, and they went in the next morning, and he wasn't there.
But then from there, I went right down the road. Five minutes down the road, there was another guy. This was about 2 in the morning. And I mean, this. This one was super easy. Took the drone off, went over, and within five minutes, I found him.
That deer was also not dead.
[00:25:35] Speaker A: Oh.
[00:25:35] Speaker C: But he ended up getting that deer. He was after that deer for, like two years. So he knew his. He knew his routes. And based off of where he was at, he knew he was. He didn't live on his property. So he would come out over in his property, then he would, you know, go back, and he knew the route he was going to take back, and he ended up shooting him the next morning.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:25:53] Speaker C: On his way back to the other property.
[00:25:54] Speaker A: Huh. So. So he wasn't fatally shot? No. Okay.
[00:25:58] Speaker C: I mean, he.
It's a chance he might have died. I don't know.
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:01] Speaker C: But he was not in good shape. But he wasn't dead yet, huh?
[00:26:04] Speaker A: Dude, those are some.
[00:26:05] Speaker C: But that was freaking awesome. Like, one of my first days, I found three of them right in a row. That was cool.
[00:26:09] Speaker A: I would. I. I don't have many deer recovery stories because all of my stuff is on drone deer recovery. Literally almost every recovery that I've ever done was recorded me doing the recovery, but mine would be more of, like, herd senses. Like, when we were doing in the beginning, I called it herd analysis, where we go and we. We count people's deer, and we'll. We'll talk about some of those ranches that you and I actually got to fly. Me and Jay, we just got to experience stuff that in. In my world, is unbelievable. The amount of land that some people have that is strictly just for hunting, and it's amazing the amount of money they spend on chasing whitetail deer. It's. It's incredible. I would imagine that you probably. Austin, have some. Some drone deer recovery stories that haven't made it on the channel that are pretty interesting.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So one of my. One of my favorite ones is. Is just start as far as showcasing the zoom feature on the 30T was one night, it went out do recovery, and the guy didn't have a great chance to look at his. His deer. And he was doing.
[00:27:13] Speaker A: Before he shot it.
[00:27:14] Speaker B: Yeah, before he shot it. So he wasn't 100 on being able to identify it if we were gonna. Gonna see it. And so start searching. And he. He's doing this with, like, a longbow, so.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Pretty. Pretty different than, you know, actually.
[00:27:31] Speaker A: You bring that up.
I can only recall one time that I did a recovery for somebody that shot a longbow.
[00:27:37] Speaker C: Yeah, I did one with a longbow. Guy never found him. I found the deer. Arrow was, like, sticking out of him this much. It was in his gut. Oh, that was a cool one, actually.
[00:27:46] Speaker A: Okay, we'll go over there.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: So.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: So I love these stories.
We might need that.
[00:27:52] Speaker B: The thing is, is that once you keep talking, it's just gonna.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: I know.
[00:27:55] Speaker B: Jog your memory more.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Exactly. Because, like, you start doing so many recoveries, it's like, oh, which one? It was what?
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah, but, like, when we first started sitting on. I don't know if I have any stories. And all of a sudden, it's just like, okay, they're starting to come. So I look. I don't remember. I'm saying maybe 30 minutes. Found a deer alive with an arrow stuck out of it. Could see it pretty plainly. And he's like, oh, that's not. I don't know what deer that is. That is. That is not my deer.
Way too small. Like, he's. He's like that. I mean, this thing was just like a little basket thing, and he's just like that for sure. Is not the deer, but. And we're looking around and there's an arrow in it. And I was like, okay, what color was your fletching? And he's like green and white. Okay, I'll show you something here. Oh, no, I zoomed way and you know, I'm like 250ft there. This is at night, you know, with that light.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:28:55] Speaker B: Zoomed in and hit the zoom and a green and white.
[00:28:59] Speaker A: Fletcher.
[00:29:01] Speaker C: Can't deny that one.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: He's like, oh, well, I guess that's the deer.
[00:29:06] Speaker C: Oh my gosh.
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Yeah, so.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: But the deer wasn't dead.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: It wasn't dead. And I don't think it ever died. No.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh. It would be great if you'd have screen recording of that.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I know.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: That would be crazy. Audio exchange. Yeah, definitely not, my dear. And then. And then you bring the drone closer and you hit the zoom and you're like, well, never mind. I guess.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Drone, drone. Don't lie.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: I. I have a story like that, but it is on the channel. I. I should try to link it in this podcast if you guys want to watch it because it was a frustrating night doing deer recoveries with.
Actually, Kevin was still with me. It was the first season. It was a very similar story to what you just said. It was an Amish guy that shot a deer and it ran in quickly, you know, got a shot off and thought it's like 140 inch deer or 150 inch deer. Low light, get out there. This is all recorded. It's literally on the channel. And started looking for deer. Finally found a deer. The deer, he would not claim it as his deer, but found a buck, big blood spot on his back, running down.
But it's like 115 inch deer. And he would not claim it as his deer. But I couldn't. I couldn't point it to him because I couldn't see. Like the arrow. The arrow had fell out. Yeah, but literally the other neighbors were around there when I was doing that recovery. And they're like, he got on the phone with other neighbors around. Hey, did you shoot a deer? No. Did you shoot a deer? No. Nobody shot a deer except that guy. And that's the only deer that we found that was wounded. Unless I think. Unless he came from a long way away.
It was his deer, but he was not. He was not claiming it. And for me, that. I didn't like that because the way we charge for deer recoveries is it's. Well, now the cost is. It's 400 if we find your deer, and it's 200 if we don't find the deer. Well, I couldn't. I couldn't charge the. Yeah.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: You can prove it.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:02] Speaker C: Yeah. That's frustrating.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: It was very frustrating.
[00:31:04] Speaker C: When you've looked everywhere else and there's no deer there that is shot.
[00:31:08] Speaker A: Well, that is laying flat dead because. Because that's the biggest thing. They want it to see a deer that is flat dead. Then. Then maybe that's their deer. But that's, you know, anyhow, that. That. That was one of mine is like. And we made the whole video. Is that. Like, this is frustrating. Now this. They got to the point where this is going to. We need a trail cam photo of the deer you shot, because I might find your deer, and you're not going to accept it.
[00:31:33] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: Tell us about that longbow.
[00:31:36] Speaker C: Oh. Anyhow, so I found the deer. I go out there in the morning, I find the deer, and, I mean, standing on top of a ridge, just standing there, like, in pain, big arrows sticking out of it.
So the deer's still alive. I leave. I had to go, actually, I was still doing trees. So I left, went to work, went to my other work, Came back that night, could not find the deer. Like, I looked everywhere, could not find.
[00:32:00] Speaker A: I think I remember this one.
[00:32:02] Speaker C: I go back the next night because I couldn't go back the following morning. I had something going on. I go back the next night. So this is like day two after he had shot him. And I look and look everywhere. I mean, I'm searched hundreds of acres at this point. I went across the road. Finally I find the deer, and across the road, there was public land. So I find the deer laying flat dead. I'm like, this is. It looked exactly like the deer the guy had shot.
I mean, I couldn't see exactly, but it looked very similar to that deer. And we went. We actually went in, look, looked at the deer. We got to the deer, and the kid picks it up, and he's like, oh, shoot, this is not my deer. I'm like, oh, crap. Like, now I found somebody else's dead deer. And we don't know who it is because it's public land. So anyhow, we just left the deer there. We left, and I literally got back to my truck. Not five minutes later, you call me, and we're like, hey, where are you at? There's a guy. He doesn't really want to pay for it. He can't really afford the. The charge. But there's a Guy over close to your area where you're at, I remember. Would you mind just looking for him? I'm like, dude, I literally already have a pin of that dude's deer.
And so we sent him the pin and it was that guy's deer. That is fantastic. It was freaking awesome.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: That's sweet. So you still did find a dead deer, but not, not, not the one I was looking for. I wonder, I wonder if that. The one that had the arrow sticking out of it if it ended up ever dying.
[00:33:22] Speaker C: I don't know. I mean, it was, it was really, really low gut shot.
Oh, I'm not sure.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: It didn't look.
[00:33:28] Speaker C: And again, I don't know. It was a long bow, so it was a really long arrow and it was sticking out, like, really, really far.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: So if, I don't know, really low hit, I'm going to bring up the guts out. Buck. Like the. On the channel again, there's a bucket I look for. It was hit really, really low. His. His intestines were actually out, but he'd never actually cut the intestines. But because they fell out, then that's what killed them. But it took a long time. And that deer went a long way from where he was last.
[00:33:58] Speaker C: Yeah, it's hard to say because in that area there's a lot of ponds, like a lot of pit strip ponds.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And if he got in there, could.
[00:34:04] Speaker C: Have went in a pond that I wasn't able to see him. I don't know.
[00:34:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:07] Speaker C: But I searched. I mean, there was hundreds of acres that I looked over and I never found him.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: Yeah, those are hard. Like, I had one where I found the deer. It was still alive, but it just looked like it was going to die. Like, I was so confident coming back the next morning and we were going to find that deer dead. And it was like a once in a lifetime for this kid. You know, I would say probably like 180s, 190s something buck, you know, and just couldn't find him the next day. Just like completely ghosted. Just. I looked and I looked so frustrating. And it was like, it was so frustrating because the night before, I mean, I hadn't flown for more than 20 minutes, you know, when I found him. And then the next morning, he's just like, literally.
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: Nowhere around.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: What I usually tell people is think about this.
This. This gives you a perspective of how far the deer could be. If the deer walks only one mile per hour, just one mile per hour. That's like just one step.
Another step. He could Literally be in one hour, a mile away. So if it's three hours, he could be three miles away.
You start thinking about that. Like, that's not that hard for deer to do. I mean, there's literally a time that I've. I've seen a deer, you know, here, and literally not even 10 minutes later. That sucker is way on the other side of the property, so.
[00:35:28] Speaker C: And they move so far. Like, at my place, I have trail camera pictures of a deer. And then our hunting land is about a mile and a half across the country, and we get same. Same trail count pictures of that deer a mile and a half away. So.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And that, you know, that it's happening everywhere in the country, obviously. I. I'd mentioned Derek from whitetail research on other videos in the past. He's showing this stuff now, Right? He's passionate about doing research on deer, and he is physically showing how far some of these deer are moving. Yeah, totally.
[00:36:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And the only, you know, the only caveat to that, you know, deer moving a lot is cattle. Cattle don't move a lot. You know, I find that out doing, like, you know, the pet calls.
I had this one guy that I like, it was freezing cold, like, nine degrees out. And so, like, I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna set up my screen in the back of. You know, I have captain seats in my suv. So I was gonna set up the screen, have him sit back there. He could watch it and, you know.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: Wait, are you doing a pet call right now? Are you looking. What are you looking for?
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm doing. I'm looking for his lost cal. He's been spending two days.
His cattle got out. I think it was like a 4H cow or something. Got out. Been looking for it for two days. Had found tracks and stuff in the woods and could not find it, so called me out. And so I spend 10 minutes to try to make this an experience as well, getting everything set up. Take the drone up, turn.
[00:37:01] Speaker C: There he is.
[00:37:04] Speaker A: You spent more time.
[00:37:05] Speaker B: You spent more time getting set up than it actually took to find him. But actually getting him then was a whole other story, capturing him.
[00:37:15] Speaker C: But I remember another crazy one that you did, and I. It might be on the channel, but you were going out and your light wasn't working, and you found the buck using thermal.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is on the channel.
[00:37:27] Speaker B: Is it the one that then was.
[00:37:29] Speaker C: Still alive up on it? It was still alive.
[00:37:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that was. That was pretty crazy.
[00:37:34] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, It's. It's Kind of hard to tell that story, right?
[00:37:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it's, It's. It's a hard one.
Just because. Yeah. With, with the conditions and flying and thinking. I was just so convinced with the thermal my light was having issues and so was able to. Just convinced that was a dead deer.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: And.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: Yeah. You were just using thermal.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: Yeah, just using the thermal.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: I think that's the time we were having all the issues with the LP12, I think. So everything was Bricken, which was. Yeah, actually, I, I think. Wasn't it foggy that night? That's why the light wouldn't.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: It was a little bit.
It was, but that wouldn't have.
[00:38:13] Speaker C: Yeah, I think your light wasn't working.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: Yeah, the light wasn't. I don't, I don't remember all the details.
[00:38:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: But you walked up on the deer.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: And he was still alive.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you can't even fly legally in the fog anyway, so.
[00:38:27] Speaker A: But that. That being said, Great transition part 108. We need to leave comments.
Every single one of us needs to leave comments.
Anybody that's listening to this, if you fly a drone, I don't care as a thermal drone, is it an agricultural drone? Is it just a photo drone? You need to leave comments on the new proposal that the FAA left for part 108. They are saying that we can't manipulate the drone if it's beyond line of sight.
Leave a comment and. Actually, you know what? I'll link it. I'll link it in the YouTube video of this podcast of a PDF that will help you leave a comment and then just put it in your favorite AI software and just adjust it slightly for your scenario. But dude, if we don't leave comments and the FAA doesn't change just a few things about being able to fly beyond line of sight, we're going to be screwed for the 10 years.
[00:39:27] Speaker C: Yeah, like, they're not going to change it again.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: They won't change it for a while. So. But I, I think they're going to be willing to listen to us because they don't know. Right. The FAA doesn't do deer recovery. They don't do pet recovery or search and rescue and know how vital it is to fly an M30T beyond line of sight right across the trees. I'm not talking that you're going to be, you know, 500ft. You're, you're, you're in a scenario where you're flying it over the trees and you can't see it. So you need to leave comments that. Part 108 super important. Yeah.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:58] Speaker C: The drone is very capable of flying beyond line of sight. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to 100%.
[00:40:03] Speaker A: Yeah. You're going to be able to, you know, Foot put a 4G dongle on it and you'll fly way beyond line of sight. And it just makes them that much more valuable and it helps with search and rescue, helps with doing deer recovery. It helps so much to be able to fly because beyond line of sight. And the thing is this is not new to the faa. Like they get hundreds and thousands of exemptions. So so people petition the FAA to let them fly beyond line of sight with these smaller drones and they've granted thousands, literally thousands of beyond line of sight manipulated flights. There's no reason we can't do it as a part. Did you see the document? Yeah, yeah. So I think it's a great idea. Like Pilot Institute said, like just make it an extra add on. It's like a rating.
[00:40:52] Speaker C: Like an endorsement.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: Yeah, an endorsement and rating to your part one.
[00:40:56] Speaker C: That's a great idea.
[00:40:57] Speaker A: If you want to fly beyond line of sight on your part 107. It's an additional endorsement that you get or a rating. Just like if I'm flying an airplane and I want to go fly multi engine like with two engines on it, I have to get a rating to fly two engines. If I want to want to be able to fly two engines in IFR conditions, I have to get an additional rating to fly multi engines in ifr. It's the same thing. I don't understand why the FAA didn't take this route. So anyhow, I'm telling you guys we need to comment before October 6th or we could be, you know, dealing with this.
[00:41:34] Speaker C: I really think they just didn't add that because they don't know well.
[00:41:38] Speaker A: Well, I partially. Well, I think the biggest companies that are pushing this and I'm serious is huge. Amazon, Amazon, Walmart, those type of things where that's who the FAA is heard from. Heard from her from. Is not us. Because we're busy. Right. We're busy having drone businesses. We don't have time to reach out.
[00:41:57] Speaker C: Yeah. We don't have a guy to strictly. This is your job.
[00:42:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Do this.
[00:42:01] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:42:02] Speaker A: So that's why it's push the part one away. Is is proposed for large commercial delivery services. But I'm telling you we can make a difference and we will be able to fly beyond line of sight. We with man in the loop or pilot in the loop. If they hear from us, they're not going to put it in there. If they don't hear from us, and so do they. If you made it to the podcast this far, do make sure that you leave a comment, take 20 minutes out.
[00:42:28] Speaker C: Of your day and do it.
[00:42:29] Speaker A: Yep, totally. I used to think that government, you know, talking to government doesn't make that big of a difference, but we have to. We have to talk to them. Yeah, dude. Getting into stuff that we weren't able to show on Drone Deer Recovery, the channel was all the herd senses that we got to do in.
It would have been in 2023, but it was like January and February.
After we went through the season, I created this video.
Just a brief little video is something that I was going to do as Drone Deer Recovery as well is doing her senses. Right. Like, I'll come to you, I'll fly your land, and we'll count the deer. We'll tell you how many bucks and how many does. I don't know exactly what you do with the data at that point. That's what I was thinking. I didn't know. Now we have the her senses course that we built that awesome put together. But we. I made a video. It's just a short video. You were in it, Right. We went to the hunting land, we counted the year, and then we put it out there. I think it did close to 100,000 views. And the phone and the DMs absolutely went mad because, like, I just showed a. A new way. Look at that new way. Jay's got a new way shirt on. Wow. I showed a new way of getting data that is more accurate, in my opinion, than any trail cam study that you can do.
And it proved right. We started doing some of these farms and we had. We had managers on those farms that did trail cam studies for them. And they were like, guys, yeah. There's no question that your data that you just provided to us is a lot more accurate than any. Any trail cam study that they have ever done. Tm start going wild.
We start getting requests to do farms, ranches all over the country. Literally.
[00:44:13] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:14] Speaker A: Ever anywhere from Colorado to the East Coast.
We were getting calls. And so most of these farms were ranches that didn't want me to film on their ranch because of, I don't know, probably just privacy.
[00:44:31] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:44:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Although, you know, I could have filmed it in a way that people wouldn't have known where we're at, but they just. That's something that they didn't want and also didn't feel that it was right for me to be like saying where I'm going, how big the ranch is and showing it, physically showing I can talk about it. I'm not going to give names of the people. But my first big one that I remember that we got is. And it was a lead from Working Class Bow Hunter podcast. I was on the Working Class Bow Hunter podcast and the manager of.
Was it 1200 acres in Wisconsin?
[00:45:06] Speaker C: That was 3000 acres.
[00:45:07] Speaker A: Was that 3000?
[00:45:08] Speaker C: Yeah, because we split 1200 acres in Tennessee.
[00:45:12] Speaker A: Well, there's also in Oklahoma, there was 1200, 1700. Good thing we got Jay here. So the first big lead that I got because he heard us talking about Her Senses was from when I was on the Working Class Bow Hunter podcast. He works for a 3,000 acre ranch in Wisconsin. He was a retired NFL player and he wanted to know if we could come count his deer. And that day we took the airplane from Ohio. But what was that airport? Upper Sandusky, I think.
[00:45:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:45:45] Speaker A: We got up early in the morning, we flew. I have to give a little context of how this stuff works. Like, so doing her census is very difficult to schedule. And you guys can jump in here at any time to, you know, say why or whatever, but it's hard to schedule because. Right. So Wisconsin. He wanted me to do that. Her senses. Well, I look at the weather three days out and we're trying to cloud forecast. So we use an app called Wendy and we forecast if it's going to be overcast and we want it to be overcast and we need to do it in the daytime. Cheese. Remember that one we did at night?
[00:46:23] Speaker C: Oh, it was brutal.
It's way easier to do it in the daytime because the deer are usually bedded or they're not moving around too far. But in the daytime, often it's sunny. So it's really hard to use. Thermal.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:46:33] Speaker C: So we need clouds in order to do it properly.
[00:46:35] Speaker A: And we like to do them between like 10 and 2. So the deer are bedded. Like, you know, Jay is saying. So we're trying to forecast this stuff and schedule it. And finally we figured out we cannot, we cannot go this far and schedule these things because just drive time, Right? Drive time to get up there would have been like 13 hours. I'm a pilot and so I rented an airplane to fly us to these locations. I was flying the airplane. I had a CFI with me because I was getting my instrument rating, which was perfect. Right. It all worked out. I was getting instrument training, flying to areas that were Cloudy. That's what you want when you're doing instrument training. Cloudy. And once we get there, we're able to do these herd analysis. We flew to Wisconsin, did 3,000 acres for him, got to go into his man cave. Man cave, that's is just the man cave.
[00:47:22] Speaker C: That's a mansion.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: Not much of a cave.
[00:47:26] Speaker C: No, it was not his. I mean, it was a shop that was just massive, like, massive. And just the whole thing was filled with trophies that he shot over the years.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: And it was just, it's an unbelievable feeling because this is somebody that just let you come on to their 3,000acre ranch and let you go into this big beautiful building that just, is just a hunter's, you know, what you dream of because of YouTube. That's crazy. I, I think of that every time that we get to experience the things that we experience because of YouTube. I'm telling you, it has changed our lives. It's changed all of our lives. Here, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok. And those people watch the content, believed who I was because of that and said, yes, come to my ranch. You're more than welcome, stay. And the people even let us stay in their lodges at times. So we fly to Wisconsin, we do that herd analysis. Same day we fly to Illinois, we do a herd analysis down there, or herd census, whatever you want to call it. Then at night, if you guys are watching this on, on YouTube, you'll get to see just some of these vertical clips because a lot of things are happening. I'm flying the airplane, I'm videoing what we're doing and so you guys can see us flying when we got. Actually, I'm going to tell you the story of flying into Wisconsin. So the thing that you have to remember is it's cloudy and it's cold. Those are two things that create icing. When you are flying an airplane, you are at altitude and it's cold and you come down through a cloud, even though the cloud looks puffy, that thing, that moisture hits the, the leading edge of the airplane and that leading edge is cold. Well, that droplet hits that and freezes on the edge of your, you know, airplane leading edge. So propeller windshield and the, the, the wings get covered with ice. We're coming down through there, we're shooting approach. You know, we got cleared to shoot.
[00:49:26] Speaker C: The approach and the airplane is not icing rated.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: Well, we don't, well, it's forecast that we don't tell them that it's not icing rated. It is. As long as you don't have to get out of it. But yeah, technically not.
What would that be called? Known into flying.
Flying into known icing. It's definitely doesn't have de icing boots. Does not have heated propeller to shed the ice. So if you have an airplane that has that, you can break it off. It'll build up. You break it off and you. It'll be fine. Well, this one wasn't. It was a bonanza. A 36.
Geez. I feel like I'm rambling because I'm. I just keep going on this airplane. Anyhow, we're coming down through here and I'm looking at my leading edge and I'm like, holy smokes. There's like icicles starting to build up on this thing. Were you worried at that point?
[00:50:12] Speaker C: A little bit.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:50:14] Speaker C: A little bit. There was definitely one time I was like, oh boy. I mean it was like a couple inches of ice on the. On the edge.
[00:50:20] Speaker A: Anyhow, we got it down, had ice build up and there was still ice on the leading edge of the airplane once we land it. But that was just some of the stuff we were dealing with because we, we had to get to these places when it was overcast and it's cold.
We were dealing with it literally that.
[00:50:36] Speaker C: Morning we were sitting on the Runway for probably 30 minutes debating if we want to take off or not. Oh yeah, yeah.
[00:50:42] Speaker A: I think that. No, that was in Canton. That was in Canton that morning. I told him to fly into Canton.
[00:50:48] Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah. He picked us up in Canton.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
That was a different morning.
[00:50:52] Speaker C: Was that a different day? Yeah. Okay.
[00:50:53] Speaker A: But that's when we went to Georgia.
[00:50:55] Speaker C: Oh yeah, yeah.
[00:50:56] Speaker A: So it was cold up here and we were dealing with freezing rain. That's worse than just clouds because that is. It's clear on your leading edge and can't see him. Anyhow, we go to Illinois, get that thing done. Then we fly through the night to Oklahoma, get to do a 1700 acre ranch. I'll have a clip of me on the back porch of this lodge here. Huge lodge. Just chilling on the back porch, counting people's deer.
[00:51:24] Speaker C: That was a pretty sweet place.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: It's like, is this real life? Yeah.
[00:51:28] Speaker C: That place had hogs.
[00:51:30] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:51:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Hogs. Cattle, I think there was. And a bunch of deer.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: Yeah. But some of those places I would love to be able to show you guys on the drone Derek. Every channel. But you know, it's just one of those things. It's too private.
Not going to do that. But I did really appreciate those people reaching out to us. At drone day recovery and trust us to do their. Her senses. I remember that one in Oklahoma, they. In order for them to be in this program of a. Management. Deer management, something. If you guys know anything about it, speak up. Remember, they had to do a trail camera study. Yeah, they had.
[00:52:06] Speaker C: I forget.
[00:52:07] Speaker A: To get a certain number of tags or something.
[00:52:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I believe.
[00:52:10] Speaker B: Yeah. Because they. I think they. Like, you're talking about the one in Georgia or Oklahoma.
[00:52:15] Speaker A: Does Georgia maybe have the same. Georgia has. There's this program that you get a certain amount of tags or something, but you have to do a survey or a trail camera, you know, study for these tags. And this was the first time that thermal drones were used. And so then they had to talk to the Oklahoma wildlife agency to see if this study would be valid for them to get these tags, and they had to get it approved. And it was. And I think to this day, they're probably still doing it. They're just using other local thermal drone pilots out there to do it is by far.
[00:52:47] Speaker C: I mean, it is the most accurate way you will ever count your deer right now.
[00:52:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I did one last year on 600 acres. And it was. It was a pending high fence.
And knew there was this one buck that the one guy wanted to see. He knew he was in there, had had pictures of him and stuff like that. And we went through the whole thing, couldn't find him. And I was just like, oh, man. Just like, I know the technologies. Able. We're able.
[00:53:15] Speaker A: You never see it.
[00:53:16] Speaker B: Didn't find him. And then, like, two weeks later, he sent me a picture, and he's like, this is why I didn't find him. He was dead. He'd found him dead on the property. So it's just like. Yeah, it just.
It was just kind of a testament to how accurate this stuff is because, like, you didn't find him because he wasn't alive.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that. That brings up a high fence that we did in Virginia or West Virginia. And you guys. You guys did that one this year. I think you. You and I did it first. He had elk in there, and. Oh, yeah, you did.
[00:53:50] Speaker B: I think you did that one.
[00:53:51] Speaker A: You and Dennis, I think did it. That is a. A client that feels like he. He has more than what the drones are counting. But we did it twice.
[00:54:00] Speaker C: We did it two times. Yeah.
[00:54:02] Speaker A: And we got one more or one last deer than we did the first time. And when you guys did it, he also thought that he had a little bit more than what you were giving him. I believe the data. I Believe the drones are more accurate than what they were thinking?
[00:54:16] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:54:17] Speaker C: 100. Like, it is way more accurate than you sitting out in a blind and seeing a deer from 300 yards away. And you might think it's a different deer than what it actually is.
[00:54:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:54:27] Speaker B: And you, as a pilot, you can give that level of confidence just based on, you know, if it is heavy pines, then you know that you're going to maybe miss one or two or three, whatever, like, or however that those conditions are. But then you can convey that. But there are times that, like, it's so clear. Like, the data is so clear based on you knowing how well you covered the area. It's just like. Yeah, you. Yeah, it's just insane.
[00:54:50] Speaker A: I agree. But doing the herd census and flying ourselves all across the country, if I would try to remember this states, it was for sure. Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Oklahoma, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, West Virginia.
They were Tennessee.
[00:55:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
Catalina Island.
[00:55:12] Speaker A: We've done. Yeah, we. We have not told that story about the Cal. Catalina thing, but we. We got to do something on Catalina island that at some point we can talk about more. But Tennessee, remember the one time we flow, we flew either Alabama or Arkansas, and we got there and it had already started. Louisiana was it. I think it was already started greening up.
Okay. So up north here in Ohio, our trees still didn't have leaves. And we get down there and it's like, oh, my gosh, springtime.
Yeah. Yeah. Literally. Yeah. And I just called the customer. I was like, I feel so bad. Like, we're not going to be able to give you good data. We.
You don't have to pay me, like, no, no payment required. I just feel bad. We scheduled this. We want it to come count your deer for you, but we won't be able to give you good data. And we told him we can't do.
[00:56:04] Speaker C: It and went, no one left. Yeah.
[00:56:06] Speaker A: But he was appreciative that we came down. I do think that he probably got a local guy the next year because, you know, we. We showed all this stuff on drone deer recovery and hundreds and hundreds of people started buying thermal drones to have their own thermal drone business. I don't blame him. It's good money. And so, you know, as far as doing the herd census in different parts of the country, doesn't really happen that much for us now because they have closer options. Unless it's really, really big land, then we would probably get involved. But I. Some of those herd senses, just being able to go to land, that is Specifically bought to do deer hunting on and experiencing it. It was just crazy. Never thought that it's something that we could.
[00:56:52] Speaker C: Yeah, no, I remember that one farm, and I think it was in Kentucky.
[00:56:55] Speaker A: We did one in Tennessee, and then.
[00:56:57] Speaker C: We drove up to Kentucky.
[00:56:58] Speaker A: The Kentucky was out of control.
[00:56:59] Speaker C: The most deer that I've ever seen in my life. Like, you would count a group of 25 deer, and you would move 100 yards, and there'd be another group of 25, 30 deer.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: Like, it was absolutely. I remember how down that landowner was. Like, he. He didn't realize how many doe were on his land.
Like, he wanted big buck. Right. Like, that's what he wanted. And he was seeing the sheer amount of does that they would need to kill off to try to help his buck population.
[00:57:29] Speaker C: Yeah, I think. Didn't he say he was wanting to shoot after. After we'd looked at it? I think he was wanting to shoot like 100 does or something.
[00:57:34] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:57:36] Speaker C: It might even be 200.
[00:57:37] Speaker A: It was to the point where they were talking about doing deer drives and, you know, just basically slaughtering them because they're. There were that many deer. Yeah. It was crazy.
[00:57:47] Speaker C: It was insane.
[00:57:48] Speaker A: It was.
[00:57:48] Speaker C: That was difficult to do because. Yeah, you'd have groups here of 20, 30 deer. You'd move up a little bit. Another 20, 30 deer. By the time you came back, those 20, 30 deer were starting to move a little bit. It was.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: It was. I think that was the same day we did that. They have a YouTube channel. They call it Buck Factory, I think, or something.
[00:58:05] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, Wasn't it?
[00:58:07] Speaker A: That's the same day, maybe. I have a feeling.
[00:58:10] Speaker C: Yeah, but might have been.
[00:58:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I think they have made a whole. Whole video on drone deer recovery coming down there, doing a herd senses. I didn't do a video, but, yeah, those are just some of the stories that we got to experience and do, and I thought it'd be cool to share. If you guys want to hear more untold stories, I'm sure that there's a lot more we could talk about. And, you know, we got Matt, we got Logan, we got Wendell, we got Dennis. There's so many local pilots here that I work with that have stories that. That we could do this a lot more if you could probably sit here.
[00:58:44] Speaker C: And talk about it all day long.
[00:58:45] Speaker A: Probably.
[00:58:46] Speaker C: Yeah. Just a little update. Dennis just sent me a picture of the two missing elk hunters found dead after days of searching.
[00:58:53] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:58:53] Speaker C: So.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: So this is happening right now. Well, let's read it. I mean, we. We talked about it in the podcast. So now we know that.
Wow, that is crazy. It's just like the Charlie Kirk saying. Like, before hopping on this podcast, I created a video for Drone Day Recovery where we did EHD survey stuff and I shot that whole video. But when I heard of Charlie Kirk getting shot, I was so. I was upset and my mood just changed and I was like super close to just turning around and not shooting that whole EHD video. And then the first edit came out and it was like, clear, I'm not going to release that edit how it was because of my mood. And then I just reshot that whole video here in the studio. And this is kind of the same thing. It's like, man, we were just talking about these guys being missing in the beginning of this podcast and literally what. We've been talking for an hour or so, and now we find out that they've.
[00:59:54] Speaker C: So they were. They searched for six days before their bodies were found. So the deputies were concerned due to heavy rain and bad weather. This resulted in a massive search with helicopters, multi county state ground teams, dog teams, drone teams, ATVs, and local volunteers. The sheriff's office said.
Yeah, people came from all across Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, wyoming. Yeah. On September 11th, the men were found seen on a trail camera near their vehicle in the trailhead area. Other hunters also reported seeing them just a day before the search began. The search lasted six days before their bodies were discovered.
[01:00:27] Speaker A: I wonder. So we won't know. Obviously we won't be able to share it on this podcast, but, like, why? That's going to be hard to piece. Like.
[01:00:35] Speaker C: Yeah, they were found two miles from the trailer head, so it's not that far in.
[01:00:40] Speaker A: Huh.
[01:00:41] Speaker C: Geez, that is horrible.
[01:00:43] Speaker A: Not good, but. Well, not a good way to end the podcast, but they're, you know, that's.
[01:00:50] Speaker C: Yeah. Tragic.
[01:00:51] Speaker A: It is.
[01:00:52] Speaker C: Glad they found him, though.
[01:00:53] Speaker A: Yep. We literally started it with that and now we're gonna end it. Yeah.
[01:00:58] Speaker C: That's crazy. He just texted me 15 minutes ago, Dennis, because.
[01:01:03] Speaker A: Because we had talked about it. Literally going there and doing it. I talked with him yesterday, so I. I wonder what ended up finding him. You know, dogs or was it thermal?
It's just sad.
[01:01:14] Speaker C: Yeah, that is sad.
[01:01:16] Speaker A: Too bad that they were dead. Like, what if they would have been alive two weeks later? That would have been a insane story.
[01:01:22] Speaker C: Well, I said, actually it was only six days after the search. They found them. So it wasn't two weeks.
[01:01:26] Speaker A: Okay. Alrighty. There you go. Hope you guys enjoyed that one. Subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. If you're listening to this on YouTube, if you're listening on Spotify or the other podcast places where you listen to stuff, I don't know how that works. If you subscribe or like, or whatever, but do that thing. That's all we got. We'll catch you guys on the next one.
