Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: All righty, guys.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Welcome back to the drone on show. I'm Mike. We have Kevin and Jason back on the show, and today we're just going to send it, because sometimes you just got to have a conversation and see what comes out about it. But of course, I'm going to start it off with drone deer recovery. Season is in. It literally kicked off here in Ohio on Saturday. What do you think? Let's roll it kind of season four.
[00:00:21] Speaker C: It snuck up on me. Like, to be honest, it's. It's. It's, like, here so fast. It feels like we're already in October.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: I feel like our business. Right. We. We have different kind of industries that we're doing with the. The drones that each has its own season, and it goes by week by month, and then it just shortens the whole year down. It's literally.
[00:00:44] Speaker C: We don't really have quiet time or, like, slow times, because when drone deer is slow, then new way ag is ripping. Ripping.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
And it's kind of the same way, like, from the service standpoint, like, you're working in the service when, you know, spray season's on, service is ripping, like, trying to get drones fixed. We're sending parts out. The more I think about this, you know, we talk at times like, oh, there'll be a time to slow down, or in our slow season. Remember you used to say, in a slow season, we'll. We'll talk about it.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: It slows. It slowed down. Like, the service center slowed down a lot, but it's still busy.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: And I think it's just going to continue getting there.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: There's something like, it's a little sad that you used to hunt before you started finding deer for other people.
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:01:29] Speaker C: And since then, I mean, you hunt a little bit.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah. I did a deer recovery last night, and they asked me that.
Go ahead.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: I had so much fun, though, hunting. Two times I've hunted.
[00:01:40] Speaker B: That's why Dennis gave you crap. Like last time on the last podcast, Dennis was like, how did you ask him? Are you, like, really a hunter? And he's like, I am much more of a hunter than you are.
Something like that. So you're saying you want to get back?
[00:01:55] Speaker C: I wanted. I mean, it's. I want to do it. We. We lease land.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Yep. You know, we hardly do anything.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: We don't do much with it because we don't have time because we just work.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: Yeah. But. Well, and the other thing is, we just don't have really good bucks over there. That's, like, motivating. To go try to hunt them down. But that land we lease, usually, you know, it's later in the year when those bucks start moving in because there's a lot of crop fields and stuff. Crop fields.
[00:02:19] Speaker A: There's couple big bucks around it, but it's. They're nothing really.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Talking about that land, we spent thousands of dollars on that land to try to put in an alfalfa hayfield completely miserably failed.
And that video. That video will be coming out.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: It is so much worse than what I think what I thought.
Dude, you walk over there, the weeds are literally taller than what you are.
[00:02:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I had to think of farmers, like think about how hard these farmers work. And it's not. There's just people overlook how hard farmers actually work to get a good crop. There's always something that they're doing with their fields to try to keep the weeds from taking over.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: We should have took a day like three months ago and just went over there and sprayed it again.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:03] Speaker A: But we didn't.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: But even just, even just any feel right, you got to give it tender loving care. It's like anything else out there. If you're doing a business, you have to keep working. You have to keep like up on it or it will go downhill. That's the same way in this farming industry. It's like I thought, I'm going to be able to just throw this seed out for this alfalfa and it's just going to grow and it's going to be this luscious green hay field and we can go, you know, do hay bales wrong to look at farmers that have a nice alfalfa field now. Total respect.
[00:03:34] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
It's like we kill everything and just unleash the weeds.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: Yeah, we did. We totally did.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: But it was in weeds for, I mean, what, 20 some years?
[00:03:45] Speaker B: Yeah, many, many years. Yep. Many years.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: And we went and killed it, planted alfalfa, weeds came up.
[00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:53] Speaker A: So next year there's no alfalfa there.
[00:03:55] Speaker C: Next year when you do it again.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: Well, we probably won't plant alfalfa there.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, a miserable thing we learned is I thought PH is not that important for soil. Like your PH levels for alfalfa. From the research I did, they wanted you to be between like 6 and 7.2 ph levels. Ours is like a 5, you know, bad. So we did a soil sample after we spent all the money.
[00:04:22] Speaker C: That's good.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: And then figured out that we actually need 3, 000 pounds of lime just to get the soil to the pH. That per acre? Yeah, per acre. Per acre. Yeah.
[00:04:32] Speaker C: That's good. Good project for the T100. Let's do it.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: But it takes a couple years for it to actually.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Yeah, yep. That's in problem.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it takes a lot of time.
[00:04:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:04:42] Speaker A: So you can't just do it once.
[00:04:43] Speaker C: Is that a project for a T100?
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Oh, it could do it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll definitely do it.
But we, we heard from another farmer that, yeah, they told us to do £3,000 to the acre, but he said just do half because the soil can't even absorb that much. He was trying to say that it was what, 1500 pounds?
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Something like that per year or something like that. Yeah.
[00:05:04] Speaker B: Is what it can actually absorb. So now I started seeing this project. It's like a two, three year deal.
We're busy. I don't know where you got time for that.
[00:05:14] Speaker C: Does this make you want to farm, though? Like, could you get into it if you could learn, like, you'd get all into the weed to learn about it.
[00:05:21] Speaker B: If I'm not busy. Right. If you wouldn't have a bunch of other things going on? 100%.
[00:05:26] Speaker A: It's a full time job.
[00:05:27] Speaker B: Yeah, like, farming is a full time job. Because, like, okay, we would have been around the field, we would have seen, okay, Weezer's taken over. Like, like, do something about the weeds. Well, we never went back. We're just like, you throw the seed down and it's just magically going to grow. Well, not true, because the. The weeds started overtaking the sprouts. Well, the weeds grew faster and they just shaded out the little new sprouts and they died.
[00:05:50] Speaker A: Yeah, we probably didn't go back for two months.
Stupid.
[00:05:54] Speaker B: I mean, anybody listening that is not a farmer, they can probably tell us. Well, yeah, dog eyes, I could have told you. If you're not going to check on your field in two months, it's probably not going to work. But you know what? We're gonna share it. We're gonna share the failures that we had and learn from it. Because if I can help another guy that's wanting to be crazy like me and Jay were, that one day, just do everything in one day. That's what we did. We did everything. We cut the grass, we tilled the dirt, we seeded, we fertilized, and we rolled it all in one day. That I thought that's how it works. Nope, didn't work that way. So if there's another guy listening or watching this podcast, don't do what we did. That's what I'm saying.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Definitely not. Yeah, we just wasted probably three grand and now we have a big weed field wor worse than what we did.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: If you would go back, Landon, it is ridiculous. Cuz you were there when we were cutting.
[00:06:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:06:47] Speaker B: Oh, it is literally as high as my head.
[00:06:50] Speaker A: Yeah, you probably want to see deer walking through it. It's so tall.
It's bad.
[00:06:57] Speaker D: Some cool top down shots though.
[00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Right.
Kevin, what's on your mind to this morning? Like, you're, you know, you're the procurement guy and we talk about it often on podcast, but we're going to keep bringing it up because that's just. It's part of the industry. Guys want to have updates check in. We did talk with head of dji, Government affairs. Is that, Is that what it was? They're wanting to get us some meetings on the Hill, like actually talking at the White House. What was your feeling of that meeting? Would you say was good or bad? Because my opinion, I didn't like.
[00:07:33] Speaker C: Was. It was interesting, I think.
So we're meeting with these people that are. This is what they do all day, every day.
[00:07:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: They're in this whole, like, what's happening with, you know, China? US relations.
I don't think relationships are getting better. US and China. I don't, I don't think they're improving. I don't think there's a magical light at the end of the tunnel. Tunnel.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: So you think it's our president.
The like, was it better if it wasn't such a hard ass of a president in there before? Like, was it better? I'm just asking. I. I don't know.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: I think it's always been not great.
I mean, even, even before Trump came in. Like, they're all talking about they're planning for a war with China. Like, literally you hear people talking, they're planning for 2027, 2028, like a war with China.
[00:08:19] Speaker B: Yeah. But I feel like I've heard that since I was a young kid.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Is it getting better or worse under Trump? I definitely don't think it's getting better under Trump.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: It's just crazy that they use this big company, dji, Right. They built an absolute empire and that's the company that they're going after because they're so well known in the drone industry.
[00:08:39] Speaker C: Yeah, they have. I mean, they have.
Every month they're releasing a couple new products, not just in drones, but cameras.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Cameras, mice.
[00:08:49] Speaker C: Yep. And they have good products.
[00:08:51] Speaker B: Yeah, they do. But do you know, I was thinking this, do you think we think is just DJI getting nailed because it's a product we sell or is there, I don't know if this is a thing. People buy furniture from China, right? They have a whole warehouse. It's just furniture related. Do they have issues? Oh yeah. You think so?
[00:09:13] Speaker A: I think Trump just put a 50 tariff on like kitchen cabinets and that type of stuff that's coming from China.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: It did not have it originally or what?
[00:09:21] Speaker C: No.
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Huh.
[00:09:22] Speaker C: Well, like that's off of the. You have the country of origin, China, 55% tariffs. Now if you're bringing kitchen cabinets from China, you're paying 105% tariffs.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Oh, no way.
[00:09:32] Speaker C: So it'll stack on top of like that's the same thing for aluminum and all steel.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: Okay. So it's not just us dealing with.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: It'S, it's a lot of people. Basically anything coming from China I think is getting, getting tariff pretty good.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: I mean, because there's companies in the.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: US like Whirlpool, they make refrigerators, dishwashers.
[00:09:49] Speaker B: That type of stuff.
[00:09:50] Speaker A: Washers, dryers, washers, dryers. And other companies from, you know, China that basically undercut Whirlpool. And Whirlpool was actually going, I don't know if they were going out of business, but they were really hurting before Trump came in. And I think that's part of the reason why he's putting tariffs on China is so that American businesses can actually make it here.
[00:10:11] Speaker D: So he's doing a really good job at implementing America first. Right, like buy local, support local.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: It is, it's helping American companies up. But man, it's hurting the consumers.
[00:10:22] Speaker C: Yeah, I think, yeah, because consumers, when they have to buy American products, they just spend more.
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Well, yeah, it's just more money. I mean, we talk about it just in the drone industry itself. It does, it's, it's friggin crazy to think that if you can't buy an M4T right? In our opinion right now, with the compactness of the M4T and just the versatility that it has and the quality of camera, what it does, you're supposed to buy a Skydio that is not even half as good and quality on camera, but almost double the price, is.
[00:10:57] Speaker D: It, it might not apply to drones specifically, but has the American consumer just been conditioned that prices are less when buying from out of country? And you know, manufacturing in the US is always more expensive. Is it just hurting the, the fact that we have been Conditioned that certain prices are a lot lower when buying out of China and other places like that. I don't think in drones, like, because the technology difference is there in terms of how far ahead and how far behind the the US is. But I think there's definitely a bit of the US consumer has been conditioned that, you know, stuff is a lot cheaper when you buy certain places. Same thing with Australia. When I was there, you know, people bought from Australia and, or bought from China and. Because everything in Australia was more expensive.
[00:11:45] Speaker B: Huh. Well, I mean, we gotta give China some credit because they totally built their infrastructure around manufacturing. They totally did it where other, other countries weren't doing that because they were building it. So why build it in house?
And they really, really did.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: It was a screw up by our politicians, I think.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: From, from the get go.
Because China used to not manufacture everything.
Now they manufacture everything.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: Other thing on my mind this morning is our pilot locator map. That thing is bananas.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: That thing's awesome.
[00:12:24] Speaker C: I can go on to the portal and I can see how many leads are being generated in real time.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:30] Speaker C: And man, our network of pilots are getting leads. Like in the early days, you remember in the early days, we had these Facebook groups with a little map with the kind of a, you know, and people were supposed to go find a Facebook group, find an image, find a.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: Phone, call multiple people and I mean, clearly that's not a good way of doing it. Yeah. Through the Facebook groups. So you're impressed with the drone deer recovery pilot locator map. That's what you're telling me?
[00:12:55] Speaker C: I'm impressed with it. Yep. And I'm gonna just tell you right now, I haven't seen this for today.
[00:13:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:13:00] Speaker C: And it's not the weekend, huh?
[00:13:02] Speaker B: No, it's. We're, we're Wednesday morning right now.
[00:13:05] Speaker C: So this always spikes on the weekend when there's, you know, more people hunting.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: But if I go look at the.
[00:13:10] Speaker B: Amount of leads for this week or.
[00:13:12] Speaker C: Just today, let's say yesterday, how many? We had fifth. So 15 leads on Tuesday.
[00:13:18] Speaker A: Jeez.
[00:13:19] Speaker C: And that's for our. So that. And that's early season.
I mean, what, this is going to be in October?
[00:13:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Starting about mid October to the end of November, 1st of December. Because the rut kind of moves from the north to the south.
Yeah. So basically mid October, it's going to start, you know, in the northern part of the states and it's going to move its way down and you're gonna see those leads flowing in.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: It's Freaking hot here.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: It was 85 degrees yesterday, I think. Yeah. And I just checked the weather. Cause I'm like, I can't say that I was thinking about hunting, but I was like, man, I maybe go hunting if it be like a cold front move through. There's literally no cold front coming for another two weeks. But you'll also see that Kevin, on the locator map is leads coming in when there's a big weather change. I guarantee you people hunt those cold fronts. And it's literally like. It was when I started drone deer.
I remember one Christmas, this literally was season two or season one. We're here in the shop, we're having like a family Christmas thing, and a huge cold front blew through it. It was like, you probably remember. Yeah, it was like minus 10 or something.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: It was freaking cold.
[00:14:37] Speaker B: Literally. People went hunting on Christmas Eve Eve. They went hunting because of this big cold front. Because that's what. If you're a decent, serious hunter, you hunt the cold fronts. And my phone was blowing up on Christmas Eve. I asked Karen, my wife, if I can go do the recoveries. And she was like, no, you got to set boundaries.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: This is one day you cannot go do it.
[00:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:59] Speaker B: But literally, I remember I had like three phone calls while we were at Christmas Eve party for people wanting, you know, they needed help.
[00:15:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: Couldn't help them, though. I could have, but I wasn't allowed.
[00:15:15] Speaker D: Sorry, Mike, was that. Was that pretty easy for you to say? Okay, like, sorry?
[00:15:19] Speaker B: No.
[00:15:19] Speaker D: Or was. Were you like. Was it pretty rough internally?
[00:15:22] Speaker A: You.
[00:15:22] Speaker D: You wanted to say yes.
[00:15:24] Speaker B: It's so hard to tell. Okay, so somebody's calling you, right? They want help. They want help. They just. They just shot this buck and they need help and they call you the only person at that time that's able to help them. Because there weren't. They, you know, there wasn't the pilot locator map, where there's hundreds of pilots, and you call them back and like, sorry, I'm just not going to be able to do it. It just hurts. It's kind of like last night, so. Got a call last night and it was literally like, what was it, 9 or 9:30? I was just getting ready to read a bedtime story to Viviana, got a call. Can you come find my buck? Tried talking the dude into, hey, just. Let's just push it off till the morning. You know, you probably hit him in the gut.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Let's.
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Let's wait, give him some time. And he thought about it. He's like, well, I got Work tomorrow. And I don't think I can call my boss at this late the hour, but I'll try. So he called his boss and he said. And then he called me back. He's like, me and my brother talked about it and we'd like you to come tonight. I was like, shucks. So I try calling a couple other guys. Call Matt. I wanted him to have the opportunity to go do it because I didn't want to do it. Nope. Couldn't find anybody. Well, then I already had. Told him that I'll come find it. And so there you go.
[00:16:44] Speaker C: You went to do it.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: I went to do it at like 10 o'. Clock. I was pulling out of the driveway. Didn't get back home last night or this morning till like 12:30. But it was. It was worth it because I was able to help him. I found his buck. He was jacked up. I'm fired up. It's about a half mile back in public land. Had to drag him all the way out. I was thinking T100. Here we go. Throwing it on the back of the truck. Don't. Do not kid yourself, guys. I'm doing it. I'm throwing it on back of the truck. Because when I find out there, that's what I'm offering. You want to drag it or do you want me to fly it out? I'm here anyhow.
[00:17:18] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:17:18] Speaker D: So you helped drag it out.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: I help film. Okay, I'm dragging it out.
[00:17:24] Speaker D: Okay, cool.
[00:17:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:25] Speaker D: Yeah. I just wasn't sure if, you know, if the. The muscle came along with, you know.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: I felt like I had my hands full. So I. I had the 360, I had the lights, I had my controller and the drone carrying it in to the. To where the deer was just a filming. Yeah. So if you guys watch recovery, that's what you get. I. So you call.
[00:17:46] Speaker D: You carried the drone.
[00:17:48] Speaker B: Carried a drone. Because when I get.
[00:17:49] Speaker D: We don't get you a little backpack.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: Oh, that. Talking about the 4T, like, that's another reason that I like it. I think I might like it better than the 4 TD is. I'm going to build a little strap that goes around the drone, keeps the props in. I tuck that little baby right underneath my arm and I'm just walking like it's like no big deal. And it's filming the whole thing.
You know what?
[00:18:11] Speaker C: Like a gimbal.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: It also doubles as a nice spotlight. Just turn it on on your controller on the one side. No, see. Whatever you want to see. My light was the brightest light from Anybody there?
[00:18:21] Speaker D: Interesting, because I know we've carried it and use a thermal.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:24] Speaker D: For some interesting shots. But that's cool.
[00:18:26] Speaker B: We got the gimbal and the light. Yeah. It's so small. You got the light, you got the gimbal, and then you get some sick shots going in and out. I'm like, there's so many different things that it does that I didn't even think about it until you're actually doing it. But I do have to get this little strap thing that, you know, tucks in the. The propellers, and away you go. Have a thermal camera, have a spotlight, have a nice gimbal. Like, you can get super smooth footage.
[00:18:53] Speaker C: That's amazing.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: It is really amazing. Yeah. And the thing doesn't weigh. What does that 32 weigh? About eight, eight and a half pounds with. With the batteries in it. Yeah. It starts becoming a pain when you're hiking it back in there. Now, I don't want to complain. That 30 t rockstar of an aircraft, like, if you want it. Yep, it's still good. But, yeah, that's. That. That's how my night went last night. Talking about just helping people out. Right. I tried getting somebody else to do it, and I already told him, we'll help him. And so as the guy out there, I could also say that I wouldn't need to do it. Right. I wouldn't need to do it, but I want to help him.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Texted me, and I was. I was laying in bed. I'm like, oh, my gosh. I hate saying no, but. No.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: You're in training, Jay. You're just in training. You're learning how to say no.
[00:19:40] Speaker D: Good.
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: If you would have texted me like, 15 minutes before that, I'd have. I'd have been on it.
[00:19:45] Speaker B: Yeah. It wasn't important to have two drones on this one anyhow.
Really super, super thick. Obviously, early season, we talk about it in the videos. It's super thick. Trying to get your RGB camera to see is one thing. Thermal, you know, punches down through. You can see the heat signatures. Yeah, I found it.
And then once we got to the deer, we're, like, looking up, and we're like, how in this. Like, you couldn't even see to the sky, but that thermal was still able to shoot down through there.
[00:20:16] Speaker D: So you left at 10, you got back at 12:30. That means you were only searching for 20 minutes.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I only.
I think by the time I found him, I was actually in the air for 15 minutes. Maybe 15 for early season.
[00:20:29] Speaker D: Yeah, that's. That's really good.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Well, well, another thing, what this hunter did and what we have to educate hunters on is this technology allows you to see if your deer is dead or not. He was not convinced on the shot. He just wasn't. He. He said he did not. Or he either forgot to put the Luna light it knock in his arrow or it didn't show up. And when you're hunting early season, heavy timber, it gets darker in there faster than what legal shooting light is. And so he took the shot and he said it sounded weird. Not that schwack sound like when you hit him, you know, through the heart or lungs. And he's just like, I'm not going after this deer. It's close to the private line. He didn't want to bump in there. There didn't have much blood. And looking at it, yes, he would have found the deer the next day. He. He has the thermal drones. Why not use the thermal drone? And that's what he did.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: That deer could have just. Just as easily been alive. 100 and yeah.
[00:21:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Much easier. It was a shot that wasn't a good shot.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: But did it end up being a gut hit?
[00:21:33] Speaker B: It was a liver gut. Yep. So it was so far back on the liver that it hit a little bit of liver and a little bit of the actual stomach. The deer died fast. He had a really big broadhead. He's using the. The beast broadhead, Bomar's broadhead. And I think what happened is the stomach acid or whatever's in the stomach, it mixed with the. The blood right close to the liver so fast that it just killed him really fast. That was my first successful for the 2025, 26 season. Me and Jay looked for one the other morning. Couldn't find it. But I think that buck was shot in the shoulder. That's. That's what you do when you're a thermal drone pilot. It's. It's a grind. I'm actually going to make the video talking about it like Viviana, literally. I was going to read her book and she's like, well, can't somebody else go? Like Matt Landon? Like, she was literally naming.
[00:22:26] Speaker D: She was naming me.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: She was literally naming off all these names. I was like, yeah, I tried, but having a wife that supports you, super important.
Although I. I don't know. She says that there's time to take a break and I just don't know when that's going to be.
We talk about it oftentimes. About. Do we work too much? I don't know.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:22:49] Speaker B: Do you Work too much. Kevin does really good.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: I think you do probably better than anybody.
[00:22:54] Speaker C: Like turn it off.
[00:22:56] Speaker A: Yeah, turn it off. Yeah.
[00:22:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:22:57] Speaker A: I don't know. Do you?
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Forget about. I don't, I don't know that, that I, I don't know that. You make a good thermal drone pilot though.
7:30, shut it off. It's family time.
Yeah. Because people usually aren't calling you until 8:30 in the early season. Yep. So no, I, I think. Great boundaries.
[00:23:13] Speaker D: So, so looking at that, knowing that thermal season brings late night hours and stuff like that, are you guys taking off earlier in the day expecting that your hours are shifting and basically doing like a split shift? Are you guys adjusting for that or are you guys just working your normal.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: And then we still have a full time job?
[00:23:31] Speaker D: Well, just, just asking. We're talking about family time here.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: You wait, is this Counselor Landon?
[00:23:40] Speaker D: Because maybe I'm just, I'm just curious because I'm, I'm, I'll tell you that like I'm working, I'm working here at Drone Deer New way. And the 7:30 this morning I was out taking photos for another client. And then I have clients that I'm scheduling photo shoots after I leave here.
So I'm just adding, I'm just adding on top of my hours here and weekends and stuff like that. Um, so I'm just, I add on top of my normal workday. So I'm asking you guys, you guys have families, you got kids? What are you guys doing? Are you making room in your afternoon or are you just adding hours on top?
[00:24:17] Speaker B: Since you're bringing it up, I'm going to say yes, I'm going to. But if I do it or not is another question.
[00:24:23] Speaker A: If you implement it or not.
[00:24:25] Speaker D: Right?
[00:24:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: No, I mean, so this morning, you know, I got back at 12:30. I'm not ripping out of bed at 6:30 in the morning. Although I say that somebody called me on my personal number this morning and I was like, oh, probably another deer recovery. Better pick this up. 7 o' clock, some company called us that we got tanks made for for New way and they wanted to know about this bill. And I was like, oh geez, this was not an important phone call to pick up. But yeah, so like this morning I was going to hang out with the family and I did. I hung out with him till this morning, till this podcast. Now that you bring that up, I probably should say my work hours are going to end around one because I know I'm probably going to head out.
[00:25:13] Speaker D: Evenings, which is What I think you should do. Yeah, I like, I. I think my. Me personally, like you guys. Your work is deer season. We know that. You know, during. During new way spraying stuff like that is during the day, sometimes early morning, not often late at night.
But you know that dear recovery means late hours. So you should carve out some time in the afternoons when you can and, you know, take it.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: We talk about this. We, you know, when me and Kevin and Jay get together, like, we're. We're going on a flight when we were headed to Vegas, and we're talking about these things that we want to implement. But we just love working, too.
It's.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: I told Mike yesterday. Or was it yesterday morning? No, it was Monday morning. When we went to look for that other buck, we had to get up. I mean, I got up at 4 o' clock and am had. I mean, I was pumped. Like, I wanted to go to work. I've never had a job before that. I was like, I had to get up 4 o'.
[00:26:10] Speaker B: Clock.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: I'm like dreading getting up out of.
[00:26:12] Speaker B: Bed to go to work. Yeah.
[00:26:13] Speaker A: This is like, dude, I'm gonna go have some fun.
[00:26:16] Speaker B: But what Landon's saying, because we love work so much.
[00:26:20] Speaker D: That's what I'm saying.
[00:26:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:26:22] Speaker D: Are you gonna carve out. Are you gonna carve out a couple hours here, a couple hours there to go? And.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: And you know what? Since this is being recorded, putting it out there, I'm gonna say I'm gonna try to do that. Doggone it. Why is it so hard to say I'm gonna do that? Yeah.
[00:26:40] Speaker D: And. And the thing is that we'll. We'll follow up here in a couple episodes.
How you're going with.
[00:26:48] Speaker B: I think Kevin's not saying much because you're like, it's pretty easy, guys. Just do it.
[00:26:52] Speaker C: No. Well, see, but my job is different than you guys, so it's easy for me to put boundaries around my job where if I was a thermal. I think you said it well. If I was a thermal drone pilot, it's like, well, it's. It's a lot tougher. So, like, for me, I just like, if I need to get stuff done, basically, I can get up as early as I want and I can go to work at five or six o' clock in the morning, and I can, like, if I need more hours, I'll do that. There's nothing that requires me to do in the evenings, and my wife would way rather I get up at 5 o' clock in the morning.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:27:21] Speaker C: And the Only sad thing Then is at 8:30 if we sit down and watch a movie, I, I, I'm done.
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Like, you'll fall asleep. Nine o', clock, your wife is watching a movie by herself, huh? Yeah.
[00:27:31] Speaker D: Okay, so your, your work affords a little bit more remote where you're able.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: To schedule a little bit more too.
[00:27:38] Speaker C: I can schedule it more.
[00:27:39] Speaker A: This is so unscheduled. Yeah. Like, you might have plans and then all of a sudden that changes in a matter of a second.
[00:27:45] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:27:46] Speaker C: But it's, it's one thing if it's, I mean, it's, if it's a month. Right. Like our, there's some give and take. If it's like all year, then that gets.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:27:54] Speaker C: Pretty shitty pretty fast.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: Yeah. What, what's your wife think, Jay? When you told Mike no, you had to tell her. Oh, yeah.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: She was laying right there.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: She was like, good job.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Or she was happy.
No, I mean, it wouldn't have made.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: A whole lot of difference because I.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Was going to sleep, so.
[00:28:12] Speaker B: Oh, okay.
[00:28:12] Speaker A: I probably could have got up and left and she wouldn't have, she wouldn't have said anything. She's, she's really good at that. Or she has gotten a lot.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: I think all our wives are good with what we're doing.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Like, yeah, originally and the first year, like when we were gone, flying everywhere, going all the time, that was hard on her. She didn't like that.
[00:28:30] Speaker C: And I would say in the first year too, we were, I mean, we were making no money, let's be honest. And we were making a little bit of money, but we were like, for the amount of hours we were working.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: If we would have put an hourly rate on our hours, it would have been horrible.
[00:28:43] Speaker C: It would have been like, so it is, it feels like I, I remember probably for a year and a half solid, telling Liz, like, eventually this will be something like what? We're actually trying to build a business and it'll be something. But it was four guys or, you know, three guys and Karen working out of a shed.
[00:29:01] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:29:02] Speaker C: And, and just working from dawn to, I mean, just working all the time now, now that we have a team and, you know, I go into the warehouse every day, I see us shipping parts. I see a shipping drone.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: It's like, holy smokes, were we shipping drones yesterday? All three of us were there taping boxes, throwing stuff in there. You were fired up with your automated system that you got going on there.
[00:29:25] Speaker C: See, these are the things that excite me.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Is tech geek over there.
[00:29:27] Speaker C: Let's figure out. We okay. If you're going to have. If you're going to do 50 orders, you're going to package them today, then it's so painful to go through one at a time, and it's the same stuff in every order. Yeah. So let's just have a cart where you can do four or six of them at a time, and then you do it in a quarter of the time. That stuff is like, what is finding a deer for Mike? It's like, oh, this feels so good. Even though. Even though we still work, the fact that I can take, like, a week's vacation and I can still kind of work remotely somewhat, but that we can go to Montana with my family, like, those are putting into.
Like, that's putting deposits into the relational bank account that I can then withdraw from when I need to go on a.
[00:30:10] Speaker B: And if. If you don't do those things, then.
[00:30:13] Speaker C: You'Re in the red.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:30:15] Speaker C: And then.
[00:30:15] Speaker B: Hey, I just thought of this. Landon. So our women, all our wives, are actually going to do a podcast. Oh, yeah. I wonder if you should run it on the back end, because you know what we're talking about.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: They don't know, like, what we talk about. Yeah. And just like. Like, pick little things, because I would be really curious to see if they would just, like, spill the beans on how they actually feel, because it'll be interesting. Yeah. So when.
[00:30:43] Speaker D: When is this happening?
[00:30:44] Speaker B: I, like, Karen's trying to coordinate it. Actually coordinate it with her. Like, just let her know that I. I mentioned something because it would be really good because Karen was kind of gonna try to head it up. But what I'd like is if somebody, like. Right. They don't listen to the podcast all the time. Hashtag. You don't think he doesn't tell his wife that he does a podcast?
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:03] Speaker B: Sorry, Kaylee. Do you. Maybe you're listening now, but then you hear us talk. Right.
No objective on the podcast. But I do want them to let people know how they feel as wives of guys that are workers and busy.
[00:31:23] Speaker D: Yeah. Busy Building a business.
[00:31:25] Speaker C: I think that what we experience, like, it's what our customers experience, whether they're thermal pilots or ag pilots. That thing of, like, you're trying to get this off the ground in your first year, your second year. Like that husband, wife, team dynamic of what it takes to actually build a business. It's the exact same thing that our audience goes through, that our customers go through. Like, we're just. It's just what it takes to start a business.
[00:31:49] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I Agree.
[00:31:50] Speaker D: And I, and you know what? I, I think Mike, you've, you've said it more often because I'm with you filming and stuff like that a lot more. But looking at the amount of support that I, at least from, from an outside perspective looking in, all of you have a spouse that is supportive and, and that might, they might shut you down and say no, you know, every now and then. But I, I would observe a lot of support coming from the people back at home, whether it's late night or early morning or just the overall grind in getting everything started. Yeah, I think that's pretty accurate to say that all of you have spouses that are fully supportive of what you need to do to go out and keep this business running and grow it.
[00:32:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I definitely don't ever want to take it for granted how supportive my wife is and, and your guys wives. But I haven't, you know, sat down and spoke with them specifically. But I have friends that have, you know, they were married and they wanted to have a business and they worked a lot and it fell apart.
I don't know why that is. You know, there might be other underlying issues, but it's like it's, it's hard, it's hard to do. Build what we have and not spend as much time in it as we do. Right. Like you need to almost spend as much time in it as we do and just to have somebody that is supporting.
I'm actually making the whole video today talking about what I did last night and I couldn't do what I do without Karen. Plus I wouldn't want to do this without a partner. It would suck. I probably wouldn't be doing it. I'd probably be out in middle west mountains somewhere. Just, you know, hunkered up, doing my own thing out there and not doing this.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: You know what's cool about the, the buck last night, this is. Makes me feel like we need to get this thermal drone community, knit it together even better.
But for the first time ever, another thermal drone company that started locally here. Year two of my being in business, he, he called me, wanted all the specs of all the, the drones and everything and started his own thermal drone business but never bought anything from us because he didn't want to maybe support.
Nothing against the guy, but they gave us that lead.
[00:34:12] Speaker A: Oh, nice.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: From last night. I was like, that's pretty cool. Like I haven't, you know, I gave them in the beginning. I gave them, you know, this is the equipment I use. I, you know, this and that and there was just a little beef. Not much beef. Just a little beef. Like, we had a phone call when you and I stayed overnight one time doing a recovery, and I found out about this guy, and then I called him. I was like, saying that he's cheaper prices to try to get people to go with him. I just think it's cool that he sent us a lead because I'll do. I'll do the same. And I think that in the industry. The industry is small. Don't kid yourself. The industry is small. You know, work with local operators rather than trying to cut each other's throat.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: You're gonna make more money overall if you work together than if you try to be cutthroat with everybody else.
[00:34:59] Speaker B: Yep. And.
[00:35:00] Speaker D: And I would say if you are customer focused, if everybody is customer focused and you already have two people that you're going out to, you're going to hand off that third phone call to someone else because you want that hunter to be able to get absolutely eyes. Eyes on the deer as soon as possible without having to wait four hours.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: For you to go.
[00:35:20] Speaker D: Like being the third. The third.
[00:35:22] Speaker B: And it'll. Yeah. Like you're saying, it'll just continue full circle. Right.
You give a guy a lead because you're doing a recovery. That guy is now doing a recovery. He gets a call, he's going to give it back to the. It just works that way. Paying it forward.
I think it works that way. So I just thought it was really cool. I had to ask him who it was a couple times, and then, you know, I connected the dots. I was like, okay, this is good. Yeah. Yeah, there's.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: There's plenty of work for everybody.
[00:35:50] Speaker B: I think early season, of course, there's not as much as it is in November, but November, it's. It's total chaos.
[00:35:57] Speaker D: Do you have any projections, Mike, for how many. How many phone calls or how many leads and recoveries that you're. That you yourself are going to do?
[00:36:06] Speaker B: So I don't like, do you.
[00:36:08] Speaker D: So Dennis had goals for. For his ag season.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: What.
[00:36:13] Speaker D: What would you like? Like, let's just, you know, throw some numbers out there.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: I know easily we're going to do over 150, 150 recoveries.
[00:36:22] Speaker D: We.
[00:36:22] Speaker B: You. So the guys. So all the guys. So I usually have a group of 10 guys that I'm sending leads to just because I am not going to do them all myself. People are not willing to wait. We just talked about that. I get the calls. They're calling drone day recovery number directly. Either through the website or just my number has been spread around so much that they're calling me, and then I'm coordinating with people that I trust.
And it usually starts with people that are listed on the website because I know they have the equipment, they have the license, they have what they need. I AM coordinating probably 150 recovery calls for sure. But I'm going to do a much better job this year tracking the data. So, like last night, I got done with that recovery. I go into the granola that you told me about, and then I just tell it, you know, today's date and how many phone calls I got that day. And then at the end of season, I'm going to know exactly what the report is on how many calls I got to do recoveries. Now I don't know what I should do on this, and maybe you guys can give me guidance.
There's out of state people calling me to do recoveries. Can I put that down as a recovery call? Because they asked me. I mean, I'm not going to North Carolina to do recovery. I'm telling them, go to, you know, the pilot locator map and find a pilot closer. But I could, because that's a. That's a call that I handle and still try to get the guy coordinate it. What do you think I should do?
[00:37:49] Speaker C: So what is your stat? Is it calls that you've received or what is this?
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Yeah, calls I. Calls I receive to do deer recoveries.
[00:37:56] Speaker C: And that's different than jobs done. You're also recording that jobs done, me personally, by you, your team of 10.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Guys, I will have. Okay, so we will be recording that in a separate spreadsheet. Austin just built it yesterday. So I will know how many I do personally. Either me and Jay, when we're running with each other, I will know how many I do personally. But I was just going to. Because people ask, how many calls do you get a year? That's usually the question. How many calls do you get? Well, mine is going to be completely different than somebody is starting out right. You know, there's. We're almost 25 million views on YouTube, so we get a ton of calls that normal people probably won't. What was the question?
[00:38:38] Speaker C: So if. I mean, if you're tracking calls received.
[00:38:40] Speaker B: Calls received to do, then recovery out.
[00:38:43] Speaker C: Of state would still factor in there. Especially if you're counting separately jobs done.
[00:38:47] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:38:48] Speaker C: Then you would have more calls than jobs that you and your team did. It'd be interesting to see how many of those you pushed to the locator map that you didn't do?
[00:38:57] Speaker B: Oh, a lot, a lot. I mean I get calls in the western state of Ohio. Like they'd be willing to pay me two and a half hour drive time to come do it. But I just, it doesn't make sense for me to drive that far. If somebody's listed on the drone deer, you know, locator map, just, I just tell them. And now I have like a hotkey or whatever you call this things where you bookmark it, pilot locator. So I just go there, I hit share and boom. I send them the map directly.
[00:39:25] Speaker D: You're probably only taking 10% of those that come through where you're actually going at yourself.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I wonder what it is. We'll know at the end of the season.
[00:39:34] Speaker D: We'll get some of those more specific stats.
[00:39:36] Speaker B: Another thing we're doing is this year we are recording with the in house pilots that we have and I thought about making it public to see if other people would want to record their data.
But what we're doing is we are recording what weapon was used, what broadhead, was it a mechanical or a fixed or a hybrid? How far did the deer go? Was it dead or alive when you found them? And if it was dead, if you're there with the hunter gutting it, what was the shot? Was it lungs? Was it, you know, gut, was it this or that? We're going to record all that data. I, I so wish I would have done this from the get go because the. Did I say gecko?
Yeah, Geico, 15 minutes could save you 15 or more.
[00:40:27] Speaker D: Yep.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: But I'm just thinking what it was.
[00:40:29] Speaker C: Like in the beginning though. Like, like the, the think of Mike.
[00:40:33] Speaker B: Trying to record all that data in.
[00:40:36] Speaker C: That first season is just hilarious.
[00:40:40] Speaker D: Mike's general focus is, is not on those details.
[00:40:43] Speaker B: No, no.
[00:40:44] Speaker C: And it was like we have, we were four deep and it was like, yeah, that those first two seasons.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it was heck, it was rough.
[00:40:51] Speaker C: Mental.
[00:40:52] Speaker B: Is his chair squeaking coming through.
[00:40:54] Speaker D: I can hear it now a lot more. Yeah, he's, he's getting a little wormy.
[00:40:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:58] Speaker C: Can we, can we talk just briefly about like what we're doing to the pilot locator map since we have a lot of changes coming online in the next two weeks that our pilots are going to be super excited about. So some of those are the biggest one is we're redoing the way that we're giving pilots the ability to request reviews. So when a hunter contacts a pilot through our portal, then we're Putting the power in the, in the pilot's hands while you're standing. You just finished finding the deer, you're standing next to the hunter.
You can through just texting on your phone, send a review request to the hunter standing right next to you and that'll mark it as a job completed and then it'll.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: Can he do that if he wasn't hired through the website? Yeah. So, so for like my call last night, I'd have to send him my pilot profile Y connect and I felt like I would have been intruding on him to do that, but I don't know, you know, if it's outside the platform, do you really have to send him through there?
[00:42:00] Speaker C: You don't have to. It'll just, it'll. If you record more reviews and more completed jobs through the platform, you become a better candidate to hire.
[00:42:08] Speaker B: Better. Yeah.
[00:42:09] Speaker C: And last season we had a lot of jobs not actually get marked as completed where we know they were completed because the way that we would send review requests were automated 4 hours, 8 hours, 24 hours later. And we figured out that 24 hours later the hunter, although he's a, he was very thankful when the, when the pilot came out. 24 hours later he's, he's moved on.
[00:42:35] Speaker A: He's no longer concerned about leaving review.
[00:42:37] Speaker C: He's no longer concerned it's the wrong time to request.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: It's a lot better doing it right, right there when he's standing next to you.
[00:42:42] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:42:43] Speaker C: And it's, it's going to be for the hunter. It's so easy. Like he can just type out how many stars on his phone through the sms, write out one sentence description, snap a photo, just, he's just sending it through SMS and then our portal is marking it as a job and showing that review online.
[00:42:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:00] Speaker C: So that's huge. Another thing is the if, if you've seen our pilot locator map, it's so much easier for hunters to scan. Like the whole interface is changed from last year. So last year we had part time developer, now we have a full time lead developer.
[00:43:16] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:43:17] Speaker C: And this is his. Like we're doing a lot more work on it.
[00:43:21] Speaker B: You know what, while you're telling this story, I'm just looking at you and thinking of when I approach you at the Beacon Cafe, I was like, kevin, that's gonna be big.
You're going to want to get in. You're like, no, not interested.
Now you're over here, you know, developing these things, helping our team develop this stuff that you're fired. Up about to help other hunter or other pilots and hunters like ourselves. Because you didn't understand the industry and how crazy people get about big deer. I like that they get crazy. Right. It helps our business. But you're. You're fired up like what we're doing. I'm just thinking like, dude, and something.
[00:44:01] Speaker C: That gets me really fired up along. This is this year. Our ad budget to push the pilot locator map is $70,000.
[00:44:09] Speaker B: So are we sharing this publicly?
[00:44:11] Speaker C: I. I think I just did.
[00:44:14] Speaker B: What was that?
[00:44:14] Speaker A: What did you do?
[00:44:16] Speaker D: It was a rim shot, but it didn't go through.
[00:44:19] Speaker B: Try it again. I don't know if it works. No, must not work.
[00:44:23] Speaker D: No.
[00:44:24] Speaker B: What? Oh, wait. So he's learning.
[00:44:26] Speaker D: I hit it, but it's not coming through.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: We got these pre recorded, like. Yeah, so.
[00:44:32] Speaker C: But no, imagine that. $70,000 to advertise in states according to how many pilots we have in the various states just to drive hunters to the map. Because last time every pilot on our portal got on average 33 leads in the season.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Yeah. We had over 400,000 people visit the pilot locator map last season. Last season.
[00:44:52] Speaker C: And that was without the. That we're doing. And the cool thing about software is that we. Our goal really is to keep the pilot locator map as the primary place and the easiest place for hunters to find thermal drone pilots. And the whole, you know, I'm not worried about more and more and more pilots jumping on our map like this. This month we had 150 pilots add on to the map.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:14] Speaker C: And I'm not worried about it because the amount of hunters that are using those pilots is growing in proportion, oh, a hundred percent. So it's, it's more like for any thermal drone pilot who's. And I can hear that now also squeaking.
[00:45:26] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:45:27] Speaker C: Any thermal drone pilot that's getting into it. It's not like it's saturated yet, especially not in most markets. It's more like, you know, a hundred thousand deer are killed in Ohio every year.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: How many of those got killed this year by ehd. Sorry. Not. I'm not trying to get off subject.
[00:45:42] Speaker C: Anyhow, our goal is still making pilots successful, but the whole industry just has a long ways to grow.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:45:48] Speaker C: Super cool.
[00:45:48] Speaker B: What. What do you say when somebody says, well, make an app. Why don't you make an app?
[00:45:54] Speaker C: Yeah, an app is. I'm not going to talk about the whole reason that we chose the direction that we did because other people are out there trying to do an app. An app.
[00:46:02] Speaker B: What I would, what I would tell them is market on your phone with an Android like what Jay has, or an Apple like what I have. They all work so easily. So if you, you're going to have to explain it, how you use it on Google. But if you use Safari, dude, just go to safari. Put in dronedierrecovery.com, go to the pilot locator map. Once you're at the pilot locator map, then you can hit share, scroll down and it says add to homepage. Add to homepage on. On your phone. Boom. It looks like you have a new app. It's called the Pilot Locator. It looks literally like an app. You click on it and it takes you to that map every time instantly. If we could get people to start thinking like that. Okay, if you think you're going to use the pilot locator map a lot, put it on your home screen. It's that easy?
[00:46:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's super easy. Even in Android. Super easy.
[00:46:51] Speaker B: So what do you. What browser do you use?
[00:46:54] Speaker A: Google.
[00:46:54] Speaker B: Okay, so you use Google on Google.
[00:46:56] Speaker A: Get the. Get to the page where you want to save it, click the little three dots on the right side, go down through there, add to home screen, and boom. Now you have an app icon on your home screen. Just click it.
[00:47:07] Speaker D: Yeah. So Kevin, Kevin, in. In brief, give me the. Give me the elevator pitch of why we didn't create an app for this and we just kept it on the website.
[00:47:18] Speaker C: An app that requires a hunter to download an app for something that they will not use every year, they'll use some years. It's very different than the experience on Uber where you're doing 20 to $50 rides and you do it every time you land in a new city.
We think what we needed to create the environment we need to create for hunters and pilots to interact is one of trust, safety.
So people are vetted, FAA license, vet, you know, equipment vetted. But we should take away all of the steps and just help hunters connect with pilots.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: So what I think what he's saying is it doesn't make sense if you're a hunter, Landon, if you want to get a, you know, a thermal drone pilot that's vetted through drone deer recovery, it. We shouldn't make you have to download an app just to have access to the best, you know, pilots out there.
[00:48:11] Speaker C: And I don't know how, how much of a one off this is, but here in Ohio, you're often in places with low signal, like not great sailor signal and sometimes crappy Internet. But SMS and calls work. So I think the direction that we're going in and I think we'll still. We'll unveil this. This season is a new way for pilots.
[00:48:30] Speaker B: Hashtag new ag. I just like how you did that. New way.
[00:48:34] Speaker C: Yeah. So this is a new way for drone deer, though.
So this is going to be a way for. Imagine if you're in the woods and you just want to find the pilots closest to you. We're going to give you a way to text deer to our phone number. Brand new phone number. And then we'll tell you the three thermal pilots that are closest to you and how far away they are from your city. So first we'll check.
[00:48:54] Speaker D: They'll.
[00:48:54] Speaker C: They'll text deer and then we'll say.
[00:48:57] Speaker B: Look at Landon's face. He wasn't even. He. You didn't know we're working on this.
[00:49:00] Speaker C: No. Then we'll say, what's your nearest zip code? Town, county, where are you?
[00:49:04] Speaker D: Right.
[00:49:05] Speaker C: And then we'll send you a list of three thermal drone pilots and how many miles you know and what. And their reviews and everything. So that without even going on the web, you can just. From your sms. Everybody has sms. You can tap on a phone number to talk to that drone pilot.
[00:49:20] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:49:21] Speaker B: That'll be without ever going to the Internet.
[00:49:24] Speaker A: So.
[00:49:24] Speaker D: Yeah. Basically, as long as they know how to use a phone.
[00:49:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:49:28] Speaker D: And. And send a text message, they don't need to wait. Yeah.
[00:49:31] Speaker B: If.
[00:49:32] Speaker D: If they are technologically channel.
[00:49:33] Speaker C: And we'll see. We'll see if this is the right approach or not. But I'm super excited about keeping the hunters interaction inside an SMS like flow.
[00:49:40] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:49:41] Speaker C: And then. Okay. And then get this last thing before I, you know, bore everybody with these details. But the last thing is for pilots. We like our marketplace where pilots can list their profiles is actually like, we vet changes so people can't go on there. Like, you're not going to get scammed by somebody on our marketplace. At least it's never happened to this point.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:59] Speaker C: And if they are, you know, they'll get booted off. So changes, description, photos, whatever. Like, we actually verify them before they go live.
[00:50:08] Speaker D: Right.
[00:50:08] Speaker C: And so for pilots this upcoming season, when you push something and our team is reviewing it before it goes live in the next 24 hours, we're enabling SMS flows so our team can SMS you and say, hey, this photo is not getting approved because of this. Or here's what we need yet from your profile. We need a portrait to push your profile live. All that will also Happen to pilots through either the pilot portal, through a chat interface or through an SMS flow. So pilots can now chat with our team and we'll get people verified and their profiles updated much faster because right now we're waiting a long time on pilots. They don't check their emails. Yeah, not gonna blame them. But you don't check your emails.
[00:50:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you're out working, man.
[00:50:50] Speaker C: This, this season, I think the numbers that we're gonna have and it's gonna be.
[00:50:54] Speaker B: Well, just the amount of leads that we're going to generate compared to the 20, 24, 25 season, I, I think it's going to be crazy.
[00:51:02] Speaker C: It's going to be crazy.
[00:51:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:51:03] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:51:04] Speaker B: You brought a, you brought up a word there. Scammed just got called yesterday. There's a, a big scam going around right now for thermal drones specifically targeting the Matrice 4T. It was actually Nick the, the guy that I bought my first thermal drone from in Wisconsin. They are working with the FBI on.
I guess the scam goes something like this. You have an e commerce store. You sell matrice 40s.
You buy it with a stolen credit card, you get it shipped.
They rob. Porch rob the, the package.
[00:51:37] Speaker C: So they would.
[00:51:38] Speaker B: Because they know where it's going.
[00:51:39] Speaker C: Not to their own address.
[00:51:40] Speaker B: No. But something, something that they can't get, you know, busted. Then they take the package and then somebody finds out that it's stolen, like the stolen credit card. So they do a chargeback.
And so that's an actual scam that's going on. So keep an eye out. Right. Buy from somebody that is trusted like ourselves.
Then it makes me think, can you believe that we brought this thing about thermal drones in the deer industry or not deer industry? In the hunting industry. So mainstream that there's literally companies that have started scams.
There was not a thing four years ago, but there's companies in India that now have scams to scam people out of finding their pets using thermal drones.
It's crazy. Stealing thermal drones because of the like, what drone deer has done. It's just. Oh my God. It's just mind blowing.
[00:52:41] Speaker C: And the market for pet especially is.
It's ripe for scammers.
[00:52:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:52:47] Speaker A: It's so much easier than hunters, I feel like.
[00:52:50] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:51] Speaker C: And you're so emotional about your pet.
[00:52:52] Speaker D: Right.
[00:52:53] Speaker C: And you're, you have such an urgency and it almost. And you don't really understand the technology. And so when they tell you they can fly it from wherever they're at remotely, you're like, okay, send it over.
[00:53:03] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it is wild.
[00:53:06] Speaker C: Yeah, we. Yeah, it. And I wonder what scale it's happening. Do you know what scale that's happening.
[00:53:10] Speaker B: On, like, is it on the pet stuff?
[00:53:11] Speaker C: On the pet.
[00:53:12] Speaker B: The pet stuff at one time was horrible. I was getting DMs weekly of people that got scammed, and then they finally, you know, connected all the dots and realized that the. The footage and the. The photos that these people were using were actually either drone deer recovery or drone pet recovery stuff. And then we're getting scammed, and then they're actually sending a DM to the original people and just saying what happened to him. And if I just felt bad, it's.
[00:53:39] Speaker C: Doubly brutal because they get scammed out of their money, and then they probably aren't out there searching for their pet because they have somebody else supposedly have somebody gonna search for it. So double whammy.
[00:53:51] Speaker B: Yeah. It's just crazy to think. Whole new industry, right? We started a whole new industry. The scammers start out a whole new industry, and they're just like, thanks, Mike. You gave us a really good idea. We're gonna take that grandma's money now and feel good about it and go sleep.
[00:54:08] Speaker A: You.
[00:54:08] Speaker B: Geez. Always. Guys, get a grip. I like watching those YouTube channels where they actually go reverse the scam.
[00:54:16] Speaker C: Jim Browning.
[00:54:17] Speaker B: Is that what it is?
[00:54:17] Speaker C: That's one of them.
[00:54:18] Speaker A: So he actually goes to the place where they're at?
[00:54:20] Speaker C: No, he, like, hacks into their CCTV and talks to them and calls them their real name.
[00:54:28] Speaker A: Oh, that would be so legit.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Oh, dude, he has a good YouTube channel. The other day I. I seen him.
The guy logged into the YouTuber's web or, like, computer, but he gave him access because he knew everything's locked. And he. But what he did is he was already in that dude's computer and brought over his files and put them in his files. And then that guy's going through the files and he sees his own video.
And he's literally, like, watching this dude. He's. Can you imagine what's going through his mind?
[00:55:00] Speaker C: Like, oh, crap, what's going on?
[00:55:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, he was in my computer. Yeah. So good.
[00:55:06] Speaker C: Are you guys gonna hunt this year? Do you have any. Any goal? I mean, do you want to hunt or.
[00:55:10] Speaker A: I. I want to hunt. I hunted myself twice last year.
[00:55:15] Speaker B: You hunted for yourself twice last year?
[00:55:17] Speaker A: I think so.
[00:55:18] Speaker B: Sorry. And then you didn't hunt yourself?
[00:55:20] Speaker A: Oh, no, I didn't hunt myself.
I myself went out and hunted for deer twice last year.
[00:55:27] Speaker D: Sorry.
[00:55:28] Speaker B: Sometimes it's Just the Pennsylvania Dutch that comes out. We can't help it, guys.
[00:55:32] Speaker A: I took Brantley out twice last year.
[00:55:34] Speaker C: That's right.
[00:55:35] Speaker A: I hunted a Ford.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:37] Speaker A: Four times.
[00:55:37] Speaker B: Brantley out. And he shot a deer. And then we flew the deer out with a flykart.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:41] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:55:41] Speaker B: How'd the FA like that one?
[00:55:43] Speaker A: They loved it. Gave him work to do.
[00:55:46] Speaker B: More on that.
[00:55:47] Speaker D: That's one perspective.
[00:55:52] Speaker A: Maybe they'll stop pursuing it. Government shutdown coming.
[00:55:56] Speaker B: Oh, we could.
Great idea.
Great idea.
It just sucks that we can't talk about it, but we do give the FAA lot of work, and they should thank us for it, right, Kevin?
[00:56:09] Speaker C: I wonder if they're thankful.
[00:56:10] Speaker A: They probably aren't thankful.
[00:56:12] Speaker C: We talked about this before.
[00:56:13] Speaker B: It's like, when we, like, kind of talk about it, everybody, like, does it.
[00:56:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:56:16] Speaker D: Like, should we.
[00:56:17] Speaker B: Can we.
[00:56:19] Speaker D: This is a good idea.
[00:56:20] Speaker C: What are you doing this year for hunting?
[00:56:22] Speaker A: I mean.
[00:56:23] Speaker B: I don't know.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:56:24] Speaker D: But you got a. You got an extra thick field.
[00:56:27] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:56:29] Speaker B: Waiting for you.
[00:56:31] Speaker D: If there's any surviving deer from ehd.
[00:56:34] Speaker B: You know where to go. I don't think EHD hit us.
[00:56:36] Speaker D: No.
[00:56:37] Speaker B: No.
[00:56:37] Speaker D: Didn't get in this area.
[00:56:38] Speaker A: There's enough rivers that are, like, big, big rivers there that. Yeah, there's not a whole lot.
[00:56:42] Speaker C: So at this point of the season with no preparation.
[00:56:45] Speaker A: No, I actually got cameras out last weekend.
[00:56:48] Speaker B: I think once the season started.
[00:56:49] Speaker D: You're actually using. You're actually using trail cams.
[00:56:52] Speaker A: I did put some out there.
[00:56:52] Speaker B: I think that's a bad idea.
[00:56:54] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I haven't flown the drone over there for a while, so. Yeah, it's easy to just put cameras out and see what's there.
[00:57:00] Speaker B: Jay, you could put the relay over there and just cruise from your house.
[00:57:06] Speaker A: Oh, I can cruise from my house anyway.
[00:57:08] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Because it's a connection set.
[00:57:10] Speaker A: Yeah, Connection's phenomenal.
[00:57:11] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:57:11] Speaker A: Like, it's a mile, about 1.1 miles from my house to the hunt.
[00:57:16] Speaker B: Definitely line of sight.
[00:57:18] Speaker A: I'm on top of the hill.
My house sits on top of the hill.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:22] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:57:22] Speaker D: It is up there.
[00:57:23] Speaker B: Pretty.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: I can fly over there as long as I don't, like, come way, way below, then.
[00:57:26] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:57:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:57:27] Speaker D: Nice.
[00:57:28] Speaker B: What? Kevin?
[00:57:29] Speaker C: Visualizing.
[00:57:31] Speaker B: We visualize it all the time in our brain, what it looks like over there. Are you gonna hunt this year?
[00:57:36] Speaker C: Okay. But my question was, at this point of the season with no prep, how do we make changes to our land so the big bucks come on to it?
[00:57:44] Speaker A: Oh, we're not. It's too late.
[00:57:45] Speaker B: No, it's. You just.
[00:57:47] Speaker C: There's got to be something. I mean, how. What do we do?
[00:57:49] Speaker B: No, you can't bring them on if they're not there. They're not there.
[00:57:52] Speaker A: They'll come in.
[00:57:52] Speaker B: They'll come in there, like.
[00:57:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Right now they're all out in the fields. Like, there's so many.
[00:57:57] Speaker B: We got to get you on a big.
[00:57:59] Speaker A: But the farmers are actually. Just seen the other day back by the dam. They're starting to pick all that stuff. I'm hoping they pick all the fields around there. That'll push them into the.
[00:58:09] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:58:09] Speaker C: So if I want to shoot a big buck, I could go out. You have. We have a blind, right?
[00:58:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:58:14] Speaker B: You know what? You gotta shoot a deer with house end in a blind. That should be the challenge this year.
[00:58:19] Speaker A: Use a tree stand. We got two tree stands hung or.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: Sit on the ground.
[00:58:22] Speaker A: Yeah, or the ground.
[00:58:23] Speaker B: You chased the buck away last year because you just thought, oh, here comes a buck. Move around. And then your chair squeaked like the one that you're sitting.
[00:58:30] Speaker C: You're saying the challenge would be not out of a blind, but out of a tree stand. That's harder than a blind.
[00:58:34] Speaker B: I'd like to see you do it on the ground.
[00:58:36] Speaker A: I feel like it's more fun, it's more real in a. In a tree stand than it is in a blind, because you're actually out in it in a blind. You're just sitting there waiting. I don't know.
[00:58:46] Speaker D: Well, it's definitely a lot colder.
[00:58:48] Speaker B: It is a lot colder.
[00:58:49] Speaker A: I love blinds in the winter time. Yeah, it keeps you out of the wind.
[00:58:54] Speaker B: Our hunting is the furthest thing from actually hunting.
[00:58:57] Speaker A: Yeah, you're sitting and waiting, but then.
[00:58:59] Speaker B: Somebody'S going to say the same thing. Your recovery, Mike, is the furthest thing from recovery. I remember when I was on my hands and knees, and my dad was sending me through the briars looking for blood.
Now you just do it from your pickup truck. Take your drone off. Oh, there he is.
[00:59:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it's so much better.
We have this technology.
[00:59:18] Speaker B: Why not use it?
[00:59:19] Speaker A: You're not going in there disturbing the deer. Just like the one that Brantley shot last year. Yep. It was a little doe, and that thing was bleeding like crazy, but he ended up. I think he shot her in the gut is what ended up happening. But we went after it. I didn't really want to use the drone if I didn't have to, but we went up, ended up going after it, probably 125 yards. And finally I was like, dude, we gotta stop. He wanted to keep going. And I ended up actually seeing it. It had bedded down and we jumped it and then I was like, okay, we gotta, we gotta leave. So it went and got the drone and we found that it was, it was only probably 300 yards from where we had shot it, but it wasn't dead.
Went up. Waiting till the next morning.
[00:59:54] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:59:54] Speaker A: Went in, flew it out.
[00:59:56] Speaker B: We did fly it out.
Oh my gosh. That T100 is gonna do so many crazy things.
[01:00:02] Speaker A: Dude, I seen a helicopter.
[01:00:03] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:00:03] Speaker A: Or the other day with the guy hanging on it. So they were working on the power lines and there's a guy hanging on the winch or whatever, probably, I don't know, 50 foot long winch. And he would fly him from the yard up into the big tower. Tower.
[01:00:19] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:00:20] Speaker A: I was just thinking, gave it a couple years, they'll be doing that.
[01:00:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. Way less overhead. 100. Yep. I mean, what do you think it.
[01:00:28] Speaker A: Cost them to operate the helicopter that. 1500 bucks an hour.
[01:00:31] Speaker B: Oh, for sure. That helicopter that you're. If it's the same one that, what I was watching on YouTube, there's a guy that makes videos about this.
That's a turbine. And so just to acquire that helicopter is about 3 million. And so it's burning probably 70 gallons an hour of jet fuel. Outrageous. Yeah.
[01:00:52] Speaker C: Another thing I saw on the feet on my feed this morning is the way that they deliver beer kegs up to like ski like chalets or whatever, like at the top of the lift. Like I didn't know that, but. And it doesn't quite make sense. It must not be a ski lift, but like somewhere they were delivering it with a helicopter, like a net with a bunch of those like beer kegs, like remote way back in and then taking out like the empty trash or whatever. Doing that with a helicopter.
[01:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's going to be a thing. I just talked to. Yeah. Gary Hostetler, his dad was shooting a shot of moose up in somewhere north Canada and they flied out with a helicopter as well. And you could easily do it with a drone.
Fraction of the cost.
It's coming. Just mark our words. You're listening to it on the drone on show right now. In three to five years, it's just going to be normal.
Yep. All righty. That's all I got. Good stuff. I, I actually we could probably chat all day long on stuff, but that's. We're going to wrap it up. Thanks for listening, guys. See you guys on the next one.
