Drones during deer season
Poll Question #13: Drones
- Thread starter IowaBowHunter1983
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Fly a drone, you can't hunt there for 48 hours. Similar to flying into Alaska or Canada.... can't hunt that day.
JNRBRONC
Well-Known Member
All drones, IMO. I've heard of a person that scouts land he doesn't have permission to be on with drones, then sees how/where he can get permission if he locates a trophy. Reminds me of those that spotlight trying to locate trophies first, then gain permission second. Might be legal or on the fringe of legality, but not real ethical IMO.
Lets say all drones for polling purposes
Falldreams
Well-Known Member
Ban completely during all open deer seasons!
This is just another crutch and stepping stone to more and worse tech. Humans have been hunters and gatherers since the beginning of time. Fast forward to modern times and the last say 30 to 40 years of deer hunting. There has never been a legitimate need for drones in any aspect during open deer seasons.
We did not need them to scout or gain information. That has forever been achieved successfully with fair chase…. Learning your targeted species behavior and learning woodsmanship….ie Hunting.
We do not need them to recover deer. We do not need more hunters taking marginal shots slinging bolts more than is already been happening. Humans did not need drones for animal recovery before and we do not need them now for recovery either. There is zero benefit to the resource after recovering a buck by flying a drone. Do we honestly think guys are shelling out money to recover marginal shot does???
There has been so much over the top emphasis on age and big inches (I’m guilty yes I trophy hunt) that deer hunting has now completely lost its way. We literally need no more tech. Matter of fact we could eliminate some things for the better good of the resource.
This is just another crutch and stepping stone to more and worse tech. Humans have been hunters and gatherers since the beginning of time. Fast forward to modern times and the last say 30 to 40 years of deer hunting. There has never been a legitimate need for drones in any aspect during open deer seasons.
We did not need them to scout or gain information. That has forever been achieved successfully with fair chase…. Learning your targeted species behavior and learning woodsmanship….ie Hunting.
We do not need them to recover deer. We do not need more hunters taking marginal shots slinging bolts more than is already been happening. Humans did not need drones for animal recovery before and we do not need them now for recovery either. There is zero benefit to the resource after recovering a buck by flying a drone. Do we honestly think guys are shelling out money to recover marginal shot does???
There has been so much over the top emphasis on age and big inches (I’m guilty yes I trophy hunt) that deer hunting has now completely lost its way. We literally need no more tech. Matter of fact we could eliminate some things for the better good of the resource.
booneriverbucks
PMA Member
Only years of propoganda has warped hunters’s minds into believing recovery isn’t part of the hunt.. just like we have a supreme court justice who can not differentiate between a man and woman because she is not a biologist…. Hunter’s complain about tech yet drop their sitka g-strings at any new tech that helps them out. Gag me.
The cons outweigh the pros by a long shot, side note a buddy of mine told me about a piece of equipment that can detect drone flights within a 10 kilometer radius and will record the drones remote frequency or ID or something so that it can be identified.
I was told it would be less than $10,000 but hopefully that technology gets cheaper. Get a few guys in a neighborhood to go in on it and be alerted when a drone is in the air.
Won’t stop everything but if it becomes more affordable it would help.
I was told it would be less than $10,000 but hopefully that technology gets cheaper. Get a few guys in a neighborhood to go in on it and be alerted when a drone is in the air.
Won’t stop everything but if it becomes more affordable it would help.
seven twenty
PMA Member
Be awfully hard to enforce the cooldown period. Officers driving around the section for 2 says to ensure it’s not hunted? Or what if it’s public ground? Are they going to shut down a State Forest because someone needed a drone?
booneriverbucks
PMA Member
A well known sportsmans “club” who I will not name out of respect is planning to push to legalize drone deer recovery. Only years of bs propoganda and useful idiots/whiny everyone gets a trophy losers will support this. It’s been well known since cavemen threw their first spear at a woolly mammoth that recovery was part of the hunt. Unfortunately we have all been conditioned to simply change the meaning of previously well known definitions if it doesn’t align with our agenda.. of course there is an exuse to legalize this. Social justice, misoginy racism, you name it. There is an excuse.. Evidently the hunters of Iowa and our DNR are too dumb to understand the current regulations. Instead of simply adding the very simple words of scouting and recovery to the list of prohibited activities involving drones we now must legalize and regulate (which is burdensome and impossible) this scam. As we have seen in the past if we do not like a word we just change the definition to make everyone happy. What is a man? What is a woman? What is marriage? Hopefully there are some biolgists on here to tell me I am a bigot. I have no doubt these proposed drone recovery regulations have everything to do with making things easier on our public servants at the DNR and have nothing to do with a member of this club’s ambitions to operate a drone deer recovery service.
I sure hope not!!
So far more people have voted against it than for it, they’d need a Joe Biden style vote counting system to think this is actually what people want.
Especially if the fines and licensing costs are way lower than proposed and the cool down period is less than 48 hours.
For one it flat out violates federal game law, seems like it breaks radio transmission laws we currently have, and I don’t know how this doesn’t break remote hunting laws.
“The bad guys are already gonna do it so we might as well legalize it “ hmmm yeah here’s the thing. If you wanted to poach with a drone before you had to come up with 10k to buy one.
Legalize this and you can pay it off in one season. You’re making it cash flow now.
Think about the upside vs the many downsides.
booneriverbucks
PMA Member
I’m sure we could all go on forever and will never agree on the ethics or legality of drones and what constitutes hunting or not... obviously legality is a non issue if we just change the laws.. My main concern is the fight won’t end with recovery.. We all know there are plenty of other uses currently in use that will continue to blur the lines between hunting and scouting. Where does it end??
The only advantage to the resource I can see is a buck recovered and tagged is one less possibly being shot. On a marginally shot deer it is legal to look for 30 minutes call it “Lost” and go try to shoot another one. Using the Drone to recover in this instance would be the better outcome. The problem comes many of these cases the deer will not be dead then what is the hunter supposed to do. If the deer s mortally wounded the ethical thing to do is try to finish it off quickly the “cooling” off period would not make this legally. I wish Drones were not on the landscape but they are,and here to stay. The shocking thing to me is how many people have them I bet I know at least 20 .
booneriverbucks
PMA Member
I’ll expand on the subject more eventually 
… maybe…. To paraphrase, I’m sure all the other states that have legalized this had plenty of good dudes/ groups etc. wishing to highly regulate it and keep the bad actors out of it too! They all failed. I’m sure they tried. Unfortunately it’s either legal or not according to the state in reality. Hunting is a relatively small fight when it comes to drone use. We are not the first group to debate all this. Others have tried. It’s kind of an all or nothing deal when it comes to the law. Drone use in deer hunting will not be totally defeated in the legislature or the courts…. It is going to be a cultural problem. The hunting industry could do a lot of good to help with the shaming of more technology but like they have always done they will punt on ethics/tech and embrace more sponsors .. They will yet again “lend” themselves out for more endorsements/clicks/ photo ops.. This could all be easily squashed before it gets worse but it wont. Too much $$$ at stake.. until the people put their foot down and say enough is enough. We all caused this.
… maybe…. To paraphrase, I’m sure all the other states that have legalized this had plenty of good dudes/ groups etc. wishing to highly regulate it and keep the bad actors out of it too! They all failed. I’m sure they tried. Unfortunately it’s either legal or not according to the state in reality. Hunting is a relatively small fight when it comes to drone use. We are not the first group to debate all this. Others have tried. It’s kind of an all or nothing deal when it comes to the law. Drone use in deer hunting will not be totally defeated in the legislature or the courts…. It is going to be a cultural problem. The hunting industry could do a lot of good to help with the shaming of more technology but like they have always done they will punt on ethics/tech and embrace more sponsors .. They will yet again “lend” themselves out for more endorsements/clicks/ photo ops.. This could all be easily squashed before it gets worse but it wont. Too much $$$ at stake.. until the people put their foot down and say enough is enough. We all caused this.
booneriverbucks
PMA Member
Good points! Too add.. What on earth is ethical about the always waiting 24-48 hours plus in some of the scenarios some bring up. We all know the deer is either dead fairly quick or it’s bad.. Let’s all face reality! The deer is either dead or dying a horrible, slow, painful death. This is about rack recovery.. rack and cape at best.. sick of hearing about how this is about the “deer”. This is about hunters not wanting to suffer the consequences of their bad shots or them not wanting to face the reality of hunting that it doesnt always go your way.. the deer is going to suffer the same under any proposed reg.. “At least I got a trophy tho!!” Totally agree the only good thing is this would stop some from wounding or shooting another one! Is this really something to pat ourselves on the back for tho?? I realize we all know the circumstances will never be perfect but if this is about the sport we should put our focus on the root causes of why we are wounding so many deer and not once again be looking for tech/ the easy button to bail us out constantly! We should also never shy away from admitting it will never be perfect and we won’t always be successful. Thats ok!! The threat of failure in hunting is what drives us to be better!
The tech argument is wrought with debate. How far do we roll it back? What do we roll back? Of course, we all want it to be "like the good ol' days" which of course is when we were kids/started no matter our age.
Do we get rid of drones, cell cams, all cams, treestands, box blinds, pop-up blinds, compound bows? The list could go on and on. I personally would be fine with all electronics, treestands, box and pop-up blinds, and compound bows. I also use SD cameras, a compound, treestands, a pop up blind, and a buddy heater currently.
The flip side is, when I started, I could shoot just fine. I could shoot a bow as well or better than most guys and won several local and regional 3-ds, but I didn't have a mentor to teach me to hunt and I hunted from age 11 until age 17 to shoot a deer with a compound. The shot to the first deer was 52 yards. Had I been forced to use a recurve, I would have had to keep going. I also used a pop-up blind on that hunt. At this point, my woodsmanship has gotten better, and I have hunted from the ground with no blind and killed mature bucks. My biggest buck with a bow was killed kneeling in tall grass because the wind was wrong for my stand. For several years until I started hunting with my kids and only taking shot they couldn't make, you could have taken every pin out of my sight except the top one and my success would not have changed.
How long and gradual do we want the slope on the learning curve to be? Do we want people with no mentors to leave the sport out of frustration?
Now, personally, things have gotten way to easy. I had never used cameras of any sort until December of 2024. In my opinion, they made the difference in killing a couple gobblers last spring and also helped with understanding deer movement, what bucks were around, and how old they were. When they showed up, we didn't need to analyze, just recognize. The decision had already been made. That's a lot more time to make the shot in a quick encounter scenario. I also abandoned ship on area where the two bucks we were hunting had disappeared off the cameras and went to a different area and killed one of the other mature deer we had on camera that scored less. Without cameras, I would have kept hunting where the bigger deer were. It turned out to be a good decision, as we never got another picture of either buck after having pictures of one buck every day and every 3rd day in daylight and the other buck every 3 days and about once a week in daylight. This was all with SD cams where I had to check cards to know what was going on. We hunted one of the best days during the rut in an area that had no mature bucks on camera for an entire week prior. It ended up having no pictures of mature bucks for the entire rest of the season.
In my opinion, the cameras, even the archaic SD cams, are a colossal advantage. We knew about deer we never would have known about if we had to use actual sightings. We also knew when they disappeared. If we go back over 29 years of bowhunting, the number of deer I have killed because of compounds is astronomical. Even if I had become insanely good with trad gear, there is no way I would have kept up.
Gun/optics tech and the popularity of prs/nrl shooting has changed the game on the gun side. The guys that spend their weekends shooting matches can shoot beyond what I would have believed was possible 20 years ago and the equipment is getting more and more affordable. Most guys, not just the guys that win matches, but MOST of the attendees, are good enough to drastically extend their effective range and speed. The other side of that is people see these guys shoot and think they can do the same thing without shooting 2k to 20k rounds per year. They go buy the gear, and without practice or really learning how to use it, they commence wounding deer at long range.
On the archery side, influencers have convinced guys to shoot further than makes sense. The distance a deer can move while an arrow flys 80 or 100 yards in insane. Even 50 yards is questionable in a lot of scenarios. There are A LOT of guys shooting bows that can absolutely stack arrows at 50 yards, so no problem, right??
A long ramble to get here. Things are easier now than ever. 30 years ago it was significantly harder. My guess is 30 years before that it was harder yet. How far back do we need to go? Do we let success rates dictate it? It's an idea. The other viable mathematical option is to adjust tag allocations based on success rates and population. Now we are back to talking about lost opportunity.
If I remember correctly, when the antlerless tags first started, it was a max of 2 per hunter. I remember seeing 30-40 deer per sit then. Now, we have unlimited available until the quota is filled and guys are still killing trailer loads. Maybe just dialing that back will improve things quickly.
Do we get rid of drones, cell cams, all cams, treestands, box blinds, pop-up blinds, compound bows? The list could go on and on. I personally would be fine with all electronics, treestands, box and pop-up blinds, and compound bows. I also use SD cameras, a compound, treestands, a pop up blind, and a buddy heater currently.
The flip side is, when I started, I could shoot just fine. I could shoot a bow as well or better than most guys and won several local and regional 3-ds, but I didn't have a mentor to teach me to hunt and I hunted from age 11 until age 17 to shoot a deer with a compound. The shot to the first deer was 52 yards. Had I been forced to use a recurve, I would have had to keep going. I also used a pop-up blind on that hunt. At this point, my woodsmanship has gotten better, and I have hunted from the ground with no blind and killed mature bucks. My biggest buck with a bow was killed kneeling in tall grass because the wind was wrong for my stand. For several years until I started hunting with my kids and only taking shot they couldn't make, you could have taken every pin out of my sight except the top one and my success would not have changed.
How long and gradual do we want the slope on the learning curve to be? Do we want people with no mentors to leave the sport out of frustration?
Now, personally, things have gotten way to easy. I had never used cameras of any sort until December of 2024. In my opinion, they made the difference in killing a couple gobblers last spring and also helped with understanding deer movement, what bucks were around, and how old they were. When they showed up, we didn't need to analyze, just recognize. The decision had already been made. That's a lot more time to make the shot in a quick encounter scenario. I also abandoned ship on area where the two bucks we were hunting had disappeared off the cameras and went to a different area and killed one of the other mature deer we had on camera that scored less. Without cameras, I would have kept hunting where the bigger deer were. It turned out to be a good decision, as we never got another picture of either buck after having pictures of one buck every day and every 3rd day in daylight and the other buck every 3 days and about once a week in daylight. This was all with SD cams where I had to check cards to know what was going on. We hunted one of the best days during the rut in an area that had no mature bucks on camera for an entire week prior. It ended up having no pictures of mature bucks for the entire rest of the season.
In my opinion, the cameras, even the archaic SD cams, are a colossal advantage. We knew about deer we never would have known about if we had to use actual sightings. We also knew when they disappeared. If we go back over 29 years of bowhunting, the number of deer I have killed because of compounds is astronomical. Even if I had become insanely good with trad gear, there is no way I would have kept up.
Gun/optics tech and the popularity of prs/nrl shooting has changed the game on the gun side. The guys that spend their weekends shooting matches can shoot beyond what I would have believed was possible 20 years ago and the equipment is getting more and more affordable. Most guys, not just the guys that win matches, but MOST of the attendees, are good enough to drastically extend their effective range and speed. The other side of that is people see these guys shoot and think they can do the same thing without shooting 2k to 20k rounds per year. They go buy the gear, and without practice or really learning how to use it, they commence wounding deer at long range.
On the archery side, influencers have convinced guys to shoot further than makes sense. The distance a deer can move while an arrow flys 80 or 100 yards in insane. Even 50 yards is questionable in a lot of scenarios. There are A LOT of guys shooting bows that can absolutely stack arrows at 50 yards, so no problem, right??
A long ramble to get here. Things are easier now than ever. 30 years ago it was significantly harder. My guess is 30 years before that it was harder yet. How far back do we need to go? Do we let success rates dictate it? It's an idea. The other viable mathematical option is to adjust tag allocations based on success rates and population. Now we are back to talking about lost opportunity.
If I remember correctly, when the antlerless tags first started, it was a max of 2 per hunter. I remember seeing 30-40 deer per sit then. Now, we have unlimited available until the quota is filled and guys are still killing trailer loads. Maybe just dialing that back will improve things quickly.
CottonwoodCanyon
PMA Member
Totally agree, this isn't discussed enough. It changes the game from "I need to make a QUICKLY lethal hit" to find the deer period, into "I just need to get some sort of EVENTUALLY lethal hit" into the deer and I can fly a drone and find it. It changes the ethics completely.
If you make a poor shot and the deer suffers, you should suffer in some way as well.