What is the fee for a deer and wildlife surveys?

Price is determined by location, size and topography. Send up your property address and/or information and we will be in contact with you to develop a free, no obligation quote and plan to get started on with a wildlife survey on your property.

Is using a drone to recover deer and perform wildlife surveys legal in Ohio?

We have discussed this many times with representatives from the Ohio Division of Wildlife before forming our business model and the answer according to them has always been a resounding yes, as long as no one in the hunting or search party is employing a hunting implement while the search is taking place. There are laws and exceptions that must be followed, and as licensed drone operators it is our responsibility to make sure these laws and exceptions are followed. We will require that all hunting implements are locked up and not present on any person while we are looking for your deer with our drone. For legal information we suggest you contact your county wildlife officer, as well as look at the Ohio Revised Code where legal definitions can be found. We will never use our drones to hunt, shoot, shoot at, kill, take or attempt to take a wild bird or quadruped. We take this very seriously and will report anyone we hear of breaking this law.

Is Conservation Drones Services licensed and insured to fly a drone commercially?

Yes. Seth Rankin is the remote pilot for Conservation Drone Services, and has completed training and passed the Federal Aviation Administrations (FAA) part 107 Remote Pilot Testing. He holds a remote pilot license through FAA and carries a full commercial liability policy on the business through an insurance provider. We are 100% legal, professional and ready to fly.

What are the capabilities of your drone?

We utilize a state of the art professional grade thermal drone, which has much greater capabilities then the cheaper drones that some others are currently using. Our drone was engineered for the search and rescue industry, therefore was made to the highest standards.

-Thermal camera can pick up heat signatures from extremely long distances
– 200x zoom camera can clearly identify specific deer from extremely long distances
-Can fly as high as 400ft above ground level
-Covers huge areas quickly and effectively
-Can fly in almost any weather rain or shine
-We also can fly at night and effectively locate and identify deer
-Non-stop flight with simple battery change
-Very non-intrusive.
-Does not disturb your ground or other wildlife.
-Mobile setup capabilities
-No blood or scent trails required for tracking

What are the limitations of your drone?

Our drone is the best drone that money can buy at the consumer level for deer recovery and survey purposes. With that said we have found that there are generally some limitations to using drones for deer survey and recovery purposes, and being a completely fair and transparent organization we feel it is only fair to mention them to our potential clients.

-On sunny days it will be harder for the thermal camera to pick up specific signatures of heat. This can be mitigated by waiting for the sun to go down or searching at night.
-During early season, the drones capabilities will be severely limited for searching a heavily stocked wooded area. The leaves of the trees will block the camera from seeing down onto the forest floor, so the woods will not be able to be searched as effectively as it would once the leaves fall. Fortunately the large majority of deer are harvested between the end of October to the end of season, so this will not be an issues for most searches. The drone will still work as expected in the early season in areas that do not have a closed canopy such as brushy areas, CRP fields, bean fields or even standing corn fields.
-We must maintain visual line of site (VLOS) of the drone at all times. In some areas, especially areas of heavy woods, this may limit the area that we can search from one location. In these cases we will have to physically move launch sites to different areas of the property in order to adequately cover the search area if the deer is not initially located at the first launch site.
-While the drone rarely if ever spooks deer from 400ft AGL altitude, it can sometimes spook deer at lower altitudes. We have found this to rarely be the case, but have also observed that every deer has their own personalities and tolerances, and may react differently to the sound of a drone.
-If flying around a regulated airspace such as a larger airport then we will have to communicate and receive permission to fly before launching in restricted airspace. However most all of rural Ohio is unclassified airspace where we can fly freely while following FAA regulations, and we will usually be in unclassified airspace.
-Unfortunately, drones are not allowed to be launched on most public land in Ohio without special permissions, so for deer recovery purposes we will be limited to private land for the 2023-2024 season.

With all said, the limitations of our drones can usually be mitigated and the capabilities far exceed the limitations. Generally speaking, there is nothing else available right now to consumers that will beat our thermal drone for searching large areas of land quickly and effectively. We are extremely confident in our drone and operators capabilities to provide the best services of this type that money can buy.