Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: How's it going, folks? I'mike, with drone deer recovery. This is dennis, one of our subcontractors from the local area. Today we are going to be talking drone deer recovery stories. Some of the stories that dennis has been doing, and then some of our stories as well. We just get into it. So here we go.
All righty. Welcome back to the drone deer recovery podcast. Today we got dennis in the house. How's it going, dennis?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: It's going great.
[00:00:33] Speaker A: So, dennis, you started flying drones because you've seen stuff on youtube, and you're local here, and you were like, I want to join the team and kind of do what I do.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I saw you the first time. It's probably been a few years.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Few years? I've only been going for 14 months.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: No. Well, it must have been 14 months.
[00:00:52] Speaker A: Wait, you're saying just me in general? You remember seeing me?
[00:00:55] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: But I did see you at a sportsman show somewhere.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: You had this probably up at the mount hoony little. Yes, I had a baby drone back then.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it was. But I thought, that's a cool idea. Then I saw your videos last year, and I thought, man, that does look like a lot of fun. But with the business that I had and stuff, I couldn't do it.
[00:01:14] Speaker A: So you had a business, you were working hard, you spent a lot of time doing your business, and then you ended up selling it and gave you a little bit of time to do this.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: You got it.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: That's it.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Sold the business about three months ago and then started getting into some other stuff. But it gave me enough flexibility to do this, which has been an interesting journey.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:01:36] Speaker A: So you had mentioned last time. Well, not just the last time, but a week or so ago, you and I were talking, not much sleep. You weren't getting much sleep because drone deer recovery was sending you that many calls to do.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: That is right. We started out with a bang. That is for sure.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: When season first starts, right? You're fired up, and it's early season. It's hard searching, and you're excited about it, but then it all of a sudden is just like a switch. Right now. It needs to be done. What's going on, kevin? You look at me like, what? Okay.
[00:02:13] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's been pretty crazy. So I started, of course, doing some just for friends and family, which gives you great.
But, um, man, I tell, you know, when I hooked up with you guys and you started giving me leads, things got really crazy.
Very few hours of sleep type of stuff.
[00:02:35] Speaker A: When I say that line all the time. It's going to be wild. Like, you experience that yourself, that's for sure. Yeah, same with austin.
He's like, mike, this is wild. And austin's supposed to be here. Austin is not here. Kevin's behind the camera doing all the computer stuff.
Austin was out all night last night doing recovery, got home. Did he say 06:00 this morning? He got back home 06:00 this morning.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: 45 he texted me and it's like, can we delay this thing?
[00:03:06] Speaker A: You would have probably been out, but your lp twelve quit working.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: I got my first full night's sleep in a long time.
[00:03:12] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:03:13] Speaker B: My light quit working.
[00:03:14] Speaker A: That being said, guys, if you're listening to this and you also fly drones and you do have the lp twelve, there is a software issue with these lp twelve s right now that with the latest firmware update from dji, you plug your lp twelve in and it corrupts the firmware on the lp twelve. And so it just basically becomes a brick and you can't do anything about it. The only other thing you can do about it is send it to zzi and then they have to repair it. Unfortunately, that happened to yours.
Not last night, but the night before while you were flying on a right.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: Yes, yes. I was using one, went to the other one, fired it up, go out, try to light it up. Nothing.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: It's so weird that literally within just a couple of seconds, you didn't do anything different and it just won't show up. Yeah, the firmware is completely corrupt, but we are now going to be promoting a new light. It's brighter, it just doesn't go to 90 degrees. It goes to 85 degrees, but it still works great. I think a lot of people are going to end up starting to use that light.
I'm a little upset. I sat down here and we come to find out that some of our best footage that we call guts out buck didn't upload properly to the cloud. And now the editors got in touch with us and are like, where's this footage? And we shouldn't even looked at it because now I'm upset sitting here knowing that we're not going to be able to show you guys that cool footage. But that's just a whole nother thing. That footage is coming. You guys are going to want to check into this. Tell us some of the coolest or craziest things you have now seen. Like when you walked in the door, you started showing, know, a video clip of this buck that was shot quartering away, had an exit coming out of the shoulder, and you're like, mike, how's this deer still alive?
[00:05:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's happening over and over. I'm telling you, I have seen some of the craziest stuff. Now, I've been around hunters. I've hunted all my life. I'm not like a diehard hunter like all of the rest of my family is, but I'm saying that I've been around it, and I have never seen anything like these bucks just not willing to die.
Now, there is somebody, you get out there, you see the hunter, and they're always like, I drilled it, totally smoked it. It should be laying right in there. And, yeah, you find it 2 hours later, and it's still running around.
The hunters can't believe it. But now, on the other hand, some of these hunters, I would have said, yeah, you totally smoked it. And for some reason, they just keep going.
I'm telling you, there's $2 that just this weekend, I found them saturday.
The one was shot friday. I found that one saturday still going. They showed me pictures of the blood trail, and it's just like, you could just walk along.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: I mean, it's shocking how much blood they lose and they can still be alive.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: It's bubbly. It's like, obviously lung shot, and there's just tons of it. And eventually they quit going after it because they're like, something's off here.
So they get us to come out, and sure enough, I find it had traveled another probably 300 yards after they last found blood, had bedded down. And we're like, great, he's bedded down. We'll come back next day, check him. Came back next.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Yeah, because they didn't want to go in in case that he's not dead. Right. You'd bump him off. So the technology allows them to see if it's completely dead.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: That's exactly why. And if it's a nice buck, that's a good idea because you're way more likely to get it if you don't keep bumping.
[00:06:56] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: And so, yeah, that's a really nice one. And I looked at it every day.
[00:07:03] Speaker A: You looked at it every day?
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Well, I had two in the same area, and so usually one of them called me, and it's like, you got to come back. This buck still, like, we can't find him or he's not dead. And so I'd go and check on the other one so I could give excellent customer service there because there were two in the same area, but, yeah. So I go back, not last night yesterday morning was the last. So this would have been monday morning. No, tuesday morning. Yeah, monday. They went in, figured he's dead. No, chump him. He takes off running. He was still laying in the same spot. No, that he had been laying for a long time. But he takes off, moves. I find him again yesterday morning, he moved a little ways, but found him still looking fine. And we could see the entry. So he believed he shot it and hit the opposite shoulder because it was limping on that site, and there was no exit wound there. But we could see the entry wound, and it looks like it should be a double lung shot.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: It is shocking what they can go through. I think a lot has to do with the rut as well. I think if it'd be late season, you hit a deer like that, or early, early season, they'd be maybe a little bit more often to just lay down and die. But when it's rut, it is insane what you're seeing, right. I was telling these stories last year already on different podcasts and showing it on the videos, and I was saying how wild this is. And now we have people like yourself and probably hundreds more people out there using drones to recover carcasses and finding deer that are hit that are now seeing it for firsthand. Like, this is nuts. Like, some of this stuff.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Yeah. The other buck that I was looking for, probably 5 miles apart, and that one arrow goes straight through.
I believe we could see the entry, the exit hole. You would have set maybe a little bit high, but no way would have I ever thought that deer would survive. And he's walking around eating yesterday. So that one was shot saturday, and he was still going strong. I think he'll be fine. It's totally nuts. While I was looking for that one, I find another one literally about 100 yards from where that one was at, laying there with a broken arrow in his back.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: What?
[00:09:35] Speaker B: No idea. Wait. Really nice one. Wait.
[00:09:40] Speaker A: You were looking for your customer's buck, and in the process of doing that, you find another buck with an arrow in it, but they don't know who shot it.
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Nobody knows.
Just absolutely crazy. So, yeah, I was looking at $3 yesterday morning that just did not want to.
[00:09:59] Speaker A: No way. Have you been looking for a client's buck and found another deer dead that was not theirs?
[00:10:07] Speaker B: Dead? Like, really dead? Yes. As in probably a month.
[00:10:13] Speaker A: No way.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: But, yeah, busser was chowing down on it.
[00:10:17] Speaker A: But did the carcass still have heat?
[00:10:19] Speaker B: No, this one did not.
Busser made me look at.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Jason the other night, so we had a customer call us, wanted to see if we can find a deer for him. And we were right next door, and we told him the price. Price was too much for him. Jason was actually working for another customer down the road here. Jason flies across the buck. They find it, and they go out there to recover it, and they show up, and the hunter's like, that's not my buck, or something like that. And then we send that coordinates to the hunter that reached out to us earlier, and it ended up being his.
You can't even. It's so crazy. Yeah.
[00:11:05] Speaker B: And actually, the one I went found saturday that was still alive, that hunter casually mentions that, hey, some of the other hunters that were here yesterday or friday morning, they shot one and they couldn't find it. They gave up. They did not call drone deer recovery. Should have. Because after I found his, I'm like, hey, should I take a little look for the other one? He's like, yeah, sure. I go, five minutes. Find it.
[00:11:33] Speaker A: No way. Was it dead?
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that one was dead.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: No way.
[00:11:37] Speaker B: So we recovered that one for the other guys. So I just told my customer, you need to make them pay heavier.
He did give me a tip for finding that one.
[00:11:45] Speaker A: Nice. That's cool. Yeah, it is crazy what you come across when you're doing this. We were talking a little bit ago. It's like, what's with the sunshine?
[00:11:55] Speaker B: We live in ohio, the sunniest november ever.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: We like it overcast.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: I tell you what, I've never had a year where I was like, man, I can't wait for cloudy days and no leaves on the trees.
And this year, it's like they're hanging on forever, and the sun keeps shining, and it's.
[00:12:18] Speaker A: Yep. I talked to a guy yesterday in louisiana, and he's like, it's overcast. And I'm like, oh, can it just be overcast here?
[00:12:26] Speaker B: Especially now that my light's not working right now. I got to replace that quickly.
[00:12:32] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll have more lights for you, hopefully by tomorrow, but, yeah, man, what crazy, cool stories. We could probably sit here all day and talk about some stories that have been already told. Last night, I was flying on a mission, and all of a sudden, we hear five gunshots in the pitch black dart. I'm like, oh, boy, I seriously think somebody was shooting at my drone. Have you had that?
[00:12:57] Speaker B: I have not had them shoot at it. I've had hunters warn me about certain neighbors that are very likely to shoot at it.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: But when I hear that, then I'm like, okay, if your neighbor is going to shoot at my drone. How are you ever going to go get that deer, right? Like, if you're on the neighborhood.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
They like the hunters better than the drones. I do think it would be a really good idea to have them tell the neighbors, if possibly can just call them if you can, and tell them, hey, we've got to have a drone flying around. Because I can understand why somebody would get a little antsy about that. That did happen to me the other night. 03:00 I'm like, nobody's awake. And I'm looking for a good buddy of mine, and all of a sudden we see the neighbor driving through the fields and stuff.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: It's like three in the morning.
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Like, between two and three in the morning. And I'm like, that is strange. Like, how did we wake him? Or whatever? But that guy ended up finding us. We found that buck, and then the neighbor came close enough to where we went out and met him. And they knew the neighbor well, and he was really cool about it, but he.
[00:14:03] Speaker A: What was he doing?
[00:14:04] Speaker B: He said the dog started barking because they hurt the drone. And so he came out and saw it and was like, that's weird, a drone fly in the middle of the night. But he came out, he was great. Didn't have a problem with it at all.
[00:14:17] Speaker A: So what's your wife say about you being gone all night?
[00:14:20] Speaker B: Oh, boy. No, she's cool. She's about as good as you can imagine about it. And I did warn her.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Just for a short season.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Yes, it's for a short season, but yeah.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: What are you doing, kevin?
[00:14:37] Speaker B: He's cleaning the lens.
[00:14:42] Speaker A: It's like a guy. It's like a guy that needs to. Okay.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: Camera guy is cleaning the lens while we're shooting. This is good.
[00:14:51] Speaker A: Any guy shot, too.
Good stuff. So do you have children?
[00:14:56] Speaker B: No kids.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: No children. Bunch of dogs.
[00:15:00] Speaker B: Just dogs. They're everywhere.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: You were showing me a picture of big. What did you call them?
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Huskies. Yeah. So I got six huskies, got two australian shepherds, and I got two palmskis, which are like little huskies.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: And they were all in your house last night?
[00:15:17] Speaker B: Last night they were. That's not supposed to happen. But my wife's like, they can come in here whenever they want. No, they can't come in whenever they want. Not the huskies, but they like it on the outside anyway.
[00:15:30] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Well, they can get into the garage, which is.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: What do you plan on doing in the future with drones? Are you wanting to get more involved in other industries or just stick with the thermal stuff?
[00:15:46] Speaker B: Well, this stuff is a lot of fun, but I am very interested and I talk with you about a little bit about getting into other stuff and getting into the ag stuff. I love it. I've always liked technology.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah. When you started telling me that you were trying to figure out how to hack your lp twelve, I'm thinking dog gun. Aren't you xomish like me?
[00:16:06] Speaker B: That is true.
[00:16:09] Speaker A: How did you get so techie?
[00:16:11] Speaker B: I don't know. Probably because I wasn't allowed to have it. You want what you can't have? I don't know, but I never really took training to do anything. But I learned that if you just try all kinds of stuff, usually you can figure it out at some point. The lp twelve one I haven't figured out.
[00:16:30] Speaker A: Yeah. You were going to try to hack into it.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: I was googling stuff. I was in the computer, like doing crazy coat stuff. Yeah. And it just would not let me do it.
Yeah, I finally gave up. Yeah, after you told me it's a brick.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it's true, it is a brick. The only thing you can do is send it off to czi. So you're techie or you like tech? Oh, yeah. And you're thinking about maybe getting into other basically agricultural. You're thinking and anything else outside of that?
[00:17:08] Speaker B: Not in particular. I figured I maybe do some photography and stuff like that, but I'm not sure how much I want to get into that. I used to do that some with my pirate paramotor.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Oh, you flyed pirate paramoter.
[00:17:21] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: Wait, let's talk about that. How long have you been flying power paramotor?
[00:17:27] Speaker B: Ten and a half years. What? Almost eleven years? Yeah. Holy max.
[00:17:32] Speaker A: I fly ultralights but not power paramotor.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:35] Speaker A: So there's two different.
Yours is like a parachute thing and mine would be have like a rigid wing.
Yours fits in the back of your f 150, mine doesn't.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I could literally break this one down in about five minutes and put it in the back of my car. So that's one thing I like about those, is they're very.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Would you say that knowing how to fly pyre paramoters, was any of that knowledge helpful in learning how to fly drones, or is it just completely different?
[00:18:06] Speaker B: I don't know that it was necessarily helpful in learning how to fly, but I can tell you knowing a little bit about airspace made it a lot easier to get my part 107. A lot of that stuff I had known already. Not that you have to know that stuff to fly a power paramoter. You don't need anything.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: You don't need a license to fly a power paramoter.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Nothing. No.
[00:18:31] Speaker A: Just being a little bit of daring and you can go do it.
[00:18:35] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I highly recommend training, but I trained a couple of my friends, brother.
I taught them how to fly their paramoters in the last couple of years.
That is a lot of responsibility though.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Yeah. Teaching somebody how to fly and then they go out and get hung up in a power line. That wouldn't be good.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: But no, they're all doing great, fortunately.
So, yeah, that's been good. And love to been doing a ton of flying with other things.
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Have you been flying lately? Because you have been. Even if you're flying drones this month.
[00:19:13] Speaker B: Oh, not in the last three weeks.
Come on.
End of october was the last time.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: No way.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: I did on a saturday. Like last saturday.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Yeah, because the thing is, with those power preparer motors, you're flying those evenings and that's when you're getting ready to head out to look for people's carcasses.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Yeah, that's for sure.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: Not people carcasses. You're looking for customers. Deer carcasses.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
This weather isn't right. Now it's not too bad. We'll probably go flying at some point. But my brother just bought a brand new one, so we got to go.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: Try that one out. Go try that thing out. What was I going to say?
Okay, so going to get your part 107. You knew some airspace stuff. How long did you study before you went to take your test?
[00:20:02] Speaker B: That's a good question. I did quite a while. I purchased the drone school. You recommended it to me.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: I don't even remember which one that was, but there's a bunch of different ones.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: You sent me a link for it. So I paid a couple of $100 for a class basically to go through. That made it really easy. But the class was fairly intense to go through the whole thing and I didn't know that it would, but I ended up going through the whole thing was very informative. It was interesting.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I think everybody that wants to fly a drone, there's enough good stuff to learn just in general, like safety wise and airspace wise. And it makes you a little bit more conscious of what you're doing with your drone.
[00:20:46] Speaker B: For sure.
[00:20:46] Speaker A: Don't be that guy that's taking the thing to 3000ft. Because, dude, an airplane could come along and just. You'll never see that. If I'm going almost 200 miles an hour, I will never see that drone come through the windshield. No, so I definitely think it's a good thing that if you guys are listening and you've ever thought about getting near part 107, sign up for one of those online courses and learn what they teach you in there, and you'll just become more aware of some of the rules and regs and airplane stuff. So it's very helpful for sure. What other cool, crazy stories as far as drone deer recovery? So one night I called you, you were out literally all night. What's the latest? Or earliest you came home one day?
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. That was when I was convinced mike enjoys torturing people.
[00:21:38] Speaker A: Tell me about that.
[00:21:40] Speaker B: So I was out all night. This was like on a thursday night, I want to say.
And I just ended up getting calls at like 12:00.
Twelve in the evening. I'm like, there's this one customer that wants me to look for a buck yet, but he's not answering anymore. I think he fell asleep. But I'm close to his place and I'm like, I don't want to drive all the way home. Then he called me. So I'm like, I'm just going to the gas station, buying a little something, taking a nap and see what happens. Sure enough, ten minutes, I'm just closing my eyes. He calls, he's like, you're going to.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: Take a nap at the gas station?
[00:22:23] Speaker B: Yes, because I didn't want to drive all the way home and have this guy call me. So he calls me, he's like, yeah, can you just come right now and look for it? And this was by that time, it was probably 01:00 like, yeah, I'll come. All right. I'm like, I'm not sleeping anyway. So I go down there, we find his buck, and at 03:00 in the morning, three in the morning, I was literally helping this guy drag the biggest buck out of the woods. We almost could not load that.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: You became a full service recovery.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I did. For sure. I do way too much of that crap. I should not do it. But I have helped drag more bucks out of the woods this year than I have ever dragged out in my entire life combined, for sure.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: But I love it. I like going and seeing the deer. Plus, if I want to video a little, it makes great. So yeah, I drag that guy out, I do some stuff there. I drive all the way home. I get home, it's about 05:00 well, it's about 430, but I'm like, I smell like a gut shot buck. I am going to take a shower before I sleep. I take a shower. Get it a bet. 05:00 I'm like, you know what? Mike's going to call me any minute when I fall asleep. And I got this in my head and I'm like, oh, then you sit there caffeinated. It's bad. Literally ten minutes. Mike calls me, I'm like, this is not actually happening. And yeah, can you go do one right now? It's in your town. How am I going to say no.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: It was in your town.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: So I call the guy and the hunter says, yeah, we can do it at seven. And I'm like thinking at that point, yes, I can get about an hour's sleep and I lay back down. Ten minutes later mike calls me, hey, what do you think about this? About right now?
You started shut my phone off.
That's funny.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: So basically you accepted the lead. And then I was like, I got to get this update on the camera. And I turned the camera on and call you again. You were just getting ready to take a nap. And then it was like I was.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Laid down again for like ten minutes. Bang again. But yeah, that was crazy. But I went the whole next day.
I think that next night I got like 3 hours of sleep. It's just been absolutely crazy. But there are a few gaps in there where I got like 8 hours. But hey, you sleep when the sun shines when you do, right?
[00:24:52] Speaker A: That is true. And the sun has been shining here in ohio.
I just don't know that it's been this sunny for this length of time that I can ever remember. Not in november, like usually it's gray and just overcast. No, not lately. It's just been bright sunshine and going for it, which isn't great for us. And the reason we're saying that is because you can't do thermal in the daytime because everything gets blown out. You might get lucky and find a deer or two with thermal, but you can't be super confident in doing.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Yeah, you can definitely find them. I've done it. Just stopping to quit when the sun starts shining and you can find deer. The problem is you never know when you miss one.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
When you started this. Right. I told you, if you want to work with us, I'll send you leads. And rather than just trying to do it completely on your own. And I don't have a problem with guys doing that, like being completely on their own.
Did you think that it would be this?
[00:25:56] Speaker B: But not even close.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: I don't know if there's a hundred people doing this right in our area. A bit in ohio. But there's a. Yeah. And there's still enough to go around.
[00:26:07] Speaker B: Yeah. I was absolutely blown away when I talked with, you know, hey, send me some leads and stuff. I never imagined that you give me what I got.
So I really haven't done hardly any, well, I haven't done any official advertising or anything like that on my just. Are you going to get on the family? I do want. I was going to talk with you about that. On the other hand, I was like, if mike takes the calls and gives.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Them to me, I already see that changing because we were going to give leads like some of the guys in southern howe, but they got onto the map. Well, now instead of those guys calling the main office, they're just calling that operator directly, which I don't have a problem with that. It's basically if the guy is close to your area, he's going to see your phone number and he's going to call you direct. I did see a slowdown on my number because of more people joining the map. I don't have a problem with that. I just want to make sure that those guys that are on the map have the good equipment anybody can get on right now. Right. You can have those little baby drones like a mavic three t and do it. But my biggest thing is I want the hunters to educate themselves on you as the pilot. And then what the equipment is that you're flying, because if you're showing up with a little mavic three t, you're not going to see what you can see with the matrice for sure. So definitely, if you want to get on the map, I'd be curious to see if calls come in for you, because I think where you're located, there's not a bunch of people north of there like north, north. That's true.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. We got to do that.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that that map being listed on the drone deer recovery map is helping people out majorly. There's a guy out in the midwest, and I also thought, dude, there's an opportunity for people that want to do road trips, like to just go and set up in an area and do recovery in that area. There's a guy in the midwest because there's not a lot of people out there like there are here.
He's been doing calls where he's driving 7 hours. One way to do.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:28:17] Speaker A: And charging for it.
[00:28:18] Speaker B: Yikes.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: Yeah, but he's making a bunch of money, I hope. He said he had three people pay him $2,500 or more to recover a deer.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: But look at it. How much do these hunters spent trying to get that deer in the first place? And then when you finally hit them and not sure, well, it totally makes sense.
[00:28:38] Speaker A: It just totally makes sense. If you're going to spend $10,000 between your hunting blinds, your camo, your food plot, your seed.
[00:28:49] Speaker B: And they do that. They all do that.
Most hunters will spend a lot of money on that stuff, so why not ones you actually have hit a deer, do whatever you can to recover?
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Yeah, that's one thing. When somebody calls me and asks what the price is. Right. Our price here is $450 plus $100 if we find the deer dead or alive. And that includes 60 round trip miles. If it's over that, it's a dollar mile. So basically, if it's a round trip of 160 miles, they'll get charged $100 for the trip charge. And some people are like, whoa, too much. But then, if you think about it, what they've already spent, it's weird that the final. Right, like the final, get a drone out to recover the carcass, and you tell them it's between 450 and maybe $600. It's like, whoa, wouldn't do that.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah. But I do think most people that they're willing to do that and understand why we should be charging that much, because it is crazy. Like, yeah, if you go out in the evening and you spent ten minutes finding a bug, it seems like, well, this is pretty good. But when you're out there at 03:00 and you've been looking for it for 3 hours, it's a grind. It is. It's brutal. And I've looked for some for many hours.
[00:30:07] Speaker A: Yeah. You do not like giving up?
[00:30:09] Speaker B: No, I have a little bit of an issue with that.
I usually tell the customer, look, I ain't quitting until you make me know. Usually they are.
[00:30:22] Speaker A: Do the customers actually tell you, like, okay, dennis, I'm done, I'm going to go home now? Yeah, that's happened. Oh, yeah, tell me.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: Well, they usually don't say it to you directly. They're like, yeah, I think we've covered everything. I cannot see that this buck is anywhere in the area. So, yeah, we've got some other stuff or dinners on the table, we need to go. And so there's been different. It always depends on the situation.
[00:30:51] Speaker A: But when the customer said, okay, I'm leaving. You've never stayed there and kept flying.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: Yeah, listen, I'm not quite satisfied yet, so if you need to leave, I'm just going to do, like, one more battery, I'll make it.
And then three batteries later.
[00:31:15] Speaker A: Those are the people we need, though. The people that are not just doing it just for the dollars, but want to find it, because it becomes like an adult treasure hunt. You don't want to quit.
[00:31:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: And then you might find a coon or a coyote or another big buck, and it just pushes you to want to keep going.
[00:31:34] Speaker B: I have never done anything to where I can sit there for 3 hours and beat that. I mean, the first few times I was shocked, I'm like, how is it 3 hours? Seems like 20 minutes.
The time just flies. But I love it. I love that it is a bit of that treasure hunt thing. And I always know I'm that close.
[00:31:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:31:57] Speaker B: And you know what doesn't help is when you're searching for one for 2 hours and you're sure you search every, and then you find him and there he is, dead, and you're like, oh, I can never give up because I was thinking of it the next time you think of that, because if you.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Would have quit five minutes earlier, the.
[00:32:16] Speaker B: Deer, you wouldn't have gotten it.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
As you were first learning, you may have been flying slower and not quite as confident, but now you can cover area and be pretty doggone confident.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: Well, the other big thing is, when I started, there were so many leaves on the trees that you had to look at it from ten different angles, look through it, and I found deer that way, but it takes way longer. Yeah. The first time mike saw me fly and he's like, dude, you're going way too slow.
But now I motor it around pretty good out there, but as soon as I start to, okay, we can see everything in this. You can just.
[00:32:56] Speaker A: Do you ever fly in sport mode? Because you're covering that.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: I have not. No, I have not. I hear of too many drone crashes, I'm afraid.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: Gosh. Yeah, there have been a bunch of drone crashes.
[00:33:08] Speaker B: Who was the guy who crashed the drone that I went to the.
[00:33:11] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. So just tell them about that. So basically, there's another subcontractor locally that I gave a lead to because you were busy on another one. And then he went out, launched his drone, was talking to the customer straight up into the power line.
[00:33:24] Speaker B: Dude, I don't want to make fun of this.
I am already, so forget it. I'm probably going to crash my drone just to keep me humble. I'm telling you, I come out there and the guy's like, yeah, that's where he crashes.
[00:33:38] Speaker A: I'm looking.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: I'm like, are you kidding me? He just did not look up at all, did he? Because he's like, right on the drive, literally 12ft above is the electric line going into the house.
But, yeah, the customer said, yeah, he was talking to me and he was distracted, obviously.
[00:33:57] Speaker A: Luckily, that drone was not completely destroyed, so it was an easy fix. We sent it up to ohio. Drone repair.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: Roger.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: Got that thing turned around in one day. That's another thing. If you guys have drones that you crash, reach out to ohio. Drone repair, he's able to turn those around, usually within a day. Guy is legit. That is what he does is really focus on repairing drones. But, yeah, he was able to get that one turned around really quickly for the customer. But then you show up and did you find that buck?
[00:34:26] Speaker B: That was the buck I was showing you when I came in here.
[00:34:28] Speaker A: Oh, no. Okay.
[00:34:28] Speaker B: Still alive.
[00:34:29] Speaker A: So you were able to find a buck, but it just wasn't.
[00:34:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I located pretty quickly. Maybe 20 minutes.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Drone crashes are just part of this thing. Right, because we're flying at night and those sensors, yes, they do have anti collision sensors on them, but they only work if it's bright out or like daylight.
[00:34:49] Speaker B: Yeah. Or if it's something big enough that they can detect.
They could miss like a line, right?
[00:34:55] Speaker A: Yeah, they could miss something really small.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: But, yeah, that's the problem with. I want to get a better look at night. I'm going so close to treetops, I'm like, I can't tell where they're at.
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Well, you're saying you go down because there's like a lot of brush or something like that. You're not pushing deer.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: Yeah, no, if it's open, then it's not a problem. But if I go down now, it's crazy. And even if you spook deer at all, they'll run 50ft or not even run. They'll go a few feet and stop and look, they do not move.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Yeah. That's one misconception that a lot of people have, is that there's all these drones flying around and just scaring deer and harassing deer and all that. And that's not the case at all. Did you see our buckfight video?
[00:35:38] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I did.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: That drone was above them. Did they give a rip that there was a drone there?
[00:35:43] Speaker B: Well, we've got plenty of video evidence that that is not the case because they usually keep right on munching and don't even look at you. There are times where I thought, well, man, how's my drone scaring them like that. And then I see coyotes coming chasing them. Actually, just yesterday morning that happened then.
[00:35:59] Speaker A: I've seen that before.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: We sure ignore the drone when that happens.
[00:36:03] Speaker A: Well, I think we're going to wrap it up here. Thanks so much for coming in, telling us some of your stories. If you guys want to get into this, obviously, you guys can go check out dronedeerey.Com, buy the whole drone kit from us, and also list your business on our website. It's been helping out with a bunch of other people that have wanted to start. And yeah, we're excited about this growth.
We get the question a lot all the time about legal stuff, and we do not give legal advice. So if you're going to reach out to just, just for that, it's a whole long battle. Illinois doesn't like it. New york doesn't like it. Michigan doesn't like it. I could go on and on the states that don't like it, but I'm almost over the whole legal thing because it's like the same thing over and over. But, yeah, so that's that. Thanks, dennis, for coming in. We appreciate it. And.
