Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Drone Deer Recovery podcast. I'm Mike.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: And I'm Kevin. On this week's podcast, we talk about the new bill that proposes banning all DJI drones in America.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: And we also talk about the agricultural side. Because it's ag season. We're going to get into it probably here in the next few weeks, and.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: Then we end up the episode just recapping what our season was like here at drone deer recovery. Stick around.
[00:00:20] Speaker A: You're not going to want to miss it.
We're rolling with the podcast, getting Kevin off guard. His headphones are up, his coffee's in his hands, and I've just been told.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: I can't use my phone on the podcast.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, well, I was asking. It's mostly for viewers that are watching the podcast on YouTube. See us on our phone because we're always doing something. You write emails, texts, you name it, we're doing. But, like, is that nice to do?
[00:00:52] Speaker B: It's probably not ideal.
[00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. Probably not proper. Is it called etiquette?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Okay.
Today is a big day. Let me tell you why. Do you know why it's a big day?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: No, I don't.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: The first court case in drone recovery. It's not drone deer recovery. The drone deer recovery. But there is a drone deer recovery case going on today in the state of Pennsylvania. He is going up against the commissioners, or not necessarily the commissioners, but the commission, the wildlife Game commission over there and going to fight a case. And we can only hope that he wins, because if he wins, then it's going to be better for the next guy because people are still going to keep doing drone deer recovery in Pennsylvania because it's not that. Okay, so the state can say it's illegal is one thing, but is it ethical? Right. You can tell me to not do this, but if I feel like it's an ethical duty of me as a pilot or you as a hunter to put all reasonable efforts in to recover your deer, if it is use a drone to recover your carcass, then why not do it? So what I'm saying is if he wins this case, it will be better for the people that are still doing it. Even if the state tells you it's illegal.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Well, and it's far quicker way of getting change. Right? Because if it goes through the normal channels, it takes forever. But if it's decided through case law like this, then it sets a precedence for all future cases. And it's effective today.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: That's what we're hoping. Now, I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice, but it's like one guy came up to me and he's like, well, it doesn't necessarily set precedents because they understand how law and stuff works. So I was like, well, either way, the guy needs to win, because if he wins, then we can at least say, hey, look, they already tried this. They set up a sting operation and they tried taking his equipment. He still does not have that equipment back.
He does have another drone. He has flying missions. He was losing thousands of dollars because people were still calling him for pet recovery, herd analysis, those types of things. And he couldn't do it because the wardens took his equipment. And so he was like, you know what? I'm losing thousands of dollars. I'm going to buy another drum.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: Is there a date for when that equipment will go back, like, get returned to him? Is it based.
[00:03:16] Speaker A: Well, it's only based on if he wins.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: So if he wins today, then I.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Just don't see it being a win today. I think it's a step in the right direction. I don't know that it's going to be a win. It could be a win. I don't know how it works for sure. But if it were a win today, I would assume that he's supposed to get his equipment back, right? Because if he doesn't, I mean, why would they keep possession of it? I'm just kind of excited about this, right? I'm passionate about it because, again, it comes back to my whole goal in starting drone deer recovery is to help people. And now these game commissioners want to shut this down of helping people find a lost carcass that otherwise goes to waste. So we got to win this thing, dude.
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Do you have a prediction what's going to happen? What chances would he give him?
[00:04:07] Speaker A: I don't know. I think he's got a pretty good thing going if he wins.
I don't even know that I want to say this, but if he wins, he could countersue for entrapment and that type of stuff.
It could be a good case. It just to think that you are a conservation officer and you want hunters to find their lost game, but yet you don't want them to use a drone to do it.
This is 2024, guys. The technology is available. It's like I was talking to a guy. Here we go again. Going to get started on agricultural. But I was talking to a guy yesterday about using drones to spray. He was an ag pilot back in the day when there was no gps. He was flying with DC three s. If you don't know what that is, that's a multi engine big airplane, like 100 or 120 foot wingspan he was using to spray gypsy moth over forests and stuff. But I had talked to him about using drones, and he's like, absolutely, we should be using drones. It's 2024. Like, get on with it. So it's the same way with deer recovery. It's 2024. Drones are available. It's totally a vital tool. Get on with it, states. It's as simple as that.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't disagree.
I have nothing to add. It seems like some states are doing it, like Missouri, they're getting on with yesterday. And one of the things that I guess, was it a senator speaking in that video?
[00:05:40] Speaker A: I don't know that it was a senator. It would have just been a guy speaking to the commissioners. And I don't know what it sounds like.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: He put together the bill or he was a vital part in.
And one of the people on the panel congratulated the state on being a first.
Like they said, the state of Missouri is one of the first states that has seen the changing landscape of technology and have come up and issued new, updated regulations based on it. And they were saying, I mean, a little bit of a pat on the back.
We're doing our job. This is what our job is. And the other states will follow. It'll take longer for other states.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: They should. If they don't, then they might be living in a cave. Because this is technology. Technology progresses, laws and rules are always behind.
Just, it's like a Commissioner came up to me, a PA game commissioner at the Harrisburg show. Did we talk about this already or is this the first?
[00:06:40] Speaker B: I think you mentioned it a little bit, but you should say it again.
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Okay. Oh, yeah. The last time we did a podcast, we were talking about how we're going to release this video that they have never seen before.
[00:06:50] Speaker B: And then what happened?
[00:06:52] Speaker A: I don't know. I kind of got cold feet, maybe. I don't know.
We will release it, but I don't know why we didn't. You wanted me to just send it, but how do you feel about it right now?
[00:07:08] Speaker B: Yeah, as a drone enthusiast, I still feel the way that we felt when we were standing out there, out that door. Like, how is this possible? Okay.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So let's just talk about it because we probably will release a video and we can talk about it. Let's talk about it. And they're still going to want to watch it.
[00:07:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. You got to see it because you will not believe it.
[00:07:28] Speaker A: And if we got confident, well, I didn't believe it, and I didn't understand why it was working either. But basically what happened is we had one of our big agricultural drones land in the pond.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Not good. Not a good day.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Yeah, that thing, just. The airframe itself is $19,999. So basically, $20,000 lands in the pond and sinks to the bottom.
And I'm like, oh, boy, no bueno.
You speak Spanish. What would you say if you've seen that situation?
[00:08:05] Speaker B: I'm not going to say it because it would be bad words.
I rolled up to the office that day, and the whole vibe, I was just like. People were not feeling it?
[00:08:14] Speaker A: No, it was just.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: Everybody was just, like, not cheerful and chill.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Yeah, we were doing some testing stuff, generators and charge boxes and run times and hover times and that type of thing. And the battery got low on the drone, and at 5%, the drone lands automatically. You can try to override it. And the drone, at 5% went, and it landed in the pond. So here it is. It's sunk in the pond. We go up to the pond, and I'm like, yes, there it is in the bottom. I was like, forget it. Let's not deal with it right now. The water is cold. I'm not just going to walk in there and get it out. We kept working. We went back and we're doing some other things, pulling out generators and getting new t 40s out of the box and stuff like that, and got that set up. And about four and a half hours later, Dennis, one of subcontractors that does drone deer recovery for us. And also, he's now getting into the agricultural side. He was like, on me, Mike, let's get this thing out of. I was. I basically had other things to do. I was not worried about getting the drone out because it's trash.
[00:09:22] Speaker B: What's the point at this point? It's like, get it out now, get it out later. Does it really matter?
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Yeah, right? It's trashed. So finally, he kept staying on me, and he went up there, and he looked at the drone sunk, and he's like, I'm going to get that thing out. And Jay's like, if you get it out, I'll give you $100. He's like, okay. He went up there and got a little paddleboat. I didn't realize there was a paddleboat there, but got a paddle boat, went out there, hooked a rope onto it, pulled it out of the pond. Battery is still turned on. Drone is powered on. It was sunk for four and a half hours. They get it out, pull the battery out of it, put a new battery in it, turn it on and had a propulsion air. ESC number five had an air. So they shut the drone down, rebooted it, boom. Fires up, Jay takes it off, flies it around, and I'm just like.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: I.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: Don'T understand how it could work because the motors are exposed. Like, there's copper wires you can see underneath the motors. But $20,000 drone sunk in the pond, sat there for four and a half hours, got it back out and it flew. The catch is, I was like, it's flying now, but will it fly in a month?
We left it there overnight, went back the next morning, turned it on, doesn't work.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: One of the motors.
[00:10:51] Speaker A: Yeah. It says ESC number five needs to be checked out. So maybe it's just as simple as changing one esc and it flies. But I don't know that DJI designed these drones to sink and then fly again.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: Yeah. And then we're talking, like, sinking, what, five?
[00:11:13] Speaker A: It was 5ft underwater.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: I thought the battery was junk, because when we got the battery out, it didn't make sense. The battery was still powered on, so they shut it down, pulled it out, and then I couldn't get the battery lights to turn on. But I think the battery was so dead that it didn't have any juice. I plugged it into a generator yesterday, charged it up and ran it. Yeah.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: But that drone still does have its work cut out for it, just to earn the trust again of being totally airworthy.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: I think that drone will just be r and d from now on.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: I mean, it has a story to tell. I don't know that it's going to see a lot of work until it proves itself. Yeah, we got to get a full inspection.
[00:12:03] Speaker A: Yeah, we'll definitely have somebody go over it completely and make sure we're good to go. But the thing is, if you don't have any errors on your screen and you inspect it physically, look for cracks, bulging, those types of things, the drone is good to go.
But I don't know, it was a little freaky looking at a drone sunk in the water and being like, it's trash, just like that. But we'll see. Maybe it'll fly again.
[00:12:30] Speaker B: So this is a little bit of a tangent, but one of the reasons you guys were doing research on the different generators and the batteries and charge time is because. And you could correct me if I'm wrong, but right now the DJI generator is the fastest.
We haven't found another generator yet that can charge the t 40 flight batteries as fast as the DJI generator can.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think the problem is that it's not so much the generator's fault as it is the charge box. So there's another charger called a t 30 charger that you can charge.
[00:13:02] Speaker B: Was that actually for the t 30, like the generation prior to the t 40?
[00:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah, that would have been made before DJI released their own generators.
So the t 30 charger plugged into a really big generator, like a Wesson house, 28,000. The charge box will charge the battery, just not as fast. You're like, between a minute and maybe a minute and a half longer to charge it through that box. And for some people, that might not be a big deal. But when you're trying to cover acres, like a ton of acres, every minute counts. Because if you start doing the numbers on, let's say it takes you 1 minute longer to charge a battery, and you have to wait for that 1 minute.
One to two batteries. Not big deal. You're waiting for two minutes. But let's say you wait on that for, like, 60 charges in a day, because you're going to go through 60 charges in a day if you're out doing this to make big money. 60 charges in a day, 1 minute. Right. That's 1 hour if you get $15 an acre. Let's make sure I'm doing this right so I'm not going to mess it up. But $15 an acre times 60.
Oh, my gosh. Is that right? 15 times 60. Okay. So that'd be $15 an acre. Yeah. All right, so $15 an acre. And you can do, say, 35 acres an hour, because 60 minutes or 1 minute times 60 is 1 hour. You're doing 35 acres an hour, and you're getting $15 for those 35 or $15 per acre. So 35 times 15, it's $525 an hour that you would have lost, lost.
[00:14:54] Speaker B: Revenue if that thing was going full speed.
[00:14:56] Speaker A: And let's say you did that for 24 days. That's $12,600 that you could potentially lose by waiting on that thing for 1 minute to charge.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: And part of the reason this is actually a big deal is because with the compressed timelines of some of the seasons where you are spraying, you can't just say, I'll do the same amount of work and I'll just do it in a day more. It doesn't work like that, right? No, it's very compressed. Farmers want it when they want it. And if you don't get to it this week, you're not going to do it next week, because the season.
[00:15:26] Speaker A: And the other thing you do is on these numbers, it's like they want to try to save money, and it's like, I want to buy one generator to charge two batteries. Well, you can do that, but if you have two generators and you have one generator go down, you still have one generator and your whole operation isn't grounded. So with $12,600, you could buy multiple DJI generators and have them as backups for that price.
[00:15:56] Speaker B: So have two and then a backup or something.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm just putting the numbers out there because what they're going to look at is they're going to be like, okay, well, DJI generator, is it $5,000.04?
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Nine. Nine, nine.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's $5,000 for one generator. So you got to get two. So that's $10,000. But if I go out and buy a Wesson house for $35 to $4,500, they're going to be a lot less money. But the thing is, now, let's say, well, then I'll just buy two. Well, that's fine. You can buy two, but you're still going to be slower on that charge every time. You're still going to be slower. And so it just doesn't make sense if people want to do it the right way. There is only one way, and that's not trying to cut corners on what you should or shouldn't use. I think if a guy wants to do it full time and wants to be a professional, you're just going to have to run the system. Because if you run that t 30 charger, there's also, like, a Mikey rig. I'm going to call it a Mikey because. I don't want to say Jimmy. I don't want to offend Jimmy, but you, Mikey, rig something together. Because the cooling station doesn't work with the t 30 charger, you got to use this extra plug. And so it looks a little trashy, but.
Wow. Well, agricultural stuff. Here we go.
[00:17:16] Speaker B: We can't stop talking about it, actually.
[00:17:17] Speaker A: Maybe they'll just turn into the. We'll just merge the two logos together, have like half the new way logo and half the drone deer, and then we can talk about whatever we want. Yeah, this is basically the drone podcast, like thermal agriculture.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: Thermal and ag.
[00:17:37] Speaker A: That being said, we should talk about the DJ ban again.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Is that you didn't talk about. No, I didn't see it. No. What's up?
[00:17:46] Speaker A: Yeah, it's coming again. Yeah. Because every year around this time, there's new legislation. Like, there's new bills proposed to commissioners, just like we are right now. We are proposing new bills to states about allowing drone deer recovery. And so now this bill is back up, and it's gaining a little bit of traction.
I am not well versed in how the whole thing works, but it goes something like this. There's two drone manufacturers in America that are pushing this bill to be pushed in here so they can get some of the market, because they don't have any of the market. 75% of the drone market is owned by DJI. So there's a guy that called me out of Texas to reach out and basically get us prepped if we do need a bunch of country boys reaching out to their state reps, because this band they're talking about, it's not just the sale of DJI drones. It is all DJI drones in America will not be flown in America.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: So they're trying to ban not the import and sale, but the actual function, like, by banning the.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: So what. What they're doing is they are banning the radio frequency something. It's the FCC something that only would affect DJI drones. It would affect all drones that have the radio frequency brain that come from China. I was talking to a drone lawyer out of Florida, and he would be, we got to get that guy on. He's good. He has so many. I don't know, proper terms to say things, but there's a brain that even if it comes from China and it's put together in America, if it came from China, then it wouldn't be allowed to be flown. I don't see it, but it's like this. The guy from Texas called me, and he was like, hey, I just want to make you aware. Basically get you prepped. If this bill gets like, let's reach out to people that have some reach. And so that's what we're doing, is we're getting prepped. You can already fill out a form pilot institute, he just put it out on his latest YouTube video.
We'll probably link it in this video, but I want to give credit to Pilot institute. He put it out. It's basically. It's an easy link. You click on the link, and you put in your name address, and it'll be a pre drafted email, and you click send, and then it'll know what senator to send it to. So in Ohio, I filled it out. So please do. Take like a minute, like between 30 seconds and a minute to fill this out. It does not take long, but it's this pre drafted email. And when you send it with your address, then it knows exactly what state rep to send it to. And so I filled mine out, going back to the guy in Texas, he was like, mike, this is going to really affect me. He has ten matrix 30s on his fleet. He does something with security purposes, and he's like, dude, if this happens, it'll be a bad deal. And not only for people that have a business, recreational users, too. There's a bunch of people that are starting to fly. The DJI. Avada.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Avada.
The mini three, mini four. Super popular. The mavic is the go to drone for anything filming.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Yeah. What about the real estate people? They're using these to create.
You look bored. Are you bored?
[00:21:33] Speaker B: No. This conversation, it's like, I've heard it from different angles.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: But let me tell you, you should seriously think about, like, the lawyer that we're talking to in Florida. He's like, mike, you got to think about, like, if this goes, know, what is your other option? I said, we'll figure it out. Once we get, like, when I say we'll figure it out, it's not just me and Kevin. The lord us, we will figure it out one way or the other. But the reason he said, be concerned about it this time, Mike, is what happened is when they proposed this bill last time, some states were watching and they implemented their own actions. So when this was proposed last time, the state of Florida went forward with it and said, no, you can't use it like state and local.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: Yep, yep.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Tennessee did the same. And now he said what they'll do is when this bill gets proposed is say, hey, did you guys, you know, Florida made an action on this. Tennessee made an action on, like, you should really consider. He said they are saying some of the most acidine stuff to these lawmakers to scare them into doing it. He said that they said at the Thursday meeting, when they met with the committee, it would be the Senate committee meeting, just like it did in Indiana. But this is on the federal level. When they had the committee meeting, he said that they said stuff like, yeah, these Drones can monitor the heart rate of Americans, and then it sends it over to China out of fear.
They're trying to get them to do this out of fear.
I could go down this rabbit hole.
[00:23:28] Speaker B: Okay, so just to come back to the reality that actually happened is China flew huffing balloons over America, and we did nothing about them for like weeks until somebody was like, do we shoot those down or do we leave them up there? You know what? Let's shoot them down. And then they shot down, but not until they had done like, I think it was a couple of weeks that they were flying.
Mean, personally, I get it, right. We should think this will never happen. We should be prepared, all that stuff. But it's such a big jump to go from preventing state law enforcement from buying a DJI product to banning the use, not just the sale of the use of it.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Yeah, but that's why we need everybody that listens to this podcast and everybody that watches this podcast to share it and talk with your friends. Because filling this out with your state reps if we're won't happen. I don't need to fill it out because I was like, I don't need to fill it out. Right? Why should I fill it out? No, that's exactly why you should fill it out if you think those things, like, you shouldn't fill it out. They're supposed to work for we, the people and so fill it out and send it.
This is the deal. He said that if we get enough country boys telling them that the government would want to take their drones from them because they're using it for more than just like, oh, taking nice pictures and this and that, they're using it on their ranches. They're using it, by the way, he said it's like telling Texans that you can't have guns.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: You're going to take your guns away. Never going to.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: But the thing is, you think, well, I got my drone, I'll still be able to fly it. No bull honky, you won't be able to.
[00:25:16] Speaker B: Is there ever a time in history, like in the past, looking back to where the US government has banned not just the sale of something, but know to where they would ban the software or ban the. Has that ever happened like a similar thing in a different industry?
[00:25:31] Speaker A: I don't know. We'd have to check that. It's, they're banning the radio frequency that they can transmit and that's how you fly drones. It's all through radio frequencies.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: What would it take then for DJI to say, okay, well, if those radio frequencies are being banned or whatever, the US is a huge market for them. So they're not just going to say, oh, well, we're not going to sell to the US. They're going to bring the drones over.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: They'Re going to finish, well, I'm going to stop you there. We think America is a big market. It is a good market for DJI, but they have to fight this stuff to get it here. What if they're like, whatever Americans deal with your government and they go to asian countries, they are selling just absolutely shiploads more of drones in other countries than they are America. If you even just talk on the agricultural, like, we are so far behind the game, it's because of our government, it's because of regulations. So what I want to say to DJI is, don't get tired of fighting the fight. Like, we like your product and we want to use your product. Because if they decide to pull out, bad deal. I mean, it's a bad deal because basically.
I don't know if I said this already, I've been talking so much this morning with people. There's two ways to get some of the market. It's legislatively or innovatively. And these companies that are paying these lobbyists to try to get them banned, they are trying to do it legislatively, not innovatively.
[00:27:12] Speaker B: They're not making a better product.
[00:27:14] Speaker A: Yeah, their product is not getting better. If we have to stop flying what we're flying, it's going to be not good.
I hear this from other people, like people that are in law enforcement, and they have to go away from flying their personal DJI drone to flying what the law enforcement is allowed. They're just like, the workflow isn't right. It doesn't work. It's slow.
It's just not that good. What is that drone that you sent me? That would be american.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: It was at the autel. No, it was one of those AI.
It navigates itself.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Yeah, there was another drone manufacturer, but that would be an american made drone. And it's literally like they're five years or ten years behind the technology of DJI.
Make sure to fill out the form. I assume we're allowed to use it from Pilot Institute. Maybe? I'd have to ask them, but yeah, you just click on that link, it's going to ask you your name, your address, and then it'll send off the email to your state rep. There's also a form on there where you can call them.
We should do that, see if it actually works. I don't know if it would work or not, but at least leave a message.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah, even if they don't pick up.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: Hey, that would be. Maybe we do that live on air. See if it works.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: See if it works. Give them a call.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's the new DJI proposed bill. No, good. What else you got? How's the new website coming along?
[00:28:57] Speaker B: It's coming.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: By the time you listen to this podcast, it'll be live.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Okay, nice. What's going to be different about it?
[00:29:07] Speaker B: Well, we'll have new way ag have a proper website for start. So if you're looking at anything from. Well, the trailer is difficult because we still haven't gotten good pictures and we've been trying to work on that. And last I heard the trailer was in the shop redoing some of the configuration because it's not quite right and we want it done just the way we need it.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I can't call them, it just sends like a text message.
Instead of sending them an email, it'll send them a text message.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: The other big thing that I'm excited about on the website is we are getting close to finally publishing the a to z guide to getting started with your own drone business and something that.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Uses kind of own thermal drone business.
[00:29:49] Speaker B: Or thermal drone business.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: It is wider than just thermal, but we use the use case of how we did research, how we purchased, what we went about doing, how we priced. And the goal is that regardless of what of the individual kind of drone related passions you want to follow, it'll be helpful to see the road to market that we took and all the questions people have about insurance, warranty, do you need an LLC? How do you actually get the nuts and bolts going?
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:30:19] Speaker B: You can see what we did and then you can base whatever you want to do. Kind of off of learning from our mistakes and learning from what we did. Right.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Nice. I like that we hit on it a little bit. But Missouri, we talked about that they are now going to allow drone deer recovery. I wanted to catch up on this because I will tell you, it's not in effect yet. If you go, it has to get approved yet. But they are thinking by the 2024 season it will be allowed. So as of right now, this day, technically it's not in effect yet. It would not go in effect until later in the season because it takes a while to go through the steps or whatever. So I forgot to mention that when we were talking about it. So if you're in Missouri, but I did have somebody reach out right after I released that video and he's like, hey, I'm going to buy the complete drone deer recovery kit. And a couple more questions. Some of those that you just mentioned that they will be able to get on our website when the new website is released. But I think it's going to give people opportunity to do it as a business. But even outside of just doing it as a business is having it as a tool for big time hunters. It just makes sense.
[00:31:41] Speaker B: And you don't even need to own thousands of acres to make sense.
[00:31:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know. I don't have much more.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: Let's talk about the other thing our team has been working on is developing the curriculum that will be teaching on March eigth and March 22 when the first class is completely sold out. There's still a couple of slots for March 22, but we'll have up to ten people coming and spending the day. And it's kind of exciting for me, actually. Like, I have a bunch of drones on the shelf over there that are set apart for some of the people that are going to be unboxing the drone for the very first time. And we get to from 10:00 in the morning to 08:00 at night or whatever it ends up being. Just help them with every step of the process from getting it set up.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: But we're going to go way into detail. Like, you're really going to learn about your controller.
[00:32:35] Speaker B: And get this, the cool thing is, at least the way I learn, you don't learn by just reading a textbook or something or even seeing it on the screen. You actually learn by doing it.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:46] Speaker B: And so the way that the whole afternoon is set up is there's going to be some teaching and you're going to see somebody doing stuff on the remote and explaining what it is. But then you actually go out. There's some big screens outside. We'll connect the remotes, and students will actually fly in a safe way by putting in practice the thing that they just learned. Come back in, learn another segment, go back out. So the whole afternoon, it's going to be fun. It's not just going to be like, I have to go back to school to learn.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: No. Yeah. It's going to be interactive. Let's get you truly comfortable on your.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: Personal phone and best place. Any questions? The goal is to leave just feeling confident, like, you know, exactly how does.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: This make them DDR certified?
[00:33:31] Speaker B: It does not. This is just going from beginners. It's kind of an introduction to the.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Matrice 30 t. Okay, so I've had quite a few people ask me at the shows that we were at so far. Are we thinking about doing a drone deer recovery certified program?
[00:33:47] Speaker B: Yeah, we're not actively working on it right now. It still is the plan for the upcoming season, but we're redoing the entire website. So when you have a location, you're listed on the map. We're building it so you can go in there, put the photos, put the name, put the description, change. If you travel from state to state, this is going to be a game changer. So if you're in Iowa this weekend and you want to provide the service in Iowa, you take your drone along, you just update your pin so people will in real time be able to see where you're at.
[00:34:22] Speaker A: Dude, that gets me so fired up. Can I be listed on your map, Kevin?
[00:34:25] Speaker B: You can. I'll make sure it happens. But no, it's going to be awesome because that was one of the big struggles that we have now is you send it. Like, who wants to change their photo by sending an email?
[00:34:36] Speaker A: Yeah, come on, Kevin. That's like, this is 2024, right?
[00:34:40] Speaker B: It's like if I'm a government agent, said, no, if you want to change your photo or you want to change your logo, you have to send an email and we'll go through the proper channels. No, that's not the way she would.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: It's like, I want to change my Facebook profile.
[00:34:54] Speaker B: Login change done. Yeah. So that's what we're building. And I think that this year it'll be far more of a useful tool for the pilots. And then we're going to also do advertising for hunters to make sure in some states, because it's interesting to see the people that follow us and the people that know. It's like we're on the eastern United States primarily. It's almost like reached the whole way over.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Well, some people aren't sure that it's going to work in the western states with rocks and boulders because we make videos of us looking through forests with rocks and boulders and that type of thing.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Wouldn't that just be that you do it first thing in the morning?
[00:35:34] Speaker A: Once those rocks have, like possibly.
We're trying to get some data so they have accurate data.
[00:35:40] Speaker B: That would be an interesting pole.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: There's a guy in Arizona that's flying a matrice 30 t and he is able to find animals out in the rocks and the boulders.
I have been invited to go to New Mexico to test it out there as well. With their brush and their boulders and stuff.
I think it's going to work. It's just different settings that you're going to have to use. I think that the market out there will be more for outfitters to have as a tool than it is necessarily to do it as a business because it's so far and so wide and so spread out between where people are. Unless you know where the people are hunting. Right. And then you do what you're talking about that you'll be able to do on the new drone deer recovery website is move your pin into those areas. And you're going to have to be somewhat close because you won't be able to schedule it out. Three, 4 hours maybe. But that's why I think that it's more popular in the east because there's more people, there's more hunters. Right. Kind of in an area where out west, if you're close to Denver, that's cool. There's a bunch of people in Denver, but there's not people hunting inside of Denver. I don't know, I could be wrong. But they're like, out from there in the sense or not.
[00:37:11] Speaker B: Yeah, it makes sense. But you would think that still where people hunt, like some people live there and the people that live in the area where they hunt. Right. There's little towns and whatever, like through the whole city.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe it is. Well, see, we were really targeting deer recovery.
What if it's elk, elk recovery, bear recovery, mule deer? It's different. Maybe it would send it to those audience instead of just to the deer people. Something to think about.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: Another thing, Mike, that I was thinking about this week, based on the conversation I had, is we have the matrice 350. Right? The big drone.
[00:37:49] Speaker A: Yes. Magla drone.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: The megalodrone. You can put a multispectral camera on that thing for ag application. Right.
I had somebody ask me about it. I wasn't quite sure what to tell them. Is that still a developing?
[00:38:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
It's so new.
Okay. I say new lightly. The people that are into multispectral are going to be like, no, Mike, it's been around for five years already. Okay. But it's new to the farmer to try to explain to him how this multispectral drone camera will be able to scan his fields and give him crop.
[00:38:32] Speaker B: Health data using an array of like five cameras. Right. It takes five different cameras. It combines the info to somehow generate.
[00:38:40] Speaker A: Yeah. It's different color palettes, I think. And I'm not an expert. I'm not going to say that I am, but somehow this multispectral camera can scan a field of, say, corn, and it will show you where the corn is struggling. And so what they would then do with that data is take it back to their spray drone, mark that area out that is struggling and apply fertilizer or apply a pesticide or in a second.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
That makes so much sense because if you're paying $30 to $50 an acre for the chemical, some of the chemical is expensive.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Yeah. So the multispectral is for spot treating.
[00:39:25] Speaker B: And I'm hearing that if you're out there offering a spot treating, you'll charge a lot more per acre than you would if you were just blanket the whole field. So the drone guy makes more money, the farm guy spends less money, and the field is helped probably, maybe not quite as much, but the field is.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Helped a lot more. So it's really for farmers that are trying to grow a crop and growing high yield, the absolute max that they can grow, but I'm not an absolute expert on that. But it's definitely technology that's coming. And I think if you're a high yield farmer, why not try it? That's where I'm at with it.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: And then have a drone come in there and spray it, because you're not going to pull your ground rig out to go spray that little section.
[00:40:17] Speaker B: And that's an example. And maybe I'm just not aware, but there's other uS based companies that have thermal drones now. But for a platform to do multispectral, is there any platform out there other than the matrice series that would have multispectral cameras that you're aware of?
[00:40:35] Speaker A: I think there are other drones that do multi non DJI drones. Yeah.
[00:40:41] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: I mean, we could google it, but I'm sure it's like anything else, right?
You think there's nothing else, but it's like drone deer recovery. There's not just drone deer know, John Henry's deer recovery. Like, there. There are other options out there, but the big player in the game is drone deer recovery, or, like, DJI. And that's what we all know is because they've been in the market for so long, I definitely think that there's other drones out there.
[00:41:13] Speaker B: Are we going to start doing that multispectral?
Is that this year or next year?
[00:41:18] Speaker A: I don't know. What should we do, Kevin? I can't say that I want to go fly and do multispectral scans of fields personally, myself, maybe, but if you think of.
[00:41:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't. So. Okay, so get this. So I've had ag pilots ask me, hey, Kevin, how do I go sell fields? Like, if I'm going to buy a spray drone and a spray trailer, how do I get farmers to buy your.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: That's the thing.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: You got to demo it.
[00:41:46] Speaker A: Yeah, you got to demo it.
[00:41:47] Speaker B: But imagine the visual of being able to show a farmer the data of his actual field, what's healthy and what's unhealthy.
[00:41:55] Speaker A: But it's convincing him that that data is accurate. Right. Just because you show him something, if he doesn't understand it or whatever, he might be like, yeah, well, how would I know?
[00:42:08] Speaker B: This is what's required for the industry to move ahead. Right?
[00:42:11] Speaker A: Multispectral.
[00:42:12] Speaker B: No, the whole educating part.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. It's definitely education.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: It's just part of the process.
[00:42:17] Speaker A: Yeah, and it's part of it.
[00:42:18] Speaker B: You just told me this morning that where we're going to be spraying some in Indiana, what's the percentage of people wanting a helicopter to a drone now? Like three years in, farmers?
[00:42:28] Speaker A: 80, 80 to 20. So 80% of them want drones and 20% want helicopters. And that man, that's what the customer base that this chemical.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: Well, and to those farmers have been exposed to it for three years now.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: Talk about market.
This gets my business brain excited, because when you talk about taking a completely cold audience that's only ever seen it being applied by helicopter or airplane, and then over the course of three years, first John Henry does it, and then it's like, well, that worked out okay. He does it. Three years in, 80% of the people is doing it.
[00:43:06] Speaker A: Well, it sells itself.
When we start talking about agricultural, we get that question, what do you charge per acre? How can I sell this to my farmer? The best way to do it is have the rig, have the new way, ag rig. You're going to get the trailer, the drones, everything you need.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Why is that important?
[00:43:29] Speaker A: Because you have to pull up to the farmer in his field and spray water on it, and he will see how this is penetrating the canopy and it's dead accurate. Going down, coming back. And it is working.
It sells itself once they see it. But to try to show them a video of it, yeah, it looks kind of cool. But how many guys came up to us at that show and they're like, oh, my gosh, that drone is a whole lot bigger than it looks. It's that. It's like when you start talking about drones spraying hundreds, thousands of acres, they're like, no way. But when they see it done efficiently, then they're like, okay, this makes sense. Sign me up. I was spraying fields in Indiana last year. It's like air tractor pilot. Those yellow airplanes you see out there, he's spraying fields next to us, coming down, hitting them. Great piloting skills. And he's doing what he's taught. But that farmer seen us at his neighbor's farm, came over, watched the drones for a little bit, and he's like, yeah, I just had an airplane spray my stuff this morning. I was like, yeah, I seen him. He's like, I'll be using drones next year. This is the way to do it. He said, you're down there where you're supposed to be. I'm like, I didn't even.
[00:44:52] Speaker B: Do I have to say anything?
[00:44:53] Speaker A: No, I didn't. It makes sense when you see it. But what I was telling people is, if you have to invest the money to buy the complete set up to look professional, if you need to pay that equipment off this year or you're going to go broke or be homeless, it's probably not a great idea because you will have to show this technology to a certain amount of farmers until it gets the ball rolling.
Unless you can get started right away with a farmer that has tens of thousands of acres and he understands it and believes it without being convinced or working with a chemical company. And they believe in the drones because right now, most chemical companies, most farmers, they just have never seen it, don't believe it, have never seen an efficient operation done.
[00:45:49] Speaker B: And some of the ones that have maybe seen it or been interested in it, and they try to do it themselves.
Have you ever seen a chemical company that does it well, where they have their own drone spraying division inside the company?
[00:46:02] Speaker A: I don't know that I've seen it personally. I know that there's some local co ops here.
So local co ops had custom applicators do their application, they're like, we're going to get drones and we're going to do it ourselves in house.
So I think that's happening. Are they efficient?
I don't know.
[00:46:25] Speaker B: And I guess this is mostly based off of conversations last season, and there's a learning curve and everything, but if you just try to cold turkey start this and you're going to plan on covering thousands of acres, there's a process probably not going to work unless you have a well thought out equipment and the teaching on how to actually be efficient.
[00:46:45] Speaker A: Yeah. And even outside of that, it starts with the fields. Like, are you personally going to be spraying it? Are you going to have a team going out? How are you going to boundary those fields? Are you going to start it? Have a KML file on Google Earth? Are you going to boundary it there? Send them out as batches? There's so much to learn. There's so much to teach on it. But can it be efficient? I absolutely believe it can be efficient.
[00:47:11] Speaker B: So, Mike, the flip side of what you were saying about if you need to pay off the equipment in the first year, you're going to go broke, going to be homeless, probably don't do that. And I'd say any business idea, if that's where you're at, you probably should just get a job until you can afford to start it more safely.
[00:47:30] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, there's some risk involved.
[00:47:32] Speaker B: The flip side, Mike, is that I think particularly for farmers, if they're going to start with a new know, I'm going to try having my crop sprayed this year. I'm going to get a local guy to come out if he has a good experience.
He's planting that field every year. He's planting that crop every year. And maybe not quite every year. He's going to need a spray, depending on the field and the location and the disease. But that is a return customer. And the easiest farmers to build a clientele around are going to be the ones that have gone from airplanes to helicopters. If you're going to try to do this in five years, I predict you're going to have a rougher road trying to get farmers to go from a different drone pilot to yourself.
You might have to be cheaper, you might have to. Maybe the other drone pilot has to do a bad job. But if you are one of the first drone pilots in your area offering agricultural spraying and applying to get somebody to go from a helicopter or airplane to a drone, it's not as hard as it's going to be to get them to go from another drone guy to you down the road.
[00:48:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:41] Speaker B: So there's definitely benefits to being on the early curve.
[00:48:44] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, I totally agree. I was looking up something here. How many drones are in China versus America? It is insane.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: What are the numbers?
[00:48:55] Speaker A: So here it's saying in 2020, the number of registered drones in China reached 517,000 in China. Let's see.
[00:49:08] Speaker B: So just over half a million registered drones.
[00:49:12] Speaker A: Yeah. They don't even have. How many drones have been sold?
Oh, my gosh.
As of 2020, there were 192,000 registered commercial drones in the United States.
[00:49:26] Speaker B: As of 20. 2192.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: Less than half.
Less than half.
[00:49:32] Speaker B: That number has got to be growing, though, pretty quickly.
[00:49:36] Speaker A: Agricultural drones market hit revenue of this is futurefarming.com agricultural drones market to hit revenue 14 point.
That is a weird number. 14.2 million by 2033. That doesn't make any sense.
[00:49:58] Speaker B: That doesn't make any sense.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: Agricultural drone market.
[00:50:01] Speaker B: I think it's 14 billion.
[00:50:03] Speaker A: Is that a billion?
[00:50:05] Speaker B: If it's 14,230 7 million?
[00:50:08] Speaker A: I don't know. I was really quickly looking up some of this stuff.
All right, we don't want to milk this thing out. We're talking agricultural all the time. But it's because that's the season we're going into. Drone deer recovery season obviously is basically over. There's pet recovery stuff that can be done, but for the most part, thermal drone season is we're packing those things up and we're getting our ag drones out and ready to start making big. I said raking. Yeah, we're about to rake in big, real money. If you want to get into the agricultural game, now is the time because there is no doubt in my mind that that is where you can make the big money.
[00:50:50] Speaker B: Nothing to add.
[00:50:51] Speaker A: All right. I was just wondering though, did you want to kind of recap since deer season ended, what was different from your.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: First season to now?
[00:51:00] Speaker A: And just kind of recap the season, how it went? Season went exactly how it did season one, but just amplified as thing came in with a lot more steroids because thousands and thousands of people seen it up to that point. My first year, a lot of my customers were Amish because where my business is located. So a lot of Amish called drone deer recovery season one. We started the YouTube channel, got millions of views and so a lot of eyeballs knew about drone deer recovery. So as the season kicked off, the phone started getting busier and busier. When you get into about third week in October, that's really when it started taking off. Just personally my phone with people calling for drone deer recovery in the state of Ohio. Now, we were also fielding calls earlier in the season from across the country, trying to.
Before we pivoted away from our other business plan, we were feeling those calls from anywhere from Illinois, Kentucky, you name it. But yeah. So it was just amplified with how many more calls I got. Had a lot more guys be able to send out on calls because I just couldn't do it. I think the one day I forget how many calls I got. It was between 30 and 50 probably calls that I was fielding personally and then dishing them out to subcontractors and stuff. And so, yeah, amplified. I would say that it'll probably do that for the next couple years. Getting busier and busier. Of course, the market, there's more and more people getting into doing drone deer recovery in the state of Ohio. So other people are also getting those calls, which is fine because I couldn't do them all, but I was able to give a lot of work out to these subcontractors that bought equipment and was able to help them with getting some of that stuff paid off. Overall, it was a great season.
People ask me, well, how many did you do? It's so hard to keep track because when I send three leads to know, Austin has to remember to get back to me if all three of those leads came through or how many deer did you find? Austin isn't reporting back to me that I found two out of those three. And so to have numbers of how many we did drone deer recovery just out of this office is hard to keep track, but I would say we did. If I throw a number out there between 125 to 200 recoveries that drone deer recovery would have handled. How many recoveries were done across the United States because of drone deer recovery? Like bringing this to attention and people buying their own drones and starting their own businesses. I guarantee it was thousands of deer were looked for. There's no knowing how many were found, but there were thousands of deer that were looked for in the state or in the country all across the board because of bringing this new technology to the people.
I've said this before, I wasn't the very first guy that had this idea of doing this. There were other people doing it, but nobody really brought it forward because they were scared of the technology and can you do it or can't you do it? And that's where I was like, I'm not going to be scared and create this content and put it out there. So, yeah, I would say this season was incredible with drone deer recovery, I see it being just as busy next season, and we'll just keep ramping up, probably adding subs if we need more subs. But right now, I'd say we got it pretty dialed in. Did you have fun? Did you have some really fun recoveries? Did I have fun recoveries? Oh, I mean, anytime you help a hunter recover a deer, it's fun. The ones that are the ones you can't find, and you're like, just where in the Sam hill could this deer have gone? And still to this day, there's a lot of recoveries that you just don't know what happened with the deer because I try to have my customers reach out to me, did you find the deer later? Was it in the search area? And it may never show back up on camera. It was moving through the area or something like that. So definitely have fun if I find them, get frustrated if I can't but I did have one guy call me the other day, and I personally did. I wonder if I did 50 myself. Probably close.
There was one guy that called me the other day and said that I found my buck that you were looking for, and it was in the search area. But here's the catch, is, when I was looking for it, they didn't know what it was. They didn't know. Was it an eight pointer? Was it a ten pointer? Was it 100 pointer? They did not know. They just knew it was a shooter. And I was finding bucks in the search area. But I would show them, like, is this your buck?
I don't know. It's like, okay, because the deer was gut hit. So unless I found a deer laying flat, dead or a big blood spot, because I've looked for gut shot deer, you can't tell that they're gut shot because the way they lay or maybe it's a really low hit or they have their leg over it or whatever, you can't tell. There are a lot of times when you watch the videos, you can tell where the deer is hit, but not all the time. But in that search, I did 250 acres, found boatloads of doughs, a lot of bucks. Not one of those bucks that they claim.
So I don't know. I can't say that I didn't find him because I may have found him. I actually went back and looked at the footage. He told me where they had found the buck. Went back? Yes. Found bucks right there where he was saying. But there's no knowing if that was for sure their buck that I found, because they didn't know. They didn't have a photo of the buck. They just said it was the biggest buck that came into their area there, and they shot at them. So, that being said, I think my odds this year were better than they were last year on getting calls. If the deer was dead in the search area last year, I would have got three or four, but two of those four or three, I forget what the number was. The hunter wasn't even sure that they were in the search area when we were originally looking. They would have moved out and came back later and just got infection or something and died.
Numbers are really good.
[00:57:56] Speaker B: You're saying chances are better for what this year?
[00:57:59] Speaker A: My numbers are better this year than they would have been last year because if I did 50, I had one guy call me, but that guy, I can't even say that I missed his deer.
[00:58:09] Speaker B: I got you. Yeah, because he didn't know if when you might have been looking at his deer.
[00:58:14] Speaker A: He didn't know if you I missed one last year, not last season, but would have been two seasons ago that I missed. And they called me back and that one was laying in cattails with about four to six inches of water. Problem is there. I don't know if his thermal showed up because I remember looking at those ponds and nothing caught my eye, but I definitely missed that one. I don't know. Live and learn. Learned a lot. I'm excited. Learned a bunch of new, different settings on our remotes and I think we'll only get better for sure. I think that's all we got for this one. It feels a little milked. If you guys feel like it's too long, let us know. We'll shorten them up if you want. If you like us just chatting around, bouncing all over the place between ag laws and what else did we talk about?
[00:59:07] Speaker B: It's like, dear ag and legal.
[00:59:09] Speaker A: And legal. That's the game of drone deer recovery in this season. But yeah. All right, well, that's all we got. Thanks so much for listening. Make sure to give it a thumbs up. Subscribe and we'll catch you guys on the next one.
