In his 20s, Michael Yoder started a tree maintenance business and began posting about his work and adventures on a YouTube channel. His YouTube content featured his day-to-day work activities, hunting trips, and his process of learning how to fly a small airplane. The tree business was thriving; he had a family, owned a home, and was monetizing his YouTube channel. He had achieved all the life goals he had set for himself and was financially secure. However, after an injury, he sank into a deep depression and realized it was time for a change. While talking to a friend who was using a drone for thermal roof inspections, Michael mentioned he was considering getting a drone to help locate deer while hunting.

Encouraged by his friend, he did some soul-searching and contemplated how his idea could be used to better his and his family’s life. Then out of nowhere, the idea came to him fully formed, using a thermal-equipped drone to locate deer as a service. Michael spent $8,000 on a drone. He went on a hunting trip and then used the drone’s thermal camera to track where the deer had escaped into the forest. He took that video and set up a booth at a local outdoor sports show. “My booth was the most talked-about at the show, so I knew it was something that sportsmen would support,” Michael said.

Michael began offering drone-assisted deer recovery to local hunters through his new business, Drone Deer Recovery. It didn’t take long for the service to gain popularity. Soon, he had earned enough to upgrade to a $20,000 top-of-the-line thermal drone system. The next step was to create more content using the drone’s thermal camera to track wounded deer and upload the videos to YouTube. His videos quickly went viral, and Drone Deer Recovery became a nationwide service. By 2023, Michael reported that Drone Deer Recovery had 26 licensed drone pilots operating in 15 different states and had set up an online store for drones and related equipment.

When looking to the future, Michael said he hopes to have “operators all across the country, to where you, as a hunter, will have an app on your phone. Just like Uber, you request a Drone Deer Recovery, that request gets sent to an operator, and then that operator gets in touch with you and is able to come out and help you recover your deer for you.” he said. Michael’s concept isn’t the first to combine drone technology with deer tracking. For several years, the state of New Jersey has been using drones to manage excessive deer populations.

When deer populations grow too large, they can damage local ecosystems and pose dangers to humans, from causing traffic accidents to spreading Lyme disease. In 2008, Gene Huntington founded Steward Green in Bridgewater, NJ, to help protect New Jersey’s ecosystems using drone-acquired data. “In 2019,” Gene said, “I conducted an infrared drone survey commissioned by the New Jersey Farm Bureau of eight study areas encompassing more than 15,694 acres, or approximately 25 square miles in Atlantic, Burlington, Cumberland, Hunterdon, Mercer, Monmouth, Passaic, Somerset, and Warren counties. We confirmed 2,558 deer or 104 deer per square mile.”

The drone data Gene delivered showed that deer populations were, on average, 7-10 times greater than what is considered safe for the ecosystem—and in some cases, up to 20 times greater. New Jersey has continued using drones to survey deer populations and has reached out to different institutions to conduct these programs. In 2021, Jessica Ray, a staff scientist with the Center for Environmental Studies at Raritan Valley Community College, conducted a drone survey at South Mountain Reservation. “Drones are much more accurate and make it less likely that deer are double-counted,” she said.

Accurate counts are vital for implementing management practices that do not anger animal rights groups. Each year, New Jersey hires deer hunters to cull the population. By providing animal rights groups with drone-based data, the state can carry out these prescribed hunts without risking the ire of activists. Whether or not New Jersey’s prescribed deer hunts are utilizing services like Michael’s Drone Deer Recovery is unknown. However, both survey counts and the use of drones to locate wounded deer offer a unique perspective on how drone technology can be applied in wildlife management. As the use of drones in wildlife management continues to evolve, innovations like Drone Deer Recovery, combined with deer censuses, may play a crucial role in shaping the future of sustainable hunting practices and ecosystem conservation.

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