Granted, I don't poach, nor have I ever wanted to hunt cattle (other than when the nearby cattle crap all over my porch), but this is a fascinating business idea.
So let's say I am hunting and think I've shot an elk, but for the life of me I can't locate the animal. That would be a first, as I usually kill on the first shot, but I know that some day I'll miss. I've never hunted in an area that has very good (or any) cell reception, or data coverage, so I would have to stop looking for the animal and head back to civilization where I can look up a service that locates game (leaving aside for the moment the very real fact that if the animal is still alive, you're still hunting it and can't use a dang drone...at the point you locate a live animal using a drone, you probably have to leave the animal where it is and hope that when you return the next day or more, depending on the state, the animal is still there, which is sorta unlikely if it is still alive).
A few hours later, I finally get to civilization, find the ad for this service and then I fill out some retarded questionnaire. Maybe a few hours later, if the business owner isn't out poaching something, I get a response with a quote for the service. I'm assuming that the business owner isn't in the next town over, so the odds are that it's tomorrow before he can get to where I think the animal went down (again, if the animal isn't down, I can't ask someone to use a drone to locate it without becoming a poacher myself).
Further assuming that the local bears, mt lions, wolves, coyotes and other scavengers haven't used nature's drone to locate the animal on their own and tear it up, Airwolf is deployed. The likelihood is that the elk is under cover of trees and the heat signature is rapidly fading.
Even so, we launch and begin the search. Then reality sinks in...the usable range of the drone is a few hundred yards. https://www.tomstechtime.com/post/how-good-is-the-autel-evo-2-drone-really#:~:text=Even%20though%20the%20Evo%202,record%20in%20the%20consumer%20field.
Yeah, I know the manufacturer claims that it will go miles, but the reality is that you can't reliably receive data from the drone beyond a few football fields in distance. As the reviewer notes, "They give a maximum range of about 9km in the US and 5km in Europe. That's big numbers and would be a new record in the consumer field. In reality, though, the connection, especially the video transmission, breaks down way earlier - and with way earlier I mean already roughly after a few hundred meters, in good times after a kilometer."
The only time I can see this thing being feasible is in extremely rough terrain, where people have a hard time getting through. Of course, having seen the business owner, I immediately realize that if the elk is dead in a steep canyon, I'll be on my own for the recovery. Since I neither poach nor waste downed game, I would of course make the effort to retrieve the likely inedible meat, but at least I was able to spend a ton of money to get a drone in....
Last edited by Remsen; 12/17/20.
