Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire drone photography

Thank you Karl.

I was looking at the Mavic Mini online. You can get the basic unit from Amazon or Walmart for $400. There are a number of different upgrade packages you can get with it bringing the price to about $450 to 500. The $500 package gets you 2 extra batteries, crash guards, a case, & some other stuff. The 2 batteries are worth the price.
One problem with it...it's not strong enough to move a case of beer.

The brother in law has a hobby drone.

It can go about 2 miles when the wind is not blowing a gale.

I think that the more you spend the better the flight time.

The one he has does take some good film.
When seen from that height the places you know look different.

Last summer 3 of us sat on a hillside at about 9000'. We could see 2 muley bucks, 2 bull elk, a cow and a bull moose, and a goat all at the same time. All were within easy drone range. It would have been great to have been able to fly a big loop and video all of them.

A bigger battery will get you more flight time but that takes more power to lift it which reduced flight time. It's all give and take. Some of cheaper ones, under $150, will fly about 15 min. Those in the 400 range will get double that. I haven't checked on flight time on the more expensive ones.

Bought my oldest one some years back. Yuneec Breeze, it has “Follow Me” more, “Selfie”, “Routes”, etc. and self stabilizing camera so integrated vs. add-on gimbal deal. It was $350 or $399 then but I saw a price of sub $150 now. It had 4k camera imaging when that was pretty new on commercial markets. It also “Auto-returned” and landed at its point of launch when battery was low.

The big thing I remember from initial fiddling was that with a 25 mins flight time by the time you reached 2-300’ it would be more than half drained and realistically at 75% it’s max elevation you had 5 mins to fly it before it was too low. It also had some challenges with losing the connection so you’d usually waste those 5 mins reconnecting to land it.

It was fun for a few days and has lived on his shelf for three years since. They make tethers to tie them to a ground battery for unlimited fly time and they get costly. I realized “Fixed Wing” was what would get us a very long flight time/distance vs. “Quadcopter” but they passed laws about not being out of “Line of sight” even if we took the FCC licensing class so I haven’t revisited that option. I did look at the much more costly versions as we have a large tourism industry here and the local”Adventure Center” was interested in selling rafting and paintball air photos. My son wasn’t ambitious about it at all so I dropped it.

I've had my DJI Mavic Air since early July 2018. I had a $50 cheapy drone before that and it was a waste of $50.

Things change as fast or faster in the UAV world as it did in the computer world of the early 2000s. There have been multiple generational chnges in the DJI Mavic line-up in the year and a half I've been flying.

3 things to remember before buying, IMO

A) DJI is at the top of the heap and likely will be for the foreseeable future

B) DJI makes the best drones out there but has the absolute worst customer service system

C) Buy from a reputable hobby or electronics dealer with staff that is passionate about UAVs and your biggest customer service issues with DJI will be moot.

You will want a dedicated tablet computer or phone to serve as an App database and Flight control interface device. The DJI UAVs are designed to work with apple devices, and most guys that I know use an iPad of some sort. An older and smaller device seems to work well. I bought the full size 128Gb iPad and an aftermarket bracket to attach it to the controller. All money well spent

The yuneec breeze you bought for $350 one year was the $50 cheapy I bought soon after.

Despite customer service issues, DJI is the route to go, IMO

Local Outdoor sports writer did a piece about hunting w/ a land owner when a drone came in over their heads. When the looked up and pointed the thin skdadled...

Curious if others would consider that trespassing (or intent to trespass) as the drone was clearly not the land owners and seems to have honed in on one of said owners still hunting spot....

Thoughts?

Would a drone spook game?

I bought my son the DJI Mavic Mini for Christmas just to mess around with. Got the package with extra batteries etc

That thing is amazing. Very easy to fly and incredible pictures. We haven’t scratched the surface on what it can do

I understand your question and your concerns. In reality, and under the law as it's been explained to me by the FBO at our local airport, any Cessna or Robinson can fly over your property in the same manner as a drone. The primary reason that manned aircraft do not is pilot self preservation. The ground is prettier and safer with distance.

With a UAV, ground proximity is no risk to a pilot. And in fact altitude limitations exist to prevent endangering manned aircraft. The law limits me as to how high I can fly, but personal property land boundaries are no barrier to lawful flight operations.

Any limitations to the flight of UAVs are there to ensure the safety of people on the ground. If I had a drone over my property, and hovering 30 feet over my head, I suppose I might like my safety is threatened. A drone traversing my property at 100 feet elevation, not so much.

Maybe consult your county attorney or your sheriffs office. Bet they've faced the question before.
That is if you're having problems sleeping caused by this issue...

Look at my youtube videos above and tell me if you think anyone had reason to be upset with those flights?

I learned after it was posted to youtube that the church which appears at the 2:04 minute mark in this video is the home church of another campfire member's grandmother.



The drone flights elicited some curiosity and questions. No one seemed upset, angry, or frightened...

As for spooking game, it depends on a number of variables like how close and how noisy your drone is. You're not allowed to harass them at any rate.
Idaho's had a law for years that lets you spot game from a plane but can't communicate it to the ground and you can't hunt it until the next day. When drones started getting popular, they made a simple change to include them. They simply changed 'aircraft' to 'aircraft, manned or unmanned'. That pretty well covered them.