What to do after the shot, what a flight costs, what is legal and what is not. If your question is not here, call — the phone gets answered.
Stop. Mark your last blood and the last place you saw the animal, get out of the area quietly, and call. Every additional hour of ground pressure moves a wounded deer farther and makes the search bigger. A bedded deer that has been left alone is the easiest recovery there is.
For a dead animal, thermal works until the body cools to ambient temperature — generally the same night, sometimes into the early morning in cold weather. For a live, bedded deer, the sooner the better. If it has been more than about 12 hours, call and we will be honest about the odds before you spend money.
Call as soon as it happens. Thermal is far more effective after sundown when the ground has cooled, so we may schedule the flight for after dark, but knowing early lets us plan the search and get to you at the right hour.
Light rain and fog degrade thermal, and heavy rain grounds us. Rain also erases blood, which makes the aerial search more valuable, not less — call and we will look at the window.
Yes, for recovering an animal that has already been shot, and rules differ by state. What is not legal is using an aircraft to locate live protected game — deer, elk, bear, turkey — to help someone take it. Feral hogs are the exception: they are an invasive species rather than protected game, so locating live hogs from the air is permitted. Every other flight we make is a post-shot recovery or a scheduled survey.
Because hogs are not native wildlife. They are a destructive invasive species, and the states we work in allow landowners to use essentially any effective means to remove them — including aircraft. Protected native game is the opposite: aircraft cannot be used to aid in taking it, period. Any operator who cannot explain that distinction to you should not be flying your job.
Because you are paying him. Any commercial drone flight requires the pilot to hold an FAA Part 107 Remote Pilot Certificate, and night operations bring further requirements including anti-collision lighting. A hobbyist flying a paid recovery is operating illegally, usually uninsured, and if something goes wrong on your hunt or your neighbor’s property, you are standing next to it.
Ask for the certificate and the certificate number, and ask for proof of liability insurance. A legitimate operator will send both without hesitation. We do.
No. Kansas does not permit drone-assisted game recovery, so we do not fly it and our coverage map is squared off at the state line. Anyone offering you a Kansas recovery flight is creating a problem for both of you.
Yes. We need permission for the property being searched, and if the animal crosses onto a neighbor’s ground we need theirs as well before we search it. We also ask for your tag information. This protects you as much as us.
Recoveries start at $400 for three hours of searching in the primary Northwest Arkansas service area. Travel outside the primary area and searches that run longer are quoted on the phone before anything launches — you will know the number up front. No recovery, no surprise add-ons.
You are paying for the search and the flight time, and the price is set before we launch. What you will not get is a flight sold to you that we already believe is a long shot — we would rather turn down the job than take money for a search that will not work.
In the primary NWA area, most searches launch within one to two hours of the call. Southwest Missouri and Northeast Oklahoma are typically two to three hours depending on where you are and what else is flying.
Northwest Arkansas is home base and gets same-night response. We also cover Southwest Missouri, Northeast Oklahoma, and south to the Fort Smith and River Valley area. See the coverage map for the full picture.
Total animals observed on the property, the antlered and antlerless split where thermal and zoom allow classification, fawn observations, and where the deer were concentrated — all backed by time-stamped video. Fly the same route each year and you get a trend instead of an opinion. It is management data, delivered outside of hunting activity.
We fly the whole pasture at survey altitude with thermal recording, then count off the footage rather than by eye in the field. Every warm body shows, including animals standing in cedar or timber a truck cannot see into. You get a documented number, video, and coordinates on any strays or separated stock.
Often, yes. Dogs hole up in brush piles, culverts and fence rows — exactly what thermal picks out. Best conditions are early morning or after dark. Dense canopy on a hot afternoon is the hard case, and we will say so rather than sell you a flight.
Yes, and we do not charge for it when we can get there. Those flights are always coordinated with the agency running the search — call us and have the incident commander or sheriff’s office loop us in.
Call or text. No call center, no dispatcher — you get the pilot.