11/03/2026
‼️Wild Story Time‼️ It’s a long one.
Friday night, I received a call from a father, who’s young son hit a nice buck, but unsure of the shot placement. Shortly after, I arrived and sent the drone up. About 200 yards from last blood, I located the buck, alive. While looking at the buck and trying to determine the shot placement, I circled around the deer a few times to get a better view.
After a few minutes, I turned off the spot light for a second and saw that the deer was completely illuminated, as if my spot light was still turned on. I scratched my head for a second, turned my light on and off a few times thinking my controller was lagging, but the light remained on the deer. (Mind you, this is in the dead middle of the woods) After a few seconds, I quickly realized that there had to be someone else with a drone looking at the same deer as me and had to be incredibly close to my drone.
After frantically flying my drone back to my truck, I decided to call Jay at Maverick Drone to see if he was flying nearby. Ironically, Jay happened to be flying the exact same block of woods, for a separate hunter and a different deer all together, at the exact same time, without each other knowing. The deer he was looking for was shot the day prior (Thursday Evening). It was a miracle that we didn’t crash into each other.
After hanging up with Jay, I talked to my clients about their deer and we decided it would be best to return in the morning and fly again to hopefully relocate the deer. I then met up with Jay to show him my flight log so that he could see the area that I had already covered. After an hour of searching for his client’s deer and no luck, Jay decided that he would return in the morning to search another block of woods that he wasn’t able to reach.
The next morning, Jay searched for his clients deer and also checked the pin of my clients deer, but both were no where to be found.
A little later in the morning, I met my client to try to relocate their deer. My initial thought was to start on the outside perimeter and work my way back to where I initially found him the night before. After about 5 mins of searching, I located the buck, about 400 yards away from where he was previously pinned, in a tall CRP field….
What happened next was incredible!
‼️After we located my clients deer, I panned the thermal camera over and only 20 yards away, was the other hunters deer that Jay was tracking‼️
Both deer were shot on separate days, over 400 yards apart from each other, over 800 yards from last blood and both deer end up right next to each other!
In the end, both hunters were able to recover their deer that may have never been found. Jay and I were able to be apart of the recovery of both deer and snag a group picture.
Being apart of these situations where hunters get to connect with new hunters, work together and have success is what makes me love what I do.
Congratulations to BOTH of the hunters on two beautiful Ohio bucks! I guess even when Maverick Drone and I aren’t flying together, we somehow still end up flying together unintentionally!
