In a recent Southeast Deer Study Group (SEDSG) meeting, wildlife specialist Jesse Exum presented a paper on estimating deer numbers with the use of drones. Drones were fitted with thermal-optical video cameras and flown at 5 different sites in South Texas. Result: The drone-captured thermal estimates of deer from the 5 surveys were comparable to much louder, time-consuming and expensive helicopter survey estimates. In another study conducted while doing his postdoctoral work, wildlife specialist Jared Beaver and colleagues equipped drones with thermal cameras and flew them over a 430-acre facility at Auburn University in Alabama, where the precise number of whitetails in the enclosure was known. After analyzing the results of their evening flights, the researchers found that the population [...]