![drones for hunting, hunting drones](https://dronelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/whitetail-7366970_640-300x200.jpg)
by DRONELIFE Staff Author Ian J. McNabb
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A lawsuit has recently entered federal district court over Michigan’s hunting laws and their prohibition on drones. Ohio resident Mike Yoder and the Pacific Legal Foundation have filed a challenge to Michigan’s 2015 drone law after the Department of Natural Resources interpreted it as banning the usage of drones to locate downed game, even after a hunter’s weapons are stowed. Yoder’s company, Drone Deer Recovery Media, Inc., argues that the law was unconstitutionally infringes on their first amendment right to collect information and release it to their customers for business use.
In keeping with the 2015 law, any use of a drone inside a hunting context could threaten fines of as much as $1000 and 90 days in prison.
Yoder’s company is a multi-state, drone-as-a-service franchise offering services to search out downed game. If the Michigan interpretation of the ban on use of drones for hunting is upheld, Yoder’s business wouldn’t have the ability to operate in its current model in any state with an analogous policy. Yoder seeks an exception resulting from his strictly post-kill services, that are more of an alternative choice to the normal hunting dogs or trail cameras than a hunting aid.
This case highlights the unique challenge of applying policies to emerging technologies like UAVs across a wide selection of fronts, including recreational hunting policy. In a press release sent to DRONELIFE, Donna Matias, an attorney on the Pacific Legal Foundation, said, “Drone Deer Recovery is providing a beneficial service that’s less environmentally intrusive and more humane than alternatives, yet Michigan is stretching the law to ban it. The Structure protects Mike’s First Amendment rights to create and disseminate information collected by the drones and his customers’ right to receive it.”
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources doesn’t comment on ongoing litigation.
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