One of the key uses of thermal imaging drones is legal hunting. In the United States, hunters hunting wild boars have become intense and interesting, equipped with thermal imaging drone 640t for wild animal hunting will be the breaking point of hunting games.
Wild boar-infested America
Wild boar is an animal widely distributed in the United States. It is an invasive species with few natural enemies and is extremely destructive. Over the past 30 years, feral pigs have spread from 17 to 39 states, and their numbers have grown to 9 million—so fast that some experts have dubbed it a "boar bomb."
Rapid reproductive ability of wild boar
Sows can regularly produce two litters per year and sometimes three litters within 14-16 months. A litter can reach upwards of 10 pigs, and these piglets - boars and sows - will reach sexual maturity in less than a year. Pigs usually live around 5 years in the wild, but some live to 14 or 15 years old. Older, larger sows tend to be more productive and produce larger litters.
In California, wild boar numbers have ballooned from about 100 since the 1960s to more than 300,000. In Texas, at least two-thirds of the population — more than 1.7 million hogs — must be slaughtered each year to keep their numbers from growing.
Modeling wild boar growth in California
According to the crop census conducted by the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service, wild pigs cause $1.5 billion in damage to crops and property across the United States annually. Not only do wild boars uproot farmland and bathe in rivers that degrade water quality, they also compete with native wildlife for food.
The land area of the United States is 9.37 million square kilometers. There are about 330 million people living in this vast land. The country is divided into 50 states, and wild boars have spread across 39 states, with an astonishing number of 6 million.
How to deal with wild animal inundation?
Hunting is a traditional game, and the hunting of wild boars in large numbers has become a new goal.
MDC Wild Boar Operation: The Missouri Wild Boar Eradication Partnership includes more than 15 federal and state agencies, as well as agricultural and conservation organizations. The partnership killed 9,857 wild boar in 2021, bringing the total killed since 2016 to more than 54,000. 10,495 pigs were killed in 2019 and 12,635 in 2020. The partnership employs 10 full-time catchers and educators through the University of Missouri's outreach program.
Competitive Hog Hunt: In Wise County, Texas, there will be an annual month-long hog hunt. It has now reached its 11th, and pigs in Texas or Oklahoma must be slaughtered by midnight on February 29. Pig hunting teams win by weight and have a chance to win four prizes paid for by the entry fee.
Black Hawg Down: A spontaneous term for wild boar hunting from hunters. Pig hunters use traps, infrared cameras, drones, rifles and night vision goggles to find and eliminate wild pigs. In addition, there are special organizations that hold pig hunts during the hunting season.
Carrying a thermal camera drone to hunt pigs
Wild boars are cunning and cautious, and since pigs don't sweat, they are most active at night to escape the midday heat. Pig activity peaks between 10pm and 5am, so how do you spot these nocturnal wild boars?
Drones with thermal imaging cameras can do just that.
Nighttime thermal imaging uses heat perception to see everything, unlike traditional RGB cameras that use wavelengths of light to see things clearly. Thermal imaging cameras can accurately detect all movements of objects even at night.
Drones are used to find locations. Armed with location information, most of the hunters took out the boar with his rifle and night vision goggles. Wild boars are considered "outlaw quadrupeds" during the U.S. hunting season, with fewer restrictions on how, where and when they can be hunted.
How to choose a thermal imaging drone for pig hunting?
The most important points involved in pig hunting drones are whether to carry a thermal imager and the flight time.
The thermal imager of the EVO II 640T drone has the advantages of resolution, focal length, and thermal palette selection. And the EVO II 640T can fly for 38 minutes.
The EVO II Dual 640t combines a high-end visible light camera with an invisible thermal imaging camera, the EVO II 640T V2 has a 0.5-inch sensor visible light camera lens, and the EVO II 640T V3 has a 0.8-inch sensor camera lens. Unique to the EVO II Dual 640t is the picture-in-picture mode of capture that overlays the camera image with the thermal image, providing a professional aerial video and still image solution.
As a thermal imaging drone, EVO II Dual 640t can record thermal imaging video with a resolution of 640 x 512 or 320*256, and is also equipped with 1-8x (up to 4x lossless) digital zoom. Therefore, EVO II Dual 640t can be used as a high-altitude hunting drone, which is convenient for hunters to find the location of prey.
Thermal imaging equipment is expensive. Pig hunting is also an expensive hobby. A FLIR pocket thermal camera with a resolution of 160*120 is about $600 on Amazon. High-end thermal imaging scope, 17µm pixel focal length, 8-bit palette Pulsar Helion 2 XP50 costs up to $5300, and the price of a 12µm pixel focal length, 10-bit Palettes EVO II 640T thermal imaging drone is $4899. There is no doubt that thermal imaging drones are becoming cheaper, easier to operate and a more worthwhile investment.
