The sky is the limit for Drone Deer Recovery
Mike Yoder, founder of Drone Deer Recovery, chats it up with visitors during the recent annual Northeast Ohio Sportsman’s Show in Mt. Hope. Yoder’s drone company has grown to epic proportions in the past 15 months.
Sometimes a person must become totally broken before restoration can heal them and send them soaring to new heights.
For Mike Yoder, an epic turnaround began when he hit rock bottom, found his faith and took flight — literally.
When asked to share the story about his remarkable journey to where he is today, Yoder, founder of Drone Deer Recovery, said the story of the company’s existence can come in long form or short form.
Yoder doesn’t pull any punches when sharing his path through life, one that hinges on a faith that came to him during a life that had spiraled into darkness.
Yoder, who lives in Dundee, was the former owner of Anywhere Tree Care, where he performed the sometimes-dangerous job of removing unwanted trees.
He had been providing the tree service for a decade, until one day a customer called him and asked him to remove a log in his yard.
Frustrated that he had forgotten to take care of the single log, Yoder hustled right over to the property to take care of business.
“This was a longtime customer, and he trusted me, so I was frustrated at myself,” Yoder said. “So I cut up the log into large chunks and started chucking them into the woods.”
Yoder tore into the job, and in the process of picking up and firing a large portion of the log into the woods, something snapped in his back.
He had ruptured a disc.
He dealt with the pain for more than a year, during which time he began drinking, at first casually and then heavily, from beer to hard liquor. Eventually, he said he turned into an alcoholic, drinking all day.
“It was ridiculous,” Yoder said.
One evening he was lying on his living room floor with his 3-month-old daughter, drunk. It was then he realized his life was spiraling downward at a rapid pace.
“I was broken physically and spiritually,” Yoder said.
He turned to God and asked for something in his life that would turn him around, something that would motivate him, energize him and influence him to turn away from the alcohol that had ravaged his life.
God provided quickly.
A licensed pilot, Yoder said he began working shortly thereafter with videography through drones.
That introduced him to thermal drones, and the idea of deer carcass recovery arose.
Diving into the business with hope it might lead to something to turn his life around, Yoder got far more than he ever expected.
He made a short video of what a deer drone recovery looks like and took it to the Northeast Ohio Sportsman Show.
In his tiny booth, the video took flight in a big way.
He created a top-end drone and did some serious marketing, with a goal of making enough to pay off his investment.
What he got was a whirlwind of activity that soared well beyond his expectations.
His journey has led to a rise from the ashes and a successful company that has opened the door for him to not only share his journey, but also utilize his knowledge to help both hunters and farmers through DDR.
After developing the business, Yoder wanted something catchy for his new company’s name. He was out in the field when the name Deer Drone Recovery hit him.
He said he quickly drove home and Googled the name, and it was available.
“It was meant to be,” Yoder said of trademarking the name.
Now others have played off his name, but despite that, his company continued to grow. DDR now has grown into a YouTube sensation, with more than 300,000 followers and more than 18 million views, all in a span of 15 months.
“You can’t make this stuff up,” Yoder said. “I truly believe that God has blessed this company and myself. It just continues to build momentum.”
The growth has been so frantic that Yoder said they continue to figure out the logistics. He said they continually seek out qualified and passionate team members who are willing to maintain the quality and purpose behind the company.
The idea behind DDR is simple.
Oftentimes, hunters will make a clean kill on the hunt, but unfortunately, the deer will scamper off, where it can easily find a hidden resting spot and go undetected, left to struggle and die hours or even days later.
Locating the fallen deer after the hunt is where Drone Deer Recovery steps in.
Utilizing a drone and thermal technology, a qualified drone expert can pilot the drone through an area to help locate the deer.
This eye in the sky technique has benefited many hunters who have watched as a clean kill scampers away. The drones can locate a deer from more than 400 feet up in the air and can be utilized both in day and nighttime.
“We use a 200-times zoom lens camera to make sure it is the hunter’s deer,” Yoder said. “It’s only for deer that are wounded and not to locate a deer someone is hunting.”
Yoder said aircraft are not allowed to be used during a hunt. There are several states throughout the nation that won’t allow drone recovery because of that rule. He said the drones are simply recovery and the ethics of that don’t fall under the hunt.
With his expertise developing a following, he has been called upon to help change some of those rules, having recently returned from Indianapolis, where lawmakers in Indiana are making drove recovery a legal option.
Yoder said the massive growth has opened the door to another opportunity, that being in the agricultural world, where they are able to utilize a massive drone to help fertilize and seed fields.
That has already seen them develop techniques to help farmers.
“It’s moved so quickly that we are manufacturing our own drone spray trailer, the kit and everything else involved,” Yoder said, noting he is currently in discussion with NuCamp in Sugarcreek to manufacture the drone kits.
Yoder said what God has done is incredible, bringing him from a pit of despair to amazing success in only a few months, and the sky is literally now the limit.