#361 - Learning Mature Bucks Through Thermal Drone Studies: What Over 30,000 Deer Can Teach You with Jack Huston
The WHTL Podcast - Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests
Jake Hofer
2.4 • 600 Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to the WHTL Podcast, presented by Moultrie. Your source for Whitetail Deer Hunting Tactics, Stories & Expert Guests. On this week's episode, we are back in the studio with Jack Huston of Midwest Deer Surveys. We discuss:
- Jack has flown over 30,000 deer across 200,000 acres in eight states
- Most landowners underestimate their deer populations by about 25%
- Deer behavior varies significantly between rut and late winter seasons
- Timber generally holds more deer than warm season grasses
- Heavy timber stand improvement (TSI) can attract deer to a property
- A balanced buck-to-doe ratio is crucial for healthy deer management
- Drones can achieve about 95% accuracy in deer surveys
- Observing deer with drones reveals their constant browsing behavior
- The best time for deer density surveys is during the rut and late winter
- Jack's company, Midwest Deer Surveys, offers thermal drone surveys for deer management
And so much more!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I've flown the last two seasons, 30,000 deer around 200,000 acres in eight different states. |
| 0:07.0 | Thermal drones, love them or hate them, some great insight can be gathered from. |
| 0:11.0 | We have Jack who tells us what he discovered from flying some of the best farms across the country. |
| 0:15.0 | I mean, most people who guess how many deer they really have and are managing and are feeding, they're 25% off. We talk about all the questions that are lingering in their back from mind. Do deer use warm season grasses? Where do they bed? How do they bed? All the things. Here we go. Do you think timber holds more deer or warm season grasses? You know, I've seen with the drone, and again, most of the time I'm flying is mid-November |
| 0:38.9 | on. You know, from that time frame on, I hardly ever find gear. Jack, how you doing this morning? |
| 0:44.9 | I am doing fantastic. How are you, Jake? I'm doing really good. I'm excited for this conversation. |
| 0:52.2 | Let's dive right into it. This, what do you do for a living? It's got to be one of the |
| 0:56.1 | most interesting jobs here for a guy that likes to watch deer. I fly a big thermal drone around |
| 1:03.1 | and go go look at deer on some awesome farms all across the country. Kind of a dream job. |
| 1:11.8 | Never thought it had turned into what it is, but I've really enjoyed it. |
| 1:15.9 | And I've been finding lots of really cool stuff the last couple years. |
| 1:21.8 | It's one of those deals like when you're growing up. |
| 1:23.8 | You're like, man, what do you want to do? |
| 1:25.5 | That's not on your fifth grade exercise of what you want to do that's not on the on your fifth grade uh exercise of |
| 1:29.7 | what you want to do when you grow up how did you decide to go into this because it's super unique |
| 1:33.6 | uh and and kind of on the cusp of of new technology it is the cusp of new technology |
| 1:41.3 | yeah probably three years ago two and a half years ago, kind of when the modern thermal drones came out and there was a big wave of people getting into the deer recovery and all that stuff. |
| 1:53.9 | I saw all that. |
| 1:55.5 | I've always been a big hunter outdoorsman and just, you know, kind of thought thought what an awesome tool I mean these |
| 2:03.0 | things are looking sane online I got to get into that so kind of kind of got in at |
| 2:09.6 | the base level saw how good good the drones were and just started started the |
| 2:17.0 | business started growing I started in recovery, but I've always been |
... |
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