The Ethics of Hunting with Tech: Drones and Thermals

I vividly recall the first time I saw a thermal device used in the field. I was on an outfitted Utah elk hunt, and as we were driving two-track mountain roads back to the lodge after an unsuccessful all-day hunt, my guide stopped in the dark. He killed the headlights, pulled out a thermal viewer and grinned.

“This is gonna tell us where we hunt in the morning,” he said. As he scanned a mountainside meadow with the digital device, dozens of grazing elk glowed like ghosts on the screen.

It felt like cheating, intruding on animals that have grown accustomed to the protection of darkness. But the activity was perfectly legal. Utah’s regulations hadn’t caught up with the new devices, which were so novel at the time that few hunters knew of their capabilities.

That changed the following year. Regulations adopted by Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources in 2021 require hunters to stop using thermals and night-vision viewers to locate game two days before a hunt, and they can’t use such devices again until two days after the season ends.

Utah is one of a growing number of states that regulate these new devices, which give hunters the ability to see and hunt animals all through the night. In fact, nearly every state is actively considering regulating thermals and night-vision units.

Drones, too, are getting attention from fish and game commissions concerned that these flying eyes could violate standards of fair-chase pursuit. These devices are so new in the context of hunting that regulations haven’t caught up with their popularity, and they are becoming more prevalent in the field as their prices drop and their capabilities increase.

The rise of digital technology raises a larger question. Are thermals and drones simply the latest instances of technology that hunters have both embraced and rejected for the past 100 years?

DEFINING FAIR

Our adoption or rejection of technology is governed by that squishy term “fair chase,” which basically means animals have the same chance of escaping that hunters do of bagging them. The Boone and Crockett Club, keepers of hunting ethics in North America, defines fair chase as “the ethical, sportsmanlike and lawful pursuit and taking of any free-ranging wild game animal in a matter that does not give the hunter an improper or unfair advantage over the game animals.”

But hunters often disagree about levels of “unfairness.” Is it fair that we drive motorized vehicles deep into the retreats of mountain game? Or that we shoot rifles that can kill animals at distances far beyond their ability to see or smell us? Or that we employ remote trail cameras that report game activity to hunters in real time?

Our application of technology exists along a continuum. Some hunters will take any advantage to ensure a successful hunt. Others take some satisfaction in limiting their ability. Regulations that try to govern our behavior tend to get gummed up in both detail and enforcement.

We’ve seen this with the allowance of transmitting trail cameras in many states. In most, they’ve become normalized and are legal almost without limitation. Others allow hunters to use them only outside of hunting seasons.

Lighted arrow nocks, prohibited for years in my home state of Montana after they became widely adopted by bowhunters, are an interesting example of our evolving relationship with technology. Rule makers considered them unethical because they might encourage bowhunters to take shots in low-light situations, even after legal hunting hours. But bowhunters successfully argued that they promote ethics because they allow hunters to retrieve their arrows to confirm either a hit or a miss. Lighted nocks are now allowed in Montana’s bow seasons.

Drones, too, occupy that intersection of ethics and utility. Some jurisdictions outright ban them during hunting seasons, reasoning they give hunters an unfair advantage over wildlife. Others, though, allow them to be used for game retrieval, considering them a tool that promotes ethical harvest.

DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY

Thermals and night-vision devices, on the other hand, seem to be different from other technologies we’ve both employed and restricted. Nearly every state forbids hunters from pursuing game animals roughly from sunset to sunrise, and the fact that night-seeing devices allow hunters to be active in the wee hours stresses this prohibition. That’s why many states allow thermals and night-vision only for non-game animals like coyotes and feral hogs.

But by putting more hunters—even predator hunters—in the field at night, we may be inadvertently pressuring our game animals. I’ve seen this in Montana, where nighttime hunting for coyotes has spiked with the proliferation of thermals. Mule deer distribution has changed as a result, with fewer animals on the roaded public-land prairies where most thermal hunters chase coyotes.

One of the ironies in this discussion is that states in the East and Midwest, which generally are more comfortable with governmental restrictions, are among the least restrictive when it comes to hunting-technology prohibitions. Meanwhile, states in the West, associated with permissive individual rights, have the most restrictions—the result of trying to manage competing user groups and activities on public land.

If you need an example of the disruption that novel technology can bring to traditional activities, look at how forward-facing sonar has turned recreational fishing on its head. Some fishing tournaments have banned the technology that allows anglers to virtually see the fish they want to catch. About a dozen agencies have considered doing the same at the state level. Others take a more hands-off approach, hoping that the industry and the angling community will level the field.

Given the rate of innovation and deep penetration of novel technologies in hunting, Boone and Crockett has tried to quantify the degree of restriction on various gear categories. According to the club’s review of 2024 hunting regulations, 32 states either explicitly or implicitly prohibit night-vision units in hunting seasons. Fewer states—22—prohibit thermal and infrared devices. Interestingly, only 22 states have some prohibition on trail cameras, and most of these ban image-transmitting cameras but not non-transmitting cameras. The use of drones to aid in hunting or to retrieve animals is either restricted or banned in 40 states.

The research also looked at states’ restrictions on electronic game calls, red-dot sights, laser devices, rangefinding scopes and spotlighting. Each of these activities or technologies were, at some point in the past, considered new and disruptive. Most states now allow full or partial use of most of them in hunting. The stark exception is spotlighting, considered a first-order violation of fair-chase principles. Whether other states consider thermals and night-vision to be modern equivalents of spotlighting will be determined in the months and years ahead.

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• This article was featured in the April 2025 issue of Game & Fish magazine. Click to subscribe.

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