08/11/2026
Maryland has proposed a rule banning drones for locating, driving, or herding game while hunting, joining nearly every other state with a hunting-specific drone law. Recovery of downed game would still be allowed with notice to Natural Resources Police before and after the flight.
The reasoning keeps coming back to "fair chase." Fair chase is the vehicle that outdated ethics rides in on. It's the socially acceptable language stakeholders use to block or slow-walk anything that feels too effective or not challenging enough.
State agencies rely on hunters to manage wildlife populations. When harvest goals aren't met, we get longer seasons, more tags, more incentives, anything to boost hunter success. Agencies aren't short on tools. Baiting, crossbows, deer damage permits, and earn-a-buck programs prove that. What's missing is the willingness to let biology decide which tools get used. Instead, the loudest stakeholders decide what still counts as "real" hunting, while parroting talking points aimed at ethics, safety, and fairness.
Crossbows are proof of the pattern. It took over a decade of advocacy by the New York Crossbow Coalition (NYCC) to get them approved statewide, not because they weren't effective, but because traditionalist hunters, the same fair-chase crowd, said crossbows took no skill and made things too easy. Declining hunter numbers and an aging hunter population built the pressure that the NYCC used to secure an ADA accommodation for a one-season trial, which soon led to full inclusion.
Hunting remains the only scalable tool for controlling wildlife populations and hunters maintain the balance between wildlife and habitat that agencies are tasked with preserving. Making hunting harder is great for campfire stories and tradition, but it's an inefficiency if the actual goal is successfully managing animal populations.
Fair chase was created to justify recreational hunting, not to cap how effective a hunter can be. Hunters are volunteers, consumers, and stakeholders, who buy licenses and tags, as well as, fund the agencies and carry out their harvest for free.
It's time to stop measuring the modern hunter by how hard we make his job and start recognizing that he's performing a community service. Any technology that reduces error and increases success belongs in that equation, not outside it. But that cuts both ways. If the modern hunter fails to manage wildlife populations, he risks losing the hunting opportunities that he's being asked to protect.
One of the last states without a hunting-specific drone law has finally moved to ban using drones to locate game.
Maryland is proposing a new regulation that would make it illegal to use drones to locate, drive, or herd wildlife while hunting. The proposal would still allow hunters to use drones to recover legally wounded or dead game, but only after notifying the Maryland Natural Resources Police before and after the recovery flight. The rule is designed to protect fair chase while still allowing technology to help recover harvested animals.
During the public comment period, it became clear why the proposal was introduced. Multiple hunters told the state that drones were already being used to locate mature bucks with thermal imaging, watch deer leave their beds, and direct hunters into position. Those comments highlighted growing concerns that drone technology was giving hunters an unfair advantage and helped drive Maryland’s effort to establish clear rules for drone use while hunting.
In looking through other state regulations, Connecticut and Massachusetts were the only states where I couldn’t find an explicit hunting-specific drone prohibition. There could be others, but those were the only two I came across.
Aaron B. Futrell, Author|Owner, Delong Lures
