Drone Deer Surveys in Alabama
Based in Tuscaloosa. We fly the whole state.
A lot of the companies claiming to survey Alabama deer herds are driving in from somewhere else. We are not. Paragon Aerial Solutions operates out of Tuscaloosa, which puts the Black Belt, the Piedmont, the Cumberland Plateau and the Tennessee Valley all inside a half-day of the shop — and our mobile command trailer and fleet travel to the property regardless of where it sits.
We fly up to eight drones at once, with multiple Part 107 pilots working the same tract simultaneously. That is the part nobody else offers, and on a large Alabama property it is the difference between a real census and an estimate. A survey spread across three days is three different snapshots of a herd that moved in between. A survey flown all at once is a count.
Alabama's deer problem is not too few deer
Alabama holds roughly 1.75 million whitetails — one of the highest densities in the country — across about 23 million acres of forestland, 93% of it privately owned. Hunters take north of 300,000 deer a year across one of the longest seasons in the United States.
And ADCNR's own biologists will tell you the recurring issue on managed properties is overpopulation, not scarcity. Wildlife biologist Brian Grice, writing on the Deer Management Assistance Program's 40th year, put it plainly: many of the clubs enrolling in DMAP have an overpopulation problem — browse lines, degraded habitat, and an adult sex ratio skewed so far toward does that standard doe-day limits cannot correct it.
You cannot fix that without knowing your actual numbers. And "actual numbers" is a higher bar than most clubs realize.
Why a Drone Deer Survey census beats a camera survey
A trail camera survey estimates a population from repeat captures at bait or mineral sites. It works, within limits, but it inherits three problems:
Double counting. The same mature buck hitting four camera sites across a 600-acre tract is very hard to distinguish from four different bucks — and every misidentification inflates your estimate.
Selection bias. You count the deer that come to bait. Mature bucks are the least likely to, especially in daylight and especially in October. The deer you most want to inventory are the deer least likely to show up in the data.
Time smear. A 14-day camera census is a composite of two weeks of movement, not a snapshot. Deer cross property lines constantly, and in Alabama's fragmented ownership pattern that matters more than it does in Texas.
A thermal drone flight counts the animals physically standing on your dirt during the flight. No bait, no assumptions, no double counting. You get a buck, doe and fawn breakdown, thermal and visual imagery of what we found, and an interactive web map with every deer pinned where it stood.
The Alabama survey calendar
Alabama runs five deer zones plus a CWD Management Zone, and your zone determines when your season runs.
Zone A covers north and central Alabama. Zone B the south and west. Zone C a block of northwest and north-central counties. Zones D and E take in parts of Cullman, Lawrence, Morgan and Winston, plus Barbour, Russell, Calhoun, Cherokee and Cleburne. The CWD Management Zone sits in the northwest corner.
Zones D and E open earlier than the rest of the state and close earlier too, so your window differs from your neighbors'.
Current season dates: ADCNR — Alabama Deer Season Dates and Bag Limits
Dates and zone boundaries change between seasons. Check the current year before you plan around them.
When we fly: November through March.
We wait until the leaves are down and the bucks have hard horns. That is when you get a clean count and real buck data — not just heat signatures.
Early season is where most clients land. You learn how many does to take and which bucks to let walk while there is still season left to act on it.
During the rut shows you something different — the bucks that do not normally bed on your property but are moving through it.
Late winter, February into March, tells you what survived: your true buck-to-doe ratio and fawn recruitment going into next year.
Why overcast daylight, not night. Thermal reads best on a cloudy day, and daylight lets us switch to the RGB camera to tell a buck from a doe. Flying at night means a spotlight and dropping from 400 feet down to 150–200 feet to see anything, which puts real pressure on your deer. We would rather not.
Alabama's season runs later than Georgia's in most zones, which gives it a genuinely good late window.
Terrain: not all of Alabama flies the same
Anyone who quotes you the same price for a Black Belt row-crop tract and a Bankhead-country hollow has not thought about it. What is under the drone changes what the drone can see.
Black Belt / Blackland Prairie — Sumter, Greene, Marengo, Hale, Perry, Dallas, Lowndes, Macon, Bullock. Dark alkaline prairie soils, ag fields, hardwood creek bottoms. Alabama's trophy belt, and the easiest thermal areas in the state. Open ground with deer concentrated in defined timber blocks is close to ideal.
Tennessee Valley and Highland Rim — row-crop bottoms with hardwood draws. Straightforward flying.
Cumberland Plateau — Winston, Cullman, Lawrence. Steep sandstone gorges and mixed hardwood. The hardest terrain-following and line-of-sight problem in Alabama. Flyable, but it takes planning and it is not a one-pilot job.
Ridge and Valley — Calhoun, Cherokee, Cleburne. Long parallel ridges with big elevation swings inside a single tract.
Piedmont — east-central. Rolling, and heavy on loblolly plantation.
Southern Pine Hills — dense loblolly and longleaf. Closed-canopy pine plantation may slow us down some but this is where the deer are! On heavily planted ground we will tell you up front what we can and cannot see.
Mobile-Tensaw Delta — 260,000-plus acres of cypress-tupelo swamp, flooded and largely un-walkable. This is the single strongest use case for a drone in the state. There is no other practical way to inventory it.
The general rule: hardwood bottomland and pines are typically the easiest to fly. Dense cedars or areas with bay leaves and yaupon, make it really tough. We would rather tell you that before you write a check.
CWD in northwest Alabama
Alabama confirmed its first CWD-positive deer on January 7, 2022, in west-central Lauderdale County. The CWD Management Zone now covers Lauderdale, Colbert, and part of Franklin County — a High-Risk Zone comprising all of Lauderdale and Colbert plus Franklin north of SR-24, and a Buffer Zone covering the rest of Franklin. At least seven cases were confirmed through December 2024, with Colbert's first in December of that year.
If you manage ground inside the CMZ, feeding and baiting restrictions apply and you should check the current rules with ADCNR before setting up any camera survey that depends on bait. A thermal drone census does not depend on bait at all, which is worth knowing.
DMAP: the data Alabama already asks you for
ADCNR's Deer Management Assistance Program has roughly 150 enrolled private clubs and landowners. Enroll and a WFF biologist provides habitat recommendations, harvest analysis, population surveys, and disease monitoring — and in return you supply data.
That population estimate is the piece most clubs struggle to produce credibly. If you are trying to justify an expanded antlerless allocation because you have too many does and not enough habitat, a hard number carries weight that "we think there's a lot of them" does not. A thermal census gives you a density figure and a buck-to-doe ratio you can put in front of a biologist.
How we fly
Every flight is under FAA Part 107 by a licensed pilot. We fly at 400 feet in overcast daylight — which is the ceiling FAA Part 107 allows. We are not just high enough that deer do not react to the aircraft; we are at the highest altitude it is legal to fly. That is the opposite of pressuring an animal, and it is deliberate. We do not drop to spotlight altitude, we do not make repeat passes to push deer out of cover, we do not fly in aid of a take, and we do not relay deer locations to anyone hunting.
What we need from you
Your property boundary. An onX share link is easiest. A KML, a shapefile, or a marked-up map works just as well.
Get on the Alabama schedule
We fly November through March and the calendar fills. If you want an early-season count — the one that tells you how many does to take while there is still season left to take them — call before the leaves are all the way down. Check your zone's dates with ADCNR.
Call or text (205) 394-6256, or send us your boundary and we will come back with a quote and a date.
Where to verify
Season dates and zone maps: ADCNR / Outdoor Alabama · CWD zones: Outdoor Alabama CWD · DMAP: ADCNR DMAP · Forestland ownership: Alabama Forestry Commission
Get on the Alabama schedule
Send your onX link or boundary file with your acreage and we will come back with a quote and a date.