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A Colorado Town Won't Let People Hunt Drones After All

Common sense prevails, for now.
Image: Shutterstock

Last we checked, the town of Deer Trail, Colorado, was mulling over a measure to allow residents to acquire drone hunting licenses, the first such drone-hunting proposal in a country still racked by Drone Fear. The votes are finally in, and the town's residents have overwhelmingly shot down the measure.

Over 70 percent of the 181 voters (the tiny town, located 60 miles east of Denver, has just 550 people) voted against the measure, the Denver Post reports.

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That result comes in stark contrast to the picture painted by a recent opinion poll by Nashville-based National Association of Drone Sportsmen. The survey showed a dead heat in Deer Trail, where just four percent of respondents said they were undecided over the prospective measure. But when push came to shove, it seems that the vast majority of Deer Trail voters came to see the proposal as symbolic, if unrealistic and impractical theatre.

What started as one local man's stand against government surveillance turned into quite a media sensation. The town eventually decided to postpone any movement on the ordinance, which would "declare sovereignty of the airspace" over Deer Trail, according to Phillip Steel, who wrote the measure.

"We do not want drones in town," Steel said last August after drafting the measure, which would have allowed the city to charge $25 for licenses to hunt unmanned aerial vehicles writ large. "They fly in town, they get shot down."

It seems most of his neighbors didn't buy it.

“If this was such a great idea, why haven’t you heard of any other little town across the United States saying this is a great idea, let’s do it?” one resident asked the local Fox News affiliate.

Curiously, Frank Fields, Deer Trail's mayor, was voted out of office on Tuesday. Fox reports Fields lost partly because of his opposition to calling open season on drones. But while there are still those who bought into Steel's claim that offering license would be a cash cow for Deer Trail that would bring in both revenue and tourism, as 7News Denver reports, it seems, for now, that common sense has prevailed.

Even if the measure did go through, of course, it still would've been a federal crime to shoot at a drone. (It's worth noting that Deer Trail's isn't exactly high-trafficked drone airspace.) Either way, even an expert shot will have a pretty tough time plunking a drone with a rifle. That's what lasers are for.