Wyoming sheriffs use a thermal drone to find a woman with special needs in a field full of deer in subfreezing temperatures after she left her home in the middle of the night.

A woman with special needs who was lost in the Wyoming desert was found by a drone with a thermal camera.

The Sublette County Sheriff’s Office responded to a call around 11 p.m. Thursday night about a special needs woman from Pinedale who had ‘taken off in the night’ and was wandering, according to the report.

The Precinct Drone Team (SCSO) released footage of the rescue after police and Tip Top Search and Rescue responded to the call.

Once they reached the search area, they launched a drone equipped with a thermal camera to search for the missing woman.

The woman was finally detected by the drone three miles from her home. In the images, the heat signature of her body detected by the camera took the form of a human silhouette moving through the forest.

Thanks to the camera’s thermal detection technology, the woman was safely recovered and returned home after being checked by medical personnel.

Administrative Sergeant Travis Bingham, SCSO pilot, said Cowboy State Diary that the drone team made the difference in finding the missing woman.

Had the team not had the thermal technology to locate the woman in time, Bingham said she could have died of hypothermia if she had not been found.

“She was a couple miles ahead of first responders from where she was last seen,” Bingham said.

‘If they had followed the footprints trying to find her, it would have been more difficult and they would have responded more slowly.

“The drone reduced the time they would have spent alone in the elements.”

It was about trying to locate the woman in a field full of deer, who also gave off their own body heat.

Bingham said the camera that detected her body heat signature provided enough resolution to distinguish the woman’s body from the nearby deer.

“We can transmit what we’re seeing as drone pilots to the responding officers’ phones and back to dispatch,” he said.

“Then, we used the radio to broadcast changes, share what we were seeing, and coordinate efforts with multiple pilots.”

As drone technology advances, they can use different accessories to assist a mission in specific ways.

Sublette County was one of the first counties in Wyoming to add drones to its police squad. Bingham said he believes the state of Wyoming, given how fast-paced and rugged the terrain is, might find drones especially useful.

“Being as far away as we are, getting a faster response and being able to cover a large area from above and see a larger area than on foot was huge,” he said.