Video: Brewery Delivers Beer to Ice Fisherman Via Drones?

It seems like we’ve been droning on about drones lately, but the unmanned aerial devices continue to make the headlines. The most significant news yet, or at least the most exciting to ice anglers, is Lakemaid Beer’s recent press release stating the North country brewer is testing beer delivery to ice anglers via drones. Okay, so maybe this is just a publicity stunt by a beer company that knows smart marketing, but I don’t think it’s that farfetched to think drones will be delivering all sorts of things in the near future. If not beer, maybe at least we’ll be able to get a hot pepperoni pizza delivered to our ice shacks soon. From the press release:

“Inspired by Amazon’s founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, which has been testing the drone delivery of its products, Lakemaid Beer has been testing a new drone delivery system on some of the top ice fishing lakes in Minnesota and Wisconsin. A new video of its test is available at LakemaidBeer.com.

“Amazon faces a lot of obstacles,” said Lakemaid Beer Company’s president, Jack Supple. “Dense urban locations present a host of problems to drone delivery. But our tests are on vast, wide-open frozen lakes free of trees and power lines. Our drone can fly as the crow flies, straight to our target, based on GPS coordinates provided by an ice angler. Fish houses are very uniform in height, so we can fly lower than FAA limits, too.”

“It’s the perfect proving ground for drone delivery,” said Supple, “Our initial tests on several mid-size lakes have been very successful. We’re looking forward to testing the range of our drones on larger lakes.”