Guide · July 2026
A game fence with one gap is not ninety-nine per cent effective. It has a gap. Checking every metre of a boundary is the job nobody has time for — which is exactly the job aerial survey is built for.
A boundary fence is one of the few farm assets whose entire value depends on being intact along every metre of it. A game fence with one gap is not ninety-nine per cent effective — it has a gap. A stock fence with a wash-away under it does not keep stock in.
And yet inspecting it properly means driving or walking the full boundary, which on a substantial property is a day or more, over the worst ground on the farm. So it is done rarely, and usually only after something has already gone wrong.
The aircraft flies the fence line, following its route and capturing high-resolution imagery of the fence and a corridor either side.
Tens of kilometres of boundary are surveyed in a single session, including terrain that would be slow or impassable on the ground — riverine crossings, rocky ridges, dense bush and steep sections. The result is complete coverage of the whole line, rather than the accessible parts plus an assumption about the rest.
Physical breaks and gaps, including damage below vegetation height that is not visible from a passing vehicle. Sagging and slack wire, missing or leaning droppers and standards, and straining posts that have shifted.
Wash-aways and erosion beneath the fence — one of the most common causes of stock loss, and one of the least visible from the road.
Vegetation encroachment: bush growing into or over the line, fallen trees, and growth shorting electric fencing.
Illegal crossings and worn paths. Repeated human or animal movement leaves visible tracks, and where a path leads to a fence, something is crossing it. That is visible from above long before it is noticed from a bakkie.
Gate condition, damage to electric fence infrastructure, and the corner and strain assemblies that carry the most load and fail first. Plus encroachment — structures, cultivation or dumping crossing the line, documented and dated.
Thermal adds a further dimension after dark, where warm bodies against a cool background make movement along or across a boundary visible in conditions where nothing is visible at all.
Distance is the whole argument. A property with thirty kilometres of boundary is surveyed in a session rather than over days, and covering the far corner costs no more than covering the near one.
Terrain matters too — the sections hardest to reach on the ground are the ones most likely to have unnoticed problems, precisely because they are hardest to reach.
Every metre is captured, at a resolution that resolves individual droppers and wire strands. The survey is a dated record supporting insurance claims, boundary disputes, lease obligations and property transactions. And it repeats: fly the same line quarterly or annually and the comparison shows exactly what has deteriorated, what has been repaired, and where new crossings have appeared.
Game fence integrity, where containment is a legal and financial matter and documented evidence that the fence is fit for purpose has real weight.
Stock security. Theft frequently follows an existing weakness, so finding gaps and worn crossing paths before they are used is materially cheaper than recovering animals afterwards.
Pre-purchase due diligence. A buyer sees a fence from the road; a survey says how much of it is sound and how many kilometres need attention — which is a real number in a negotiation.
Maintenance planning, with repairs prioritised and located so a team is sent to coordinates with a task list rather than dispatched to patrol. Lease compliance, where a dated survey at the start and end of a term settles the question. And boundary records, since a dated georeferenced record of where the fence physically runs is useful long before it is needed.
Fly the line rather than the block — a corridor survey following the fence route gives far better resolution on the fence itself than a general area survey.
Winter and the dry season give better visibility where bush is deciduous. Low sun angles early or late cast long shadows that make posts, gaps and undermining more visible. Fly the same route each time for comparison work. And use thermal after dark where the objective is movement and crossing activity rather than physical condition.
Stock theft is a significant and persistent problem, and it commonly exploits existing fence weaknesses and established crossing paths rather than creating new ones. Finding those first changes the odds.
Game farm containment carries legal, financial and conservation weight — the value of the animals inside makes documented fence integrity a serious matter, and escapes create liability as well as loss.
Distances are substantial, with boundaries frequently measured in tens of kilometres across terrain that makes ground inspection genuinely difficult. And boundary disputes are common enough that a dated record of where a fence physically runs — as distinct from where a diagram says the boundary is — has real value.
An annotated fence line map with every defect plotted along the boundary. A defect register giving each finding with GPS coordinates, description, imagery and severity. High-resolution imagery along the full line, indexed by position. A prioritised repair schedule, ordered by severity and grouped by locality so a team works efficiently. Total line length surveyed with a condition summary by section. Change comparison where a previous survey exists. And thermal imagery where night survey is included.
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