Montana Drone Laws (2026): Warrants, Trespass & Hunting

Montana confirms one of the flagged national questions directly: since 2013, Montana law has barred using drone-gathered information as evidence or as the basis for a warrant unless it was collected under a warrant, a recognized warrant exception, or during a roadway crash investigation. A 2025 law added a separate civilian drone-trespass offense.

Information last verified on 2026-07-09. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Jurisdiction scope: This article addresses Montana state law governing drones, specifically Mont. Code Ann. section 46-5-109, section 45-6-210, section 76-13-214, and sections 87-6-208 and 87-6-215, as verified on 2026-07-09. It does not address FAA registration, Remote ID, or Part 107 licensing, which apply the same way in every state; see the Drone Laws by State hub for that baseline and for how other states compare.

The FAA sets the airspace rules; Montana law covers what happens with the data

The FAA is the exclusive regulator of where a drone may fly, through drone registration, Remote Pilot Certification under 14 CFR Part 107 for most non-hobby flights, and, since 2023, Remote ID broadcast requirements. None of that answers the two questions that matter most to a Montana resident: can police use a drone against you without a warrant, and can a drone legally fly low over your land or your hunt. Montana answers both with real statutes, unusually early ones by national standards, plus a brand-new 2025 trespass law layered on top.

Does police need a warrant to fly a drone over your property in Montana? Yes, for evidence to count

Montana was one of the first states in the country to legislate this question, and the answer is a clearly confirmed yes, with an important nuance about how the law is structured. Mont. Code Ann. section 46-5-109, originally enacted in 2013 and amended in 2019, does not flatly ban warrantless drone flights by police. Instead, it operates as an evidentiary and probable-cause rule: information gathered from a drone is not admissible in any Montana prosecution or proceeding unless it was obtained (a) under the authority of a search warrant, (b) under a judicially recognized exception to the warrant requirement, or (c) during the investigation of a motor vehicle crash scene on or involving a public roadway. The same three conditions govern whether drone-derived information can be used in a probable-cause affidavit to obtain a warrant in the first place. In effect, this makes a warrant (or a recognized exception to one) a practical prerequisite for drone evidence to matter in a Montana criminal case, even though the statute is written as a rule of admissibility rather than a direct operational ban. The statute defines an "unmanned aerial vehicle" as an aircraft operated without direct human intervention from on or within it, and separately excludes satellites from that definition.

Montana's 2025 drone trespass law

Montana added a second, civilian-facing statute in 2025. Mont. Code Ann. section 45-6-210, enacted as Chapter 410, Laws of 2025 (originating as Senate Bill 493), creates the offense of criminal trespass by unmanned aerial vehicle: a person commits the offense by knowingly causing a drone to fly 200 feet or lower over the property or residence of another person without the property owner's or resident's authorization. A conviction carries a $500 fine. The law exempts several categories of operator from prosecution: federal, state, tribal, or local government units acting for public safety, environmental, or welfare purposes; peace officers acting consistently with the warrant rule in section 46-5-109; flights within a recorded easement with the dominant-estate holder's permission; utility employees or broadband providers inspecting their own equipment; and FAA-licensed operators conducting legitimate business consistent with federal regulations. This is a meaningfully lower bar than the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy or surveillance-intent standards used in states like Texas or Wisconsin. In Montana, an unauthorized low flight itself is enough, regardless of whether the operator was trying to observe anything.

A 2026 fight over what the trespass law means for corner-crossing

The 200-foot buffer in section 45-6-210 has become entangled in a separate, long-running Montana land-access dispute: corner-crossing, the practice of stepping from one corner of public land to an adjoining corner across the single point where they touch a private parcel, used to reach public land otherwise landlocked by a checkerboard of private ownership. In 2026, Montana Lieutenant Governor Kristen Juras, drawing on the old common-law doctrine that land ownership extends "from the heavens to the depths," argued publicly that a hunter or hiker's foot crossing through the airspace above a private corner could itself trespass under the same airspace-ownership logic the 2025 drone law reflects, even though the statute's text addresses drones rather than people. She noted Montana sits within a different federal circuit than Wyoming, where the Tenth Circuit sided with corner-crossing elk hunters in 2025 and the U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear the landowner's appeal, so that precedent does not bind Montana courts. Lawmakers including Rep. Josh Seckinger and Sen. Ellie Boldman have said they are drafting legislation to affirmatively legalize corner-crossing, a live, unresolved dispute that shows how a narrow drone statute can reach beyond drones once its airspace-ownership logic is applied elsewhere.

Hunting, wildlife, and drones in Montana

Montana is one of eight states nationally with a specific statutory restriction on using drones in connection with hunting. Mont. Code Ann. section 87-6-208, Montana's unlawful use of aircraft statute, reaches drones by cross-reference rather than by defining them itself: subsection (4) provides that "aircraft" has the meaning given in section 87-6-101, and section 87-6-101(3) defines an aircraft as any manned or unmanned aerial vehicle or device used or intended to be used for flight in the air. As amended in 2025 (Ch. 553, L. 2025), section 87-6-208 bars using an aircraft to spot or locate a game animal for the purpose of hunting within 24 hours after using an aircraft, bars communicating a game animal's or fur-bearing animal's location to another person as an aid to hunting within that same 24-hour window, and bars using an aircraft to concentrate, pursue, drive, rally, or stir up a game bird, migratory bird, game animal, or fur-bearing animal.

Penalties run in three tiers. A base conviction carries a fine of $300 to $1,000, up to six months in a county detention center, or both, and the court may in addition order forfeiture of a current hunting, fishing, or trapping license and of the privilege to hunt, fish, or trap in the state for a period the court sets. Forfeiture is discretionary at that tier, not automatic. It becomes mandatory in the two escalated tiers: if the violation involved deer, elk, antelope, mountain lion, mountain sheep, moose, wild buffalo, caribou, mountain goat, black bear, or grizzly bear, the fine rises to $500 to $2,000 and a 30-month forfeiture is required; for a fur-bearing animal, the fine is $100 to $1,000 with a 24-month forfeiture. A related statute, Mont. Code Ann. section 87-6-215, separately penalizes intentionally interfering with another person's lawful taking of wildlife, including by disturbing the animal, with a fine of up to $500 and up to 30 days in jail.

Unusually, Montana is also the only state in the West that affirmatively allows a hunter to use a drone to help locate and recover a wounded or dead game animal, according to a 2024 National Deer Association report. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has confirmed through enforcement guidance that if a drone locates the animal already dead, the hunt is legally over and the hunter may retrieve it, but if it locates a wounded animal still alive, the hunter must wait until 24 hours have passed since the drone flight to resume hunting it under the aircraft restriction, as amended in 2025. FWP's Enforcement Division has acknowledged rising complaints about drones being used to scout or stalk big game rather than genuinely recover downed animals, and an Environmental Quality Council interim committee advanced a 2025 proposal to restrict "motion-tracking devices" used in game recovery, reflecting an unsettled debate over where legitimate recovery ends and improper scouting begins.

Flying a drone near a wildfire is a separate Montana offense

Montana also criminalizes getting in the way of firefighting from the air, and the statute names drones outright. Mont. Code Ann. section 76-13-214, obstruction of aerial wildfire suppression activities, prohibits obstructing lawful aerial wildfire suppression by any means, including by the use of an unmanned aerial vehicle system. A violation is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not more than $1,500, and the section does not displace other remedies for damages or for recovering the costs a violation causes. It does not apply to drone operations conducted by federal, state, tribal, or local government units, or by people working under contract with them, for the purpose of protecting public safety and welfare, including firefighting, law enforcement, or emergency response.

This provision deserves more attention than its placement in the forestry title suggests. Montana runs a long and heavy fire season, temporary flight restrictions go up over active incidents, and putting a hobby drone into that airspace is one of the more common ways an ordinary recreational operator ends up on the wrong side of a Montana drone statute rather than a purely federal one.

Shooting down a drone is a federal crime, not a Montana property right

Even with Montana's unusually protective 200-foot trespass buffer, no state law authorizes a landowner to shoot down or otherwise disable a drone flying over their land. 18 U.S.C. section 32, the Aircraft Sabotage Act, makes it a felony punishable by up to twenty years in federal prison to willfully damage, destroy, or disable an aircraft, and the FAA has treated drones as aircraft within the National Airspace System since 2012. That federal exposure applies even over the shooter's own property, because the FAA, not the landowner, controls the airspace, regardless of how low the drone was flying or whether it violated section 45-6-210. Publicized cases in other states where local prosecutors declined to pursue or continue state charges after a drone shoot-down reflect discretionary charging decisions, not a legal right to disable a drone; no state, including Montana, has enacted a law creating one.

Disclaimer

This article provides general legal information about Montana law governing drones, as verified on 2026-07-09. It does not constitute legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Readers should consult a lawyer licensed in Montana for advice about a specific incident or dispute.

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Last updated: 2026-07-09. Statutes cited reflect their in-force version as of 2026-07-09.

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