It sounds like your brother in law was spotting for you from quite a distance, was he telling you the locations by radio? If so I would be careful it is highly illeagal to use electronic devices to locate or put someone on animals. If I'm wrong sorry it sounded like he was a mile and a half away on two seperate occations, to use hand signals to direct would be legal in that case, not sure what you did there you didn't specify.