Part 107 UAS pilot reported the UAS collided with a bush during an automated flight.

Narrative

Matrice 4T CrashBy Person A; Day 0 @XA30Location XI decided on Day 0 to get some night drone training in on Day 1 morning around XA am at Location X. My Homepoint was going to be the north end of the runway because it is centrally located with good line of sight to Location X directly west. I planned out the attached 'square' using Google Earth to encompass the area where I have previously seen wildlife in the early mornings. It is about 300 acres in size. I verified that I would be 250' AGL at the western boundary of the flight. I had it in my head that if I flew the whole thing at 350 I would be high enough to avoid crashing into the hillside. I did not bother to power up the controller to take a look at the grid that would be required figuring it would be just as easy to do this in the morning. The objective was going to be to watch the controller screen and a separate larger screen during the flight and count the heat signatures as I was flying. I would also record the video and run it through EagleEyes at home and compare the counts. I was hoping I could complete the Area Flight before the sun started heating the ground at around XCam.I arrived at Location X a little before XAam. The gate was open and the lights were on in the hanger. The Skydio crew was there putting their drones through endurance testing. We compared flight areas and agreed there would be no conflict. They were east of the runway flying north south and I was taking off from the north end of the runway and flying west in my 300 acre area. I drove to the north and my VO arrived a few minutes later. We set up our Homepoint with cones; landing pad; and 4 blinky lights. I turned on the controller and plotted the 4 corners of my grid and designed an Area Search. I would be flying east west and my start point was the southeast corner. I had the choice to fly with a Digital Surface Model but decided it would take too long to set that up. I observed that the overlap would take me a little further west but did not recognize the significance of this. I did not fly the exact Google Map square but rather ballparked the four corners. I set all my altitudes based on the mission flight altitude of 350 feet that I measured the previous day in Google Maps. As I was configuring the Area Flight I played around with various settings but settled on 350' AGL constant Altitude using the IR camera. This was going to take 1 hour and 12 minutes not including automatic pauses for battery changes. Should be done before sunrise!Being a little time constrained by the sunrise I was in a hurry to get launched and to see what it looked like in case I needed to make adjustments I would still have time to beat the sunrise even if I need to make changes. The grid start point was the southeast corner and the drone would start flying west to the search area boundary and then come back east. This would be repeated as it worked slowly north. I immediately did not like the Oblique camera setting I chose because it kept switching between ortho and oblique and it was going to make it difficult to spot heat. I was also trying get the bigger screen set up - trusting that the drone would take care of itself and not anticipating any rising terrain issues…All of a sudden things started to go wrong and then everything stopped and the drone was clearly not moving any more and I had no RC and several warnings about the gimbal and RC and...Having 99.9% trust in the drone location that was being displayed on the controller - and panicking - we quickly shut the drone base down packed up most of the gear and proceeded driving north and west to the trailhead parking near the north end of Location Y to begin our search. This put us within about 100 yards (832 Feet) of the drone versus walking from the runway which was right at a mile of gradual uphill walking. The 832 foot trek was mostly downhill; very steep; and slippery. It was also dark but we took our time and did our best to select a reasonable route. We also both had headlamps. My paranoia to find my drone was continuing to try to cloud my better judgement. We made it without serious injury or death and were aided by the flashing lights of the drone which still had power and was able to connect back with the controller once we were close. It appeared initially that both front arms had broken off but in fact they were just nicely folded in and had no signs of physical damage. They must have folded in by themselves due to the nature of the crash. Amazing. The rear arms were extended but not damaged. The only damage I could find was on the left rear prop set that had the smallest of chips. When we returned to Location X at around sunrise I inspected the drone again for anything and still could only find the tiny chips in the props. I very cautiously did a short test flight and seeing no issues of any kind I proceeded to fly up and down the west side of the runway and 150 AGL testing cameras; spotlight; speaker; controls; zoom; Laser range finder and IR and detected no issues. This lack of damage can only be described as an act of God. I regret that I did not take pictures at the crash site.I am writing this before noon on Day 0 of the crash.