Thread: I've Experienced the Advantage of Hunting with Thermal and Night Vision

I have been doing thermal and NV for about 5 years now, great for night shooting on farms to control numbers, I don’t have a range finder thermal but in hot spots I go in the day and stack rocks at 10 yd intervals beyond 60 yds, at night the rocks stay warm enough to see in the thermal and I can range accordingly. This obviously only works in rocky areas.

I don’t use it much for hunting as it sort of takes away some of the fun by making it too easy. I prefer not to come to rely on it.

One important thing that not many people mention is that (with my pulsar unit not sure about others) you get a lot more from the thermal by setting the brightness and contrast to suit the conditions on the day. In really cold conditions I turn the brightness low and the contrast high, this makes anything that is significantly hotter than the surroundings glow like a torch, with the surroundings being quite homogeneously dark. higher brightness and lower contrast make it work more like a black and white NV, very clear to see through but not great for picking up animals.

While it often helps with target identification, I don’t rely on it for this, often it can help with mis identifying your target (cats can very easily look like rabbits etc).