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

I've hunted for a long time. I took me a while to use a telescopic sight on a regular basis. I grew up with open sights, and I felt that scopes were complicated and more likely to fog up or fail. But I considered them essential for shooting after dark. So I've had a scope on a .22 for many years.

Early this year I started hunting on small farm belonging to some new friends. This couple have a planted a lot of young trees that were being damaged by hares. I went to the farm several times during the late afternoon and shot maybe five hares. After that I saw very few animals. I thought that there wouldn't be a big population on this small farm largely surrounded by pines. I decided to go up after dark with a spotlight. I got a few more. Then a while later I had the use of a thermal monocular and a Pulsar NV scope mounted on a Ruger .223. The results were very good. I shot hares which I didn't know were there.... and at a long distance across the clean paddocks.

it took a while to get used to the effect that the thermal viewer had on my eye. Moving around in the dark, after looking through the viewer, was strange. It was a bit like wearing an eyepatch... or having been whacked in the eye. I found that things weren't so disorientating if I used a red headlamp in an attempt to see where i was going without using a bright white light.

While a .223 is really good for shooting small game, it isn't a wise choice for some situations. I need to use a .22 sometimes. I hunt in different areas, and some have farm buildings and houses nearby, there are water supply pipes and trees which may be damaged, and shooting a possum in a tree is best done with minimal power. So I felt the need for an NV scope on a .22. While using an ordinary white spotlight for a possum doesn't seem to be much of a handicap, it is good if you don't have to turn on a bright beam. I also believe that some of the rabbits and hares I've been trying to get seem to know to take off when they see a light.

So I did the research and bought a NV scope. Because I intended using it on a .22 shooting subsonic ammo, I felt I needed a rangefinder. While I'm reasonable at estimating range in the daylight, I've found it very hard to guess how far I'm shooting when I've spotted something through the thermal monocular. It doesn't matter with the .223 so much because anything up to about 180 metres I can just aim at. The sight I bought is a Sytong HT-60 with a built in rangefinder. It worked well right from the start, apart from a glitch with the rangefinder that was fixed with a software update. I have to say that the salesman I dealt with (nightvision dot co dot nz) was very helpful. It was simple to mount on my Ruger American .22, although with the mount position I chose, I found I had to remove the flip-up lens protector as there was insufficient gap between the mount and the front of the scope for it to fit. No worries though, I seldom take a scope cover hunting .... and when a rifle is sitting in storage I sometimes cover the uppermost lens with a bit of plastic or paper to stop oil and dust settling on the glass.

The 'clarity' of the device when properly focused is pleasing. And I am very impressed with what the physically small IR illuminator (built in torch) can do. Last night I was stalking a hare which my range finder told me was 188 metres away.... too far to shoot, but the image was plenty clear enough to identify and shoot at. I managed to get a rest (carefully) on a fencepost (electric fence) which was 118 metres away from the hare according to the scope. I would have liked to have been closer, but the moon was about to rise and I've had animals spook and run before. The rifle was zeroed for 50 metres, and my home-brewed 'bullet drop' table stopped at 100 metres where I'd require a calculated 22 cm of hold-over. So I held a bit higher and squeezed off. i thought I heard the 'plop' of the bullet hitting and the hare acted as if it were hit. I fired maybe three more shots. The hare rolled out of sight in the grass.... and I had to walk quite a way to get through the formidable fence. It took a while to find the hare, but I was pleased to see that I'd scored two good hits. I think the range finder played a critical part in my success. That was hare number 22 from a farmlet on which I thought an estimated population of five hares was on the high side.

I also shot two possums last night using the scope. I didn't need to use the IR illuminator because they were visible enough in the light of my head lamp. Neither required exceptional marksmanship skills or special equipment. One of the possums was notably large and smelled a bit like a deer for some strange reason.

Now i'm wondering what a Sytong thermal monocular would be like. These devices certainly offer a huge advantage when there are shy pests around.

Here are pictures showing last night's success.