I've been leasing a piece of property for the past 14 years that's loaded with hogs, I hunt them pretty much year-round, and have tried just about every hog hunting technique imaginable during that span.
I've used the feeder lights and weapon lights. They work to a degree, but I've found the pigs (at least where I hunt) soon wised up to them. I also found that unless you have multiple baited blind/stand setups where you can divide your time and leave some of your setups undisturbed for several weeks, they also fairly quickly learned to stay away from areas where a lot of killing has taken place.
For years, I had a lot of success just using good quality scopes with excellent low light performance and illuminated reticles, hunting during a full moon or bright moon, and ditching the lights altogether.
I finally yielded to temptation and bought a FLIR RS32 1.25-5X thermal scope, and I've never had so much fun hog hunting! There's something to be said for being able to hunt with complete stealth on the darkest night, without any lights and not giving up your position or educating them.
Like you, the high price of thermal sights kept me from owning one sooner, until a buddy of mine offered his for sale at nearly half price. After spending time with the thermal scope, I now wish I'd gone that route sooner and not burned all the money I spent on all the other gadgetry that ultimately left me wanting more. I now prefer hunting at night, and darkness ain't their friend any more!
My advice... if you plan to do a lot of feral hog hunting on a regular basis, I think it's worthwhile to just bite the bullet and invest in a decent thermal scope. I promise you, once you start using one and see what you've been missing, you won't regret it and you will never hunt hogs without it again. It truly opens up a whole new world of fun when you can remain completely hidden in darkness and see all living critters around you without them knowing you're in the same zip code. Consider that the price of admission into thermal optics has come down considerably during the past 5 years, and will probably continue to decrease in the next few years with improving technology. You can now get a decent thermal sight for $2K - $2500. That's still not cheap for sure, but it's within reach of most serious hog hunters' budgets with minimal "saving up" time. I have no doubt many of you reading this have that much or more invested in at least one custom rifle. When you consider a high end illuminated scope can approach that much $ and not provide anywhere near the capability, consider that you don't need to buy any other lights, lasers, or other gadgets, and factor all the years of fun you'll have with it... to me at least...it's worth every penny. If you shop around, you can also find some good used thermal scopes at more reasonable prices. I made a believer out of a couple of my hunting buddies who, until they tried mine, would never consider buying a thermal scope. It truly is a game changer for nighttime feral hog and predator hunting.
