The thermal worked very well I was able to locate three squirrels well before it was even light enough to shoot, I was able to close the distance on 2 of them and kept track of them until it was light enough and then shoot both of them.
I have the same optic and really have never thought about using it for spotting squirrels but I have noticed how easy it is to pick up rats and mice at night while looking for hogs. Makes sense!
I was amazed at how far thru the thick brush it was picking them up. It is helpful in just giving you a direction to start moving in, the squirrels were kind of just sitting around scratching and doing squirrel stuff before daylight but not really moving. I might make a recording the next time out.
I started using an AGM Rattler and was pleasantly surprised how well I could pick up a stronger heat signal when looking up into the trees. I set mine to jungle mode with white hot/red. You have to still have open air between you and critter but you can see bits and pieces of them and then move to scope or bino’s. When I find one it reminds me of the old predator movie when the squirrel starts sneaking along. I hunt behind treeing feist so finding that hidden squirrel among leaves is still very difficult. Looking forward to winter. I think the thermal will be even more valuable.
I hunted coons last night. Whenever a dog treed the other guy would use a hand held thermal scanner to determine where the coon was. We'd light them up and shoot them with a normal riflescope. Sometimes he wouldn't find a coon with the scanner and we'd just pull the dog off the tree and make him run. It sure did save time as we were able to move on faster than if we stood around shining lights looking for the coon.
Thermal is a game changer. Nothing whose body temp is above ambient temp can hide.
I've several pair of good binocs, and most of my glassing is 200 yds and under. I've almost quit using them. I've done several tests where in the early morning I will scan with the binocs, and see nothing, then scan with a thermal unit and things just pop. I'll make note of the location and try again with the binocs. No comparison.
We stand hunt, I used to get to the stand an hour and a half before daylight and sleep till shooting light. Now I do not sleep near as much. Now I spend that time scanning with the thermal unit.
One more thing I noticed with thermal while looking directly to the west when the sun is setting. With the naked eye or binocs the sun flares and blinds you. With thermal you can look directly west and see anything within your field of view as you are measuring the heat signature.
FWIW, I have a little handheld thermal by armasight, being sold by covert optics that does well spotting just about anything that has heat above ambient temperature.
It doesn't record, but I was able to try to hold the thermal and my cell phone towards the screen last weekend to show one of my buddies that it would pick up small animals too because he wasn't sure how well it would work for that.
Obviously, the lines you can see on my cellphone is the refresh rate. You can't see those with the naked eye.