Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Night Vision or Thermal question

Silver HVAC tape works really well to sight thermal in the daylight, even on a bright sunny day. I tried hand warmers, but had trouble seeing them.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Nashua-...-Foil-Sealer-Duct-Tape-1906075/100030120

I had good luck with an "X" made with black electrical tape on white paper.

I use another Bering Super Hogster for a spotter.

When I'm not using it for that, it rides on another rifle.

If I'm going to spend that sort of money, I want it to have crosshairs and go on a rifle.

I have wondered about Bering optics! The super hogster looks great but a lot more than the pulsar monocular.

I bought an ATN from Cabelas with my club points. All they had left was the display model which I should have know better to buy. I had issues right away getting the optic to turn on. I charged it overnight and then took it out in the woods to try it out. Once it came on it worked okay and was pretty easy to use. The picture is not very defined, but you can make out animals. You can change modes to make animals show up white or black. I took a few photos to show a small doe in black and then a squirrel in a hole white. I had all kinds of issues trying to get the optic to turn on so I finally returned it. I looked at the Wraith from PSA for $349, but decided to pass on going with a Night Vision model. I buddy has a Pulsar and it is awesome, but I just can't see spending that kind of coin.





Small Fawn about 50 yards away...





Squirrel coming out of a tree about 30 yards away.

So, what was the sensor resolution on that ATN? It’s about what I’d expect from 160, or even 256.

IMHO, other than for discovery, a unit with a sensor less that 340, will not prove satisfactory.

What is the base magnification of that unit. I noticed that your images were at 5.4x and 7.2x, so right there your images are degraded.


IIRC the amount of pixels are reduced by each time you increase the magnifcation over base.

An example. This is a vid using a Bering Optics Super Yoter, 640 Sensor, 12 Micron sensitivity, 3x base magnification. Temp would probably be 80 degrees F + and humidity below 80%.

The distance is +/- 120 yds.

Starts out at 3x base mag, then up to 6x and finally 9x. After the shot up to 12x and then back to 3x.

One can see the degradation in image quality each time the magnification is increased.




Other than for discovery, I would postulate that for $1K and under one would be better served with night vision and a good aftermarket IR Illuminator for actual hunting. Particularly if you are shooting over a feeder or at a stationary object vs. running and gunning moving target in a field.

The same distance as the vid above with the ATN 4K Pro 5-20 and Night Snipe N750 IR Illuminator.



Best,

GWB

^^^didnt pick up on the Xs since it was so tiny, but the 3.0x doesn’t look terrible on resolution. Folks new to thermals don’t realize that base magnification is where you should be content for resolution on 384s. 640s you can halve, but halving below that starts to suck quickly.

the ATN and light did not look to bad. If the sightmark is better than that, it may be workable. Focusing on a detection thermal monocular right now. The Athlon unit has decent specs, about the same price as the axion xq35 pro

I don’t have a lot of opportunity to hunt at night so I didn’t want to spend a ton just to see if it would be worth the investment. I’ve got friends and family that have high dollar thermal and high dollar night vision, I know they work well.

But I saw video from the sightmark Wraith a friend has and found the mini 4K for $549. The same friend brought his AGM TM10-256 thermal scanner by and I found it good enough to find one of my own. It was about the same price so I’m into the deal for about $1200 and it should let me decide if I need to upgrade later or just dump the whole idea.

I haven’t been able to hunt yet due to deer season but hope to get out sometime soon. I took the scanner with me on my walk around our lake last night and usually there are deer everywhere but all I could find was a person walking down the rock amphitheater.

Only about 50 yards away but I think it’ll be good enough to scan with. I was learning how to use the scanner paired with my phone and figured out I need a memory card for the unit itself, it’ll be much easier.

I could go with the AGM TM19-384 for about $1700 but then I could up that to $2200 or so and get a thermal scope. Then I might want a 640 so it kinda never ends.

I’ll try what I’ve got and see if it’s worth the investment for me.

Thermal @ 385 res is very solid. Prices are getting low.

640 res is great but 385 gets you 90% on a weapon sight. In a way I might say 385 res is a 6X day scope and 640 res is a 10X.

Not much extra gets done with a 10X day scope.

AGM Rattlers @ 385 res are very good buys.

As other have said for NV a powerful IR light makes even cheaper night vision work pretty well. Coyotes and pigs don't care if you are emiting lots of IR energy, it's not a battle field.

The super power of being able to see in the dark is getting cheaper.

That it is.

And with the improving quality of the entry level stuff and increasing number of units sold, I'm seeing a very direct correlation to increased distribution of masters-in-education degrees for coyotes here in the midwest.

3 good starting thermals would be Thor-4 by ATN, Infiray Bolt TL35 v2 and AGM Rattler all with 385 Resolution. I use the TL35 and the thor-4 and my nephew uses the rattler. The Thor-4 will go all night on full charge other two you need to replace battery after 3-4 hours of uses. The TL35 gives best picture but also is affected more by humidity where the Thor will look grainy but still gives good picture on bad nights. anything under 300 yards they all work fine.

Agree the 384 resolution is pretty versatile. Friend and I both have AGMs - one Rattler, one Adder. We just kill rats and pigeons in/out of dairy barns, but would have zero problem killing deer to 200 yds or so with them. We tried a 256 resolution and weren't happy. Same with the ATN (?300 resolution?).

Also agree the 640 doesn't add much. I have a 50-640. Better? Yes. But not enough better to justify the premium for most my purposes.

"What kind of thermal/NV equipment do I need" is about like "what kind of offroad vehicles do I need". You really need to know the conditions, ranges, game hunted, terrain, budget, etc in order to make a well-educated decision.

It is a great time to be getting into night hunting though, as Burns and SKane have mentioned above. You can do a lot in the field these days with a fairly small budget. I'd dare to say that a hog hunter in my part of the world with $2k of equipment can kill 95% of the hogs that his buddy with $6k of equipment can kill, given the same hunting scenarios. This is due to our limitations on conditions, terrain, range, and so on. Switching to different terrain or also trying to also incorporate different game, like called coyotes, and the bigger budget is going to start to offer some real advantages in flexibility and capability.

I agree for the most part, although there are some scenarios here where a hunter here had better have either 640res or a decent resolution NV setup with good illuminator. This would be when trying to positively identify a target animal in the 175yd+ range, especially in sub-par conditions, tall grass, or the like. I was hunting the other afternoon (daylight) when a black shape stepped out on a narrow lane at 190yds or so. I immediately thought it was a hog, but once it began moving again, I could see that it was a chubby black bear cub. If that cub had been stationary at that range at night, I don't know for sure that your typical 2-2.5x 384res thermal scope would have offered the ability to confidently tell it from a hog. A 640res thermal likely would, and I'm sure that a good digital NV setup would. For folks that are only hunting inside 100yds, that capability might indeed be an unnecessary expense.

lol. Coyotes and pigs have definitely been accustomed to IR lights now.

Thats why I switched to thermal a few years ago

I've seen a few pigs at close range take a bit of notice on an IR light, but they were maybe 30-40yds from me. They didn't spook, but definitely looked at me for a few seconds. I've also seen several big hogs that had previously spooked off a green weapon-light take zero notice of an IR beam in their faces at 70+ yards.

That's interesting (critr's noticing IR light), I used to hunt a lot at night with red lights and coyotes seldom ever seem to notice. We were limited to shotguns and had to get them in real close too. Only recently they opened night hunting for nuisance hogs and coyotes with any legal means, that's what got me interested again.

I use the chemical hand warmers stapled to a large sheet of plywood


It’s takes awhile to range animals using thermal. Doesn’t matter because I keep shots under 150 yards. Hard to tell if 50 yards or 125 yards at first