Here's a request for advice concerning a scope for shooting hogs at night. The situation is that we have educated our feral hogs to a point where they are totally nocturnal and extremely wary. In other words we only have the smartest ones left but there are plenty still around. Our method of late has been to dig post holes and put corn in them to make them work for the bait and stay in place a while. In the past I've used solar driveway lights to let me know they are present and a motion detector green light by Elusive Wildlife Tech. to provide light enough to shoot a hog at 200 plus yards in the dark. That coupled with a Leupold VX-R 4-12 firedot has worked fine. We have to stay across a wide bayou to keep the hogs from coming in downwind and can only hunt when the breeze is favorable, their main protection is their nose. The hogs we have left are completely allergic to light so now the plan is to put up a camera that will notify us when animals are present and show on a smart phone whether they are deer or hogs. All of this is background that leads to the question of what sort of night vision scope is available that will definitely clearly identify a target as a hog at 250 yards, will hold zero, and will not put me into bankruptcy. I can claim it as a business expense but 4 or 5 thousand dollars is not acceptable. Under a thousand would be nice.

Check out posts by BobbyTomek. He’s had loads of experience doing just that.

DF

Look at Behrig I have a buddy who sales them. They are a lot more reasonable then reaprs or pulsars and have all the same benefits for a thermal scope. That’s all we use here on my stuff.

Link?

DF

Here ya go we use the hogsters.


https://beringoptics.com/

I'm still using feeder lights and scope lights but one guy that hunts with us has ATN Thor witch is a nice rig. Another guy has a Pulsar Thermal. I like the ATN because it mounts on 30 mm scope rings . Either way they both say it is not very comfortable to to sit behind the scope scanning for hogs hours at a time.

Bering does the same thing. Or you can mount them to your regular scope and have a thermal scope as well and a traditional scope.The creator was one of the lead engineers for pulsar. Don’t get me wrong I loved pulsar and even some of my ATNs, but why spend 5k - 8k.

I see an ATN Thor for $1199. We can wait for the camera to tell us a hog is there. I'm wondering about out to 250 yards and ability to hold zero. Will be studying for reviews. Don't need recording or bells and whistles, just need to see without light. We've got smart hogs. About the only way to kill them is from a distance at night without a light. They are very trap shy and I don't use snares or poison.

We have 2 Thor thermal scopes in service and they will get the job done.

They did not break the bank,for the money it's a good deal.

The ones we use are the 3x6 power.

They are not that heavy.

All hogs are jumpy as hell! That’s why you run thermal and suppressed equipment. I’ve waited all night in corn fields before just trying to kill one monster boar that’s to smart for his own good.

I'm looking at the ATM THOR LT on AMAZON. The reviews are mixed. I have a Remington 700 with a #4 Douglas barrel 25 inches long. It already has 30 MM rings and is an accurate rifle. It could become my dedicated night rifle as I have a Jap Weatherby Vanguard2 that is my favored .30-06 for daytime also very accurate. No telling how many predators and depredators it has killed including over 100 hogs and maybe 2 dozen pit bulls. I wonder about the ATN THOR LT holding up to .30-06 recoil but I don't like the idea of 200 Yards plus on hogs with .223.

When one gets hard to kill I'll go exclusively after him. When Louisiana had almost non existent trespass laws the Cajuns kept the hogs killed out.

If that’s your daytime rig to then just get a clip on thermal objective for your scope. I’m not real sure about the 30-06 thats why I would look at a Bering clip on thermal objective. Then your not worried about your internal reticle on a thermal scope. 200 yards on a pig with a .223 is average. If you want more then look into a 350 legend. That’s what I have now. Here’s a little clip of the Bering hogster we use for coyote / pig hunting trips here in OK.


https://youtu.be/ux6GkIvK6jc

Armasight Vulcan 3.5-7, 5/6 year old technology, may be better out there cheaper, don't know, don't keep up with every new offering, but they work damn good.

Can you trap them?

The LT is serviceable to maybe 100 yards. ATN's customer service is horrible. Pulsar Core rxq30v is really nice, just sold mine and ordered a hogster 35mm though. Sounds like for what you're doing a Sightmark Wraith would be perfect. I hunt with a few guys that have them and they're very impressive, they work really well together with someone using a thermal scope to scan or a hand scanner.

Very smart and trap shy. Snares would work but I'm not willing to risk the by-catch. The ATN THOR_LT is the only one near my price but it has too many bad reviews and probably won't work at the range I need it for. I guess we'll try to acclimate the hogs to a dim 12 volt light bulb and continue to weed out the dumber ones.