Thread: Thermal Night Shooting Gear - Pard NV007

Originally Posted by 10-Ring

Thinking of getting a Pard 800 so phoned the chap at Owl Optics and he was very good to talk to. I asked a lot of questions. There are a few I thought of later so maybe someone here could help.

I've been using a Pulsar hand held thermal for a couple of years with a grunty scope mounted Maxtoch torch. Two problems with that are #1 the deer only wait about 3 seconds before bolting once the light hits them, sometimes less. #2 even a single strand of tussock or other plant will reflect back through the scope when the light is switched on and blot out the sight picture. Does the same thing happen with NV when using the illuminator? Can the animal see the IR light?

Any answers to those last two questions would be appreciated.

Obviously a thermal scope would be great but I can't justify the cost for the amount of deer hunting I do these days.

Here's my observations:

When spotlighting with a Maxtoch, keep the deer on the edge of the light pattern, not the centre. And use the least powerful setting that illuminates them.

If using the cheap and cheerful scope mount for the Maxtoch, hang it over to the left hand side of the rifle, not straight up above the scope. You get too much glare off your suppressor when its up above the scope.

Re using a 008 with inbuilt illuminator, the animals seem oblivious to it initially, but a couple of fluffed shots on hares saw them move off pretty quickly the next night. Again, use minimum power to illuminate the shooting area. I can pick up my cows eyes at 300 in an open paddock with the 008 on minimum IR setting.

The 008 also extends your dawn and dusk shooting times significantly, still getting a colour picture way after any quality optical scope lucks out.