Thread: Thermalling deer

Originally Posted by 1justin

i dont care if you get a helicopter with an m60 out the side and fly round gunning them down i sure people know what im getting at when i say cheating, and yes i bet back in the day when scopes wernt common some people called people that used them ...soft..cheats...bad shots more making a joke than anything

what im getting at is your not looking at the light your eyes pick up, you may not even be looking at the correct thermal image if your equipment is faulty or a software update is bad your looking at a computer genrated image from the information and there is limatations and mistakes can be made,

the more you look through one the more you get used to how heat is seen and so the more time in use the safe the user will be

if i look at you from 10 meters away i can see you as clear as day no mistaking you but it is not the same as looking at someone in the light you dont have the detail or the detail of the background,as you are not looking at light you are looking at heat and things can have very similer heats so a point could be if a person is leaning againt a tree and there not moving and they have a jacket on with a hood up faceing away from you there 500m away its just past night fall so the sky is bitter cold and the tree is still warm you probly wont see them, but in normal light you would have every opertunity to see them and they could be in the background of your shot where as you just think there a tree cause your not looking at light your looking at heat and basicaly anything that is the same heat as your background is invisable to you witch is one place mistakes can be made

im not saying there is a high risk for mistakes with them im just saying there is a risk

and to counter the point as it is complety diffrent vision source it could increase safety at times if you where to use it to spot as well and you may see things its hard to see in normal light
that you may miss

theres a low risk when ur on private land you know you have good gear and you,ve watched the animal for a long time you know the background

all im trying to say its not just about identfying your target its about knowing the background as well witch there limits for thermal as you are not looking at LIGHT you are looking at heat

You raise some valid points regarding safety etc too. And wether a shooter chooses to use thermal or not, we are all still 100% responsible to make sure that we identify our targets and checking our firing zone. If there is any doubt, do NOT take the shot. If an operator is using thermal gear they need to know its pro's and its con's, and as you mention it may not pick up everything. But it will pick up some things normal sight will miss so using both cannot make it worse.

A thermal has the potential to show you where a hunter is that you would have otherwise missed. You may not see them with a naked eye or a scope but you may see them with the thermal. Then once you know "something" is there, you can set about identifying it beyond all doubt by any and all means you can.