Thread: Thermalling deer

At the end of the day, whether you use eyes, bino's scope thermal or IR , or whatever the next great thing is, it still comes down to a shooter using the information that he has at hand to decide if he has identified a target beyond all doubt before he fires a shot. The wrong decision will be made sometime no matter how much people use. Hopefully it becomes rarer and occurs far less often (hopefully never) but due to people being human, thought processes and decisions are made and I believe it will never truly go away.

In saying that, anything that adds more information to people trying to make that call can only help. It is no longer about fair chase and probably has not been truly "fair chase" since man invented the bow and arrow or arguably the spear. It is about safety for you as a hunter and those around you in the environment.

I had the opportunity to look through some of Yukon Pulsar gear about 6 months ago. We scanned a paddock with a powerful torch looking for rabbits and stock just to see how many we could see. We then scanned the same paddock with a Thermal scope as well as an infra red one. The thermal showed us that we were seeing less than half the rabbits that were in the paddock, highlighted stock that we missed with the torch and the infrared gave a similar but different perspective of the same information. All the additional animals were within the same range as the torch and were not further away. Definition was impressive and details could be made out as easily as a black and white TV as a comparison. If looking at a black and TV you can tell the difference between people and animals very easily as it is more than just shapes.While the definition was not as clear as a photo, it was certainly clear enough to tell the difference between rabbits and a stoat, or cat, sheep, dogs, person and deer. And I can only see this technology getting better.