Thread: A question on your shooting using nv techniques

For you guys that are using nv how are you going about it, do you sit in one spot or are you walking around as you would when spotlighting?

On rabbits and possums I use the thermal hand held in place of the spotlight, and NV or thermal scope on the rifle. I have never really been a sit and wait sort of hunter so I am still walking/driving around.

Using thermal,just sit in truck and wait.Sip coffee and let the deer come to me.Its a new hunting procedure for a 70 yr old.
Bugger walking around in the dark all night,you might trip over something.Deer will see yr torch.lols

I use thermal for night pest destruction from rats up to deer.
I have an old H7 Lenser headlamp that I colored the lense with a red permanent marker. On its lowest setting it gives just enough light to see well enough to walk and doesnt disturb animals.
I mainly walk the properties, on bigger properties I sometimes use the quad/Suzuki Vitara ( 2 door) to get to different areas.
I use a hand held thermal to spot likely targets, try and ID them positively with the Pulsar rifle scope and stalk in to a max range of 100m.
I also have a thermal camera which I can plug into my Tablet. The camera can be tripod mounted, mounted on the quad or I have a swivel mount on the Vitara's roof rack. Only use it for staking out areas when the weather is crap or scouting properties on the first visit...

The thermal scope will go on one of 3 rifles.. T1x in .22, T1x in 17HMR or a T3x in 243 depending on the target species.. Have taken deer with all three calibres. Normally wont shoot anything large thats more than 100m away.... Culling deer off Horse farms its easy to allow the mind to be tricked into seeing a deer when its a horse at anything over 200m....I treat every deer sized animal as though its a horse until I get close enough to positively ID it.

Looks like I might have to venture into the world of thermal

I shot a few pigs with the aid of a thermal spotter. It worked out best sitting in one spot and waiting for them to come out the bush. Saw more walking around, but spooked most of them. It's very hard to walk quietly in the dark with no torch, even in a farm paddock.

agree with MB we target our spots but we know the area careful approach- on with the thermal and once we have known animals and close on with the spotlight - one is working with a limited area quite often that has been looked over - unlike day time where one can see the whole paddock - and quite often one or two can be off to one side and its those unknown ones that can spook quite often - pigs coming out can spread out quite quickly - or one or two are already out and passed further into paddock and then get a whiff of us - but as a rule a successful method for meat gathering- last outing 4 fallow in about half an hour -

Originally Posted by MB

I shot a few pigs with the aid of a thermal spotter. It worked out best sitting in one spot and waiting for them to come out the bush. Saw more walking around, but spooked most of them. It's very hard to walk quietly in the dark with no torch, even in a farm paddock.

....and covered in 'mines' that can whip your feet out from under you in the blink of an eye!

I've been using NV for a couple of weeks now, bought a nv007 primarily to try and get a pig problem under control,
So far I'm finding that I have 2 or 3 spots with a good overlook onto the paddocks where pigs are causing the most damage, generally where there is a large fence post to use as a rest when scanning or shooting, I imagine this would only go so far In a hunting situation rather than pest control, I'd likely be more mobile If I had a handheld thermal/Night vision unit,

when walking between spots I've just been walking slowly in the dark, I know my area well enough that I don't have any problems navigating without a torch as long as I can see the sky I do always bring a torch with me though just in case,

A thermal hand held would certainly make things easier and probably change my method quite a bit but with the cost of a thermal unit it'll take a heck of a lot of dead pigs to justify, so far I'm up to 10 pigs over about 3 hours of hunting an hour or so for 3 nights, pigs have gotten a bit too easy to spook now so might give it a rest for a few days and switch to possums.

Oh well got a cheap thermal spotter today hoping to test it out tonight

I use a handheld thermal spotter and NV scope on dedicated 223 mostly, sometimes use green led torch mounted on my daytime 223 if that’s what I have with me. Scan with thermal and if animals are close I’ll work in closer if necessary using thermal, smaller lense with wider FOV so handy for this. If I need to cover bigger distances I use a headlamp with red led on lower setting, lighting ground directly in front of my feet to see where I’m going if necessary. Otherwise I just take it slowly if there’s enough light to see my way. Only use thermal with my left eye to help preserve my right eye night vision. Adjust NV screen brightness and contrast as necessary also to help preserve vision. That’s what works for me.

So picked up the budget hikmicro monocular and had a play with it when we went out last night. I must be slow to grasp new tech or something as I found myself automatically just going for the spotlight all the time. Wife was with me and she was getting the hang of it quite fast. She was spotting possums to about 50-70m with it and cows out to 150m plus. It was just the budget unit and Im sure more expencive units will be better but for the price and how much we will use it we are more than happy with it. Just need to have a play with the settings a bit more i think

@blip. Something like Lynx LH15 ? Perfectly useful unit. Got one that lives in truck with hunting bag. Probably use it more often than my bigger unit, such a handy size to put in pocket or carry in hand and can positively identify animals at useful shooting ranges ( 400 metres) once you get familiar with operation and heat signatures.

Originally Posted by blip

So picked up the budget hikmicro monocular and had a play with it when we went out last night. I must be slow to grasp new tech or something as I found myself automatically just going for the spotlight all the time. Wife was with me and she was getting the hang of it quite fast. She was spotting possums to about 50-70m with it and cows out to 150m plus. It was just the budget unit and Im sure more expencive units will be better but for the price and how much we will use it we are more than happy with it. Just need to have a play with the settings a bit more i think

I adjust the brightness and contrast on mine at the start of every hunt. Find an outside animal (dog or cat is good) that you can look at to make sure the settings are suitable for the conditions. Generally I try to go for the lowest brightness and the highest contrast without interference from other warmish objects (which is usually low contrast too).

The other thing to remember is it shows up temperature differential, as opposed to warm objects. So a luke warm thing against cold background will show strongly, but a lukewarm thing against a hot background won't be as apparent. It will also average the total picture so if you are looking at trees agains't a cold sky, it will show the trees as hot. If you can keep as much ground in the viewfinder as possible this will 'cool' the trees down a bit. You do also need to get used to what you are looking at, in leafless trees, possums look like white blobs on white branches.

Also it is interesting to look at vehicles and houses. When you turn on the hot tap the first time (where it initially runs cold) it is interesting to watch the interface between cold and hot, when the hot comes throught the tap.

Thanks for that info now it makes more sence at what I was looking at. We had it set on the black hot mode so possums showed up as black spots on white tree