The Gun Counter

A quick hog hunting trip has become available to me at the end of march.

Any recommendations for night vision/night scopes or thermal vision for hogs? I don't think I'd want to spend more than $800 or so, if that's even possible.

Edit: I've seen ATN, but the reviews seem spotty - freezing up, loses zero, things like that.

Raytheon and L3 made the NV equipment I used in US Army. I'm not sure if that is available commercially. I think the thermal viewer on our M1s was FLIR. Those were great, but they drained our batteries in a few hours.

I've seen some of the newer FLIR systems. It looks like FLIR has some pretty good IR equipment, including weapons sights, which is a major step-up in mechanical construction than their little hand-held units.

I think a useful budget starts at $5000. Anything under $800 is a waste of money. Range is based on objective size. Bigger objective means a big, expensive disk of polished boron. Low-cost, handheld IR viewers, which would be in your budget, have a useful range of about 20m, and that is a handheld viewer, not a weapon sight.

Schedule your hunt for a full-moon night, and buy some tritium iron sights for your rifle. Those will cost about $200, plus paying a gunsmith about $200 to figure out how to mount them. That is a better use of under-$500-budget dollars for a night hunt.

Hmph. That's what I was afraid of.

The time is scheduled. Looks like the full moon is 2 days after we leave, so that might work out if the clouds cooperate.

I'll look into tritium.

What about also lighting them up with green or red light to help seeing them?

An Aimpoint or mid grade illuminated reticle LPVO would be well within your budget; I would rather have one of those than tritium irons.

Netpackrat wrote: ↑Wed Feb 24, 2021 12:40 am An Aimpoint or mid grade illuminated reticle LPVO would be well within your budget; I would rather have one of those than tritium irons.

Burris MTAC 1.5-6?

Would probably be fine, or possibly the 1-4. What is it going on?

It's already on an AR-10.

/thread

Well, not /thread yet.

That lets me see the reticle in lower light, but what about seeing the dark pigs themselves? My buddy with the thermal set up will get them all.

I've read that you can light them up with a good red or green light. Has anyone had experience with that?

Doc Russia and I just did a thermal pig hunt in December. It is DARK out and the cheapest scope was $1500 and not very good. It is very hard to see the pigs even with the FLIR. Are you going to spotlight them?