Daytime thermal scanner

[Armchairhunter]

Thinking about getting a thermal scanner for daytime calling, especially lions and bobcats. No night usage. Lions are hard enough to see, thought it would help to spot them in the rocks.

Thoughts on what might be good for those of you doing this already? Really don’t want to spend an arm and a leg, but don’t want to get something that is worthless either.

I know 640 is the new hotness, but do you really need that during the day? I can see the higher res being important for target identification at night, but during the day you just need to see something, then you are pulling up the binos or rifle scope.

Any suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[huntsman22]

A thermal can't distinguish between daylight and darkness. It looks the same thru them no matter the time of day......

 

[Choot]

I have a agm 640 I use for a scope and a scanner. In my experience it works great in the daytime as long as it’s not sunny. It don’t take long once the sun pops out till it’s hard to pick animals out.

 

[nocoolname]

Get as high of res as you can afford. I've been out with a 256 scanner and a 384 scope, the scope picked up deer bedded down 350ish yds and the scanner didn't. In daylight on a warm and sunny day, the smaller delta from body temp of the animal to surroundings temp would mean the difference between a lower res not picking up the animal. Also a higher resolution sensor will have a longer detection range depending on how long a distance you're glassing with it.

 

[Murdy88]

If you’re just wanting to detect heat signatures, you can get away with a lower resolution sensor. If you want to be able to ID what you’re looking at you are going to need more. Like others have said, buy the best you can afford. 640 thermals are going down in price since more 1280 res are on the market. Check out outdoorlegacygear.com and/or call them. They have a lot of good info and I recently bought a nocpix vista S50R from them.