Hog hunting-a low cost thermal that works

[kcm2]

I picked up a Rix K3 Pocket Thermal last year. On my hunts in 2025, I had no real need to use it. Bowhunting, the hogs I shot died within sight during the day.

This year, I played with it a bit. I could see hogs in the timber, moving, that were invisible to the naked eye. I'd previously ranged deer out to 300 yards with it. But the clincher was Tuesday night. A group of hogs came in and kept fidgeting around, so I did not have a clear shot. Finally, one gave me a 15 yard quartering away shot so I sent an arrow out. The shot was at about 8:35 pm on a cloudy day after a massive rain storm in SE Oklahoma. I could see it looked like a good hit.

He ran about 75 yards due west, and the arrow fell out. It had a lighted nock, so I could see it on the ground. I walked to the arrow, no blood trail to it or after it. So, I started walking and took out the Rix Thermal. About 125 yards away, in the timber, there was a big red blob. Still no blood trail, but I went right to a 175 lb boar in a pitch black forest. Instead of guess and by gosh, the thermal sent me right to the pig. I won't tell you this $800 thermal is as a good as a $3000 one. But it works pretty darn well. And nobody from Rix is paying me anything to write this.

Where legal, it'll be in my pack.

 

[kcm2]

Let me add one more data point. Had I followed where the pig was going when I last saw him, I would have headed straight west. But once he went into the timber, he went northwest. So, by scanning, I found him in a minute or so, as there was nothing red hot west. He wasn't a dink, 175 lbs on the digital scale at the skinning area.

 

[Bubblehide]

Pics or it never happened. But to be fair, I'll share one also.

 

[kcm2]

Sorry, no field pics. We had 5 pigs down and one other hit that night, so we were in a hurry. Didn't get done skinning until around 11:00. Here's a pic of the hog at the skinning shack.