Let's talk Thermal optics

[journeyman713]

What the best value for Thermal optic for a rifle at 3-4k?

 

[SuperDUECE22]

1) do you have a handheld thermal monocular ?
2) terrain you plan to hunt ? farthest shot you may take ?

 

[SuperDUECE22]

Honestly your best bet is call Jason @ outdoor legacy gear & tell them your situation & budget. These guys will not up sell you a more expensive scope just to make a sale. There have been so many new thermals hit the market in the last 2 years it's hard to keep up with all of them, but these guys test them all except ATN because they are junk.

Outdoor Legacy | Night Vision & Thermal Optics - A Texas Company

We take the confusion out of night vision and thermal optics. We've helped thousands of customers find the optic that is right for their specific situation. At Outdoor Legacy we pride ourselves on offering honest, unbiased pre-purchase advice and customer service after the sale. Have questions...

outdoorlegacygear.com

 

[dirtytough]

I agree with SuperD. There are so many new thermals and thermal companies it is hard to keep up. Bering and AGM seem to have a lot of bang for the buck in that price range. The other thing is a good thermal for coyote hunting the open plains is not the same thermal I would use where cover is tight like Texas.

 

[journeyman713]

Good point on the Usage being a major consideration.

Coyotes is the focus here, distance between 100 and 500 yards. At the shorter distance, field of view becomes an issue. I’m thinking base magnification needs to get down to 3 or less.

The Pulsar xq38 has been drawing my attention.

Anyone have experience with that one or anything better???

 

[ChrisAU]

I have an AGM TS25-384 and I’m absolutely thrilled with it for what I paid, around $1600 last summer.

 

[SuperDUECE22]

Good point on the Usage being a major consideration.

Coyotes is the focus here, distance between 100 and 500 yards. At the shorter distance, field of view becomes an issue. I’m thinking base magnification needs to get down to 3 or less.

The Pulsar xq38 has been drawing my attention.

Anyone have experience with that one or anything better???

First off forget about taking coyotes with thermal @ 500 yards, is it possible .... yes, but not something you're going to be doing consistently. Anything past 250 yards is a long shot with thermal.

I take it you are talking about the pulsar thermion 2 XQ38? Personally, for me i would not spend that kind of money on a 17-micron unit.

once again, I'd call Jason at outdoor legacy like I mentioned earlier or
Tom Austin @ https://www.nightgoggles.com/
These guys are professionals that get to hunt with all the latest & greatest units

Thermal Rifle Scopes - Under $4,000

We take the confusion out of night vision and thermal optics. We've helped thousands of customers find the optic that is right for their specific situation. At Outdoor Legacy we pride ourselves on offering honest, unbiased pre-purchase advice and customer service after the sale. Have questions...

outdoorlegacygear.com

 

[journeyman713]

First off forget about taking coyotes with thermal @ 500 yards, is it possible .... yes, but not something you're going to be doing consistently. Anything past 250 yards is a long shot with thermal.

I take it you are talking about the pulsar thermion 2 XQ38? Personally, for me i would not spend that kind of money on a 17-micron unit.

once again, I'd call Jason at outdoor legacy like I mentioned earlier or
Tom Austin @ https://www.nightgoggles.com/
These guys are professionals that get to hunt with all the latest & greatest units

Thermal Rifle Scopes - Under $4,000

We take the confusion out of night vision and thermal optics. We've helped thousands of customers find the optic that is right for their specific situation. At Outdoor Legacy we pride ourselves on offering honest, unbiased pre-purchase advice and customer service after the sale. Have questions...

outdoorlegacygear.com

Good points thanks, starting to realize distance at night is quite unlike distance at day.
Seen a few of Jason's and Han's video's, they know this material for sure, and can talk, talk, talk.

Ironically in their latest episode, "Top 10 Mistakes people make" their number 2 was, 'don't go online and ask' the exact question I started with. Just call them instead.

Nothing wrong with some discussion and gathering information from different sources IMO. It's like one of those - 'you don't know, what you don't know' processes.

What do you like and why?

 

[ChrisAU]

The biggest problem with long distance night shooting is you can't reach up and dial your turret. Even if you have the ability to in the optic, it still involves navigating through a menu. I know some offer reticles with holdover points, a BDC of sorts. I just set up my 6mm ARC for MBPR, and my TS25-384 isn't going to adequately identify anything that I want to shoot past that range anyway.

 

[journeyman713]

The biggest problem with long distance night shooting is you can't reach up and dial your turret. Even if you have the ability to in the optic, it still involves navigating through a menu. I know some offer reticles with holdover points, a BDC of sorts. I just set up my 6mm ARC for MBPR, and my TS25-384 isn't going to adequately identify anything that I want to shoot past that range anyway.

It looks like the TS25-384 is mostly a close range optic, and at significantly less cost than what I looking at, in part due to the size. The 1.5 base magnification gives great field of view, but the picture quality suffers a lot at zoom as a result.

From what I can tell, the biggest challenge is getting clarity at range and with field of view. The question is, how much field of view do you want to lose. I figure somewhere between 2 and 3 base power, is the best compromise.

 

[SuperDUECE22]

@journeyman713 do you have thermal scanner yet ?

 

[journeyman713]

@journeyman713 do you have thermal scanner yet ?

Do not. Good question.
This is a big part of the reason for staying fairly low on the base power, and not getting carried away with long range performance.

 

[SuperDUECE22]

I know you don't want to hear this but you're going to want/need a scanner after hunting one night with just the scope. 99.9% of people (including myself) go about getting in the thermal game the wrong way. We all want to buy the best scope that we can afford so we set a budget and start looking and then end up spending a little more than was intended. After 1 or 2 nights of hunting we realize that hunting without a scanner is a giant pain in the ass. Then most guys having already spent their entire budget on a scope buy a cheap scanner which works but leave a lot to be desired, within a year that cheap scanner is for sale, and they are on the market for something better. Think of it this way, would you go deer/elk hunting without binoculars? Night hunting for coyotes you are going to spend 95% of your time scanning and maybe 5% of your time actually looking through and shooting with scope. This is just my opinion of course but I always tell people to buy the best scanner you can afford, and you can get by with a cheaper scope to start.

The same can be said when you go down the rabbit hole of looking for a quality tripod to mount your gun & shoot off of, most guys (including myself) buy cheap and then within a year or 2 that's for sale and they are looking for something better.

Not trying to rant just trying to save you from making all the mistakes i made when i took plunge into the thermal world.

 

[journeyman713]

I know you don't want to hear this but you're going to want/need a scanner after hunting one night with just the scope. 99.9% of people (including myself) go about getting in the thermal game the wrong way. We all want to buy the best scope that we can afford so we set a budget and start looking and then end up spending a little more than was intended. After 1 or 2 nights of hunting we realize that hunting without a scanner is a giant pain in the ass. Then most guys having already spent their entire budget on a scope buy a cheap scanner which works but leave a lot to be desired, within a year that cheap scanner is for sale, and they are on the market for something better. Think of it this way, would you go deer/elk hunting without binoculars? Night hunting for coyotes you are going to spend 95% of your time scanning and maybe 5% of your time actually looking through and shooting with scope. This is just my opinion of course but I always tell people to buy the best scanner you can afford, and you can get by with a cheaper scope to start.

The same can be said when you go down the rabbit hole of looking for a quality tripod to mount your gun & shoot off of, most guys (including myself) buy cheap and then within a year or 2 that's for sale and they are looking for something better.

Not trying to rant just trying to save you from making all the mistakes i made when i took plunge into the thermal world.

This is solid advice!
Sort of knew it was headed that way, which is why the LRF XP50 is off the table.
There might be a little room left for the 35mm Phenom . What's your position on that one, or any other that might do the trick?

 

[SuperDUECE22]

I have heard good things about the phenom, but I have no personal experience. One thing to consider when looking at these different thermal optics is battery type. Reason I say that is your location is Wisconsin, so you'll be hunting in colder temps. Majority of the things you read online or see in videos is based of guys hunting hogs & coyotes down south so take that with a grain of salt, these batteries don't last for shit up in our neck of the woods. My old scanner was an AGM ASP TM35-384 which I absolutely loved but the onboard battery would last less than 1 hour when it was -20. I made it work by using an external power pack in my bino harness but that put a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on the power jack and was kind of uncomfortably to use with big gloves with small cord coming out the bottom of it. Thats one of the main reasons I switched to the AGM FUZION 35-640 LRF which uses rechargeable 18650's. Now i just carry a bunch of these in my bino harness with a handwarmer and no longer deal with cords attached to scanner.

I'm a little less concerned with battery type on scope because I have a permanently mounted 6700 mAH anker on my gun that allow me hunt 2 full nights on one charge. I don't even bother putting batteries in my scope anymore because they don't last in the cold.

One scanner I would not recommend is any of the pulsar axion XM models (think they make XQ & XG now which are probably better). The XM are junk IMO and perform horrible in high humidity.

That's another thing to bring up, I never realized how high the humidity was during the cold winter months in the northern tundra until I got into thermal hunting. To piggyback off my last point about the axion XM was one of my hunting partners has a lower end pulsar thermion (not sure model) but it also leaves a lot to be desired and the image goes to hell really quick in high humidity(he still kills plenty of dogs with it but the image is not good).

 

[journeyman713]

Kuddos to Jason and Outdoor Legacy!
He set me up with the Pulsar xq38, had the chance to play with it a little bit, it's amazing an technology, great product!

Had an interesting learning point when zeroing in. I used a white board with black tape, for contrast, the whole target was completely invisible in the shade. Moved it to the sun and the black tape Glowed, board was still invisible.

What are you guys using for thermal targets?

 

[SuperDUECE22]

Kuddos to Jason and Outdoor Legacy!
He set me up with the Pulsar xq38, had the chance to play with it a little bit, it's amazing an technology, great product!

Had an interesting learning point when zeroing in. I used a white board with black tape, for contrast, the whole target was completely invisible in the shade. Moved it to the sun and the black tape Glowed, board was still invisible.

What are you guys using for thermal targets?

foil HVAC tape with the target tilted back 5-10 degrees to get a good reflection off the sun or a hot hands hand warmer cut in half