Daytime thermal scanner

A

AKShooter

New member
Thinking about getting a thermal scanner for daytime calling. 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!
 
340 scanner is probably OK. You may have a problem with non-targets showing up and movement is only way to tell if it's a real target. Trees and hot rocks are the problem. Even bushes and grass can show hot. I shot at steel swinger last week during day. I could see it OK but plenty of other hot stuff around so I had to really look for it. Of course, once located it was easy.
 
It will probably work best early in the day. you might want to find somebody that has one so you can look through it to see if you think it will work for you. Like I said earlier once the everything heats up during the day I doubt it will help much but it all depends on the outside temperature. The colder it is out the better it will work. A 384 res. unit should work fine to pickup "something" is there. Good luck to you.
 
I think it should pick up movement fine. A guy I know in WVA uses one in deer season and swears by it. Rix has a 384 for $1000. ST3 lite
 
Thanks everyone. Appreciate the ideas. I have a friend that has a 640 I’ll check out. It might just be worth waiting a little for more of the 1280s to come out and drive the used prices down on the 640s. It’s not going to be used a whole lot so don’t want to spend a ton of money

Like I mentioned. Only going to be used in daytime, so target identification is not imperative. Just need to see something is there and then can use the binos and scope to suss out what it is.
 
Im giessing that a lot of people (including myself) have the misconception of how a thermal will work. Just point it out there and BINGO! The animal sticks out like a sore thumb. That may be so in short cut hay fields but not so much with tall grass or bushy vegetation. I was amazed at how much heat signature can be blocked by a thinly vegitated creasote bush. Not to mention how much heat signature can be given off by rocks & vegetation. Probably even worse when the sun is out.
Im no thermal expert. Just relaying what my limited experiences have shown me.
 
crapshoot said:
Im giessing that a lot of people (including myself) have the misconception of how a thermal will work. Just point it out there and BINGO! The animal sticks out like a sore thumb. That may be so in short cut hay fields but not so much with tall grass or bushy vegetation. I was amazed at how much heat signature can be blocked by a thinly vegitated creasote bush. Not to mention how much heat signature can be given off by rocks & vegetation. Probably even worse when the sun is out.
Im no thermal expert. Just relaying what my limited experiences have shown me.
Click to expand...

Yep. Here in the South a lot of coon hunters buy scanners just to end up selling them a few months later.
 
I have a 384 scanner. It's decent and it works. 640 is more pleasant to look through and i hope to upgrade someday. But it's a low priority right now because what I have works sufficient.

I've used my scanner with great success for early morning rock chuck spotting. Early in the morning when the ambient temperature is cool, any warm body will really pop out. Once the sun comes up and starts hitting rocks and things, many more things "pop out" and it becomes harder to spot what is a living warm body. I pride myself being able to spot rockchucks well with my naked eyes.....but with thermal they just can't hide from me =D

If it rains, the rain tends to make everything turn the same temperature....it becomes difficult to make out the terrain, but an animals warm body will pop out great.

If you are looking for lions in the rocks....i suspect you are hunting in the winter in areas where the temperatures are cooler. Thermal should work great, just beware that direct sunlight on rocks and other objects will significantly degrade the effectiveness.
 
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