Originally Posted By: cjdavis618I can tell you in the west Texas desert that if you are tying to scan 360 degrees with a scope, your going to get dizzy and miss a whole lot of eyes. It was just too much tunnel vision when I tried it. The light made things easier to pick up and while the reflections are brighter with the NV from the eyes, it wasn't any harder to pick out the reflections with the lightforce even with a really low beam strength.
Not knowing where you are headed to hunt, take as much as you can and try it. I went 6 times on my night hunt trips for 3 days each which by no means makes me a pro. But it was easy to see what worked and what didn't. We could cover all 360 degrees with that light in 2-3 seconds and spot animals. Trying that with a scope would be insanely hard to do.
If you really want to find the animals, get a thermal eye or flir for detection. Use the NV then to identify. That will get the ones that won't look at you after you halo them.
I wouldn't scan with a scope at daytime, and certainly wouldn't do it at night in unfamiliar territory.
This is a single kill using nothing but NV. Video recorded grainy on the digisight, but you can see what I mean about looking through the scope for scanning. (The brighter light was the lightforce with IR filter.) Coyote was 75 yards away. Only killed 6 coyotes on that trip, and part of that was getting all the NV figured out and bad weather.
On this trip, over half of these coyotes were killed in one night, lights only with day scope. 13 in one night. 21 coyotes total.
I don't scan with a dedicated NV riflescope, we scan with a monocular and then quickly attach it to a daytime scope for the shot. Our Signature Series Scopes (
http://www.hightechredneckincorporated.com/Night_Vision_Scopes_s/2.htm) eliminate the need to use the NV riflescope for scanning or purchasing a separeate NV or thermal unit for scanning. I get approximately 1/4 to 1/2 mile field of view at 300 yards which is signifiantly better than what any conventional light can give me. I try to set-up in places where I can easily scan in a 270 degree viewing pattern but can also easliy cover the backside without getting dizzy. Hunting cross wind and downwind set-ups works best and eliminates being detected from behind. Also, as most of you conventional light users know coyotes are very sensitive to light and NV basically eliminates that problem. That said, there are other predators that are not so light sensitive (bobcats/foxes). So if your target is those species you could probalby do pretty good with conventional lights. The biggest and most significant downside of NV or Thermal technology is obviously the cost. If you can't afford it then go for the conventional lights and save your money until you can afford at least a Gen 2 NV device. Kevin