Thermal for scouting, green/red light for shooting?

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hunter4fun

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Being new to the nightvision game, I'm trying to stretch out my dollars. I'm thinking my best value would be hand held night vision like Scout III then a green or red flashlight. Once I spot them I can bring out the light and flash them.

Do wildlife usually react immediately to the light so much that I'd be way better off with IR illumination + nightvision scope or can I just go flashlight and regular scope?

Military uses green night vision and thermal scope but I bet they already know something is there... Correct me if I'm wrong but thermal seems best way to find something in a big field. As long as it's not running should be able to see it with a flash light or IR illumination to shoot it.
 
Originally Posted By: hunter4funBeing new to the nightvision game, I'm trying to stretch out my dollars. I'm thinking my best value would be hand held night vision like Scout III then a green or red flashlight. Once I spot them I can bring out the light and flash them.

Do wildlife usually react immediately to the light so much that I'd be way better off with IR illumination + nightvision scope or can I just go flashlight and regular scope?

Military uses green night vision and thermal scope but I bet they already know something is there... Correct me if I'm wrong but thermal seems best way to find something in a big field. As long as it's not running should be able to see it with a flash light or IR illumination to shoot it.

You are on the right track. Invest in thermal for DETECTION as your first major purchase. Your budget and type of hunting will determine your shooting setup. Nothing wrong with lights and a day scope preferably with an illuminated reticle.

You can then determine what the next step will be...... Gen II, Gen III, Digital, or Thermal when you are ready to upgrade your shooting rig.

Save until you can buy a good quality scope of whatever type you decide to go with.



 
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Originally Posted By: hunter4funBeing new to the nightvision game, I'm trying to stretch out my dollars. I'm thinking my best value would be hand held night vision like Scout III then a green or red flashlight. Once I spot them I can bring out the light and flash them.

Do wildlife usually react immediately to the light so much that I'd be way better off with IR illumination + nightvision scope or can I just go flashlight and regular scope?

Military uses green night vision and thermal scope but I bet they already know something is there... Correct me if I'm wrong but thermal seems best way to find something in a big field. As long as it's not running should be able to see it with a flash light or IR illumination to shoot it. It can work but coyotes do not like the light!!! You will get some that will stand there and look at you long enough to get a shot, some will run as soon as the light hits them. If you go with the light option get a light with a good dimmer and be very careful when you shine it into their eyes. That's the short version of it.
 
I went straight to a Thermal scope and no regrets. I used a PVS14 for awhile and it always gave me a bad headache.
Only thing i found NV good for is walking in to a few places.
But i mainly use my thermal for hogs so its a little different. used it for coyotes only 3 or 4 times now.
 
If you go with the thermal to spot and switch to a gun light for the kill, it will be vital to have a light with a dimmer control as tking said. When you spot them with the thermal, you will need only enough power to get their eye shine with the light. Then as they come in closer or close enough for the shot you can bring up the power on the light to ID and make the shot. Hitting them with a full power light out of complete darkness if they are very close is going to spook them most of the time guaranteed. Eyes will shine for a long ways and without using much power on the light.
 
I've done it before and its a lot tougher than using some kind of night vision scope. I bought the handheld first and then later got a digital riflescope and now have several thermals of both handheld and rifle mount.
 
I used a Flir and a red light, hoping for the best. I did kill a few coyotes, but more spooked off than I got a shot at. Everything was good until I hit them with the light.
You can do it, but you better be ready to shoot when you turn on the light, and you better get used to shoot at moving targets. Sure, you'll get the occasional one that doesn't seem to mind the light, but most of them reacted to it in my experience.
I upgraded to a NV scope and my kill ratio went way up.
 
Seems I can get away with a cheap night vision which I can still use through my scope and just get a powerful IR illuminator. No need for fancy NV since thermal should give me general location and I know they are there and I just use my scope + NV. A lot cheaper than dedicated thermal scope.
 
It would be nice if it were always that simple. Unfortunately even with an NV scope there is often a problem finding the target after spotting it on thermal. You can do it, but it isn't easy or certain. Additionally, while the IR light is better than a red, green, or white it isn't invisible at the source. In other words while the light is invisible to coyotes as well as humans, there is a red glow that shows from the lens of the flashlight that can be seen by them and does sometimes spook them especially if that glow is bouncing all around trying to find them.
 
An ATN X-sight II seems like a decent deal for a cheap digital NV scope. I'm seriously considering mounting a flir vue on top of the scope with a quick disconnect and a small monitor. Then it should be much easier for going back/forth between thermal and digital night vision. The Flir vue with wide angle lens should give me idea what I'm looking at/scouting and ATN X-sight give my some reticle without resorting to a visible flashlight. At $599 the ATN seems like a good deal and when they improve the tech I can just throw it out...

What they should really do and probably will do is put AV input on the digital night vision scope. Then you can use your handheld night vision or Flir vue and see both through the scope. Picture in picture split vision eg large overview with thermal for detection then zoom digital night vision would be awesome and easy to implement...
 
Also they seem to have 940nm IR illuminators now like the Evola LT38 which at $46 on amazon is pretty good price. Should be completely invisible at 940nm with no red glow. I bought the LT38 + ATN and will see how it performs...
 
You certainly have a lot of ideas and enthusiasm for your project. I hope it works out well for you. Keep us posted on the progress!

I am testing a 940nm light from an unnamed source at this time with the Photon 4.6XT model digital scope. I can verify that it would be good to about 150 yds. maybe slightly more, but while the source is not as bright, it still has a visible glow but much less than an 850nm light. Remember the coyotes are keying on movement, and so even the 940 would have enough glow to appear to be bouncing around if there is much movement at the rifle.
 
I've used one of the cheap evolva lights from amazon and it worked pretty good with my pvs 14s.
 
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I'll test out the 940nm led when I get it and check the sensitivity of the ATN. I can easily get rid of any remaining red glow with a narrow bandpass filter which transmits 90% of light +/- 5nm and blocks everything else by a factor of 100. Hope it is not necessary however.

The "red glow" should never be a problem with a properly designed light.
 
Originally Posted By: hunter4funI'll test out the 940nm led when I get it and check the sensitivity of the ATN. I can easily get rid of any remaining red glow with a narrow bandpass filter which transmits 90% of light +/- 5nm and blocks everything else by a factor of 100. Hope it is not necessary however.

The "red glow" should never be a problem with a properly designed light.

I've been designing our Torch Pro for many years now and we're about to release the drop in diodes of 880 and 910nm...Not sure how to rid the glow of the IR spectrum light in IR LED systems. We bury our diodes as deep in the cavity of the bezel to mitigate as much as we can. Surefire also did a great job with theirs... But as mentioned, we cannot do much with the red glow, physics kinda gets in the way.
smile.gif
 
Have you tried adding a bandpass filter? These things are pretty cheap. Stick your flashlight on an IR850 or IR950 filter which you can buy from amazon.

If you want a real filter which trusting specs you can buy this one: https://www.thorlabs.com/thorproduct.cfm?partnumber=FEL0850

That will cut everything below 850nm. You can't get rid of it completely but you CAN reduce the intensity by a factor of 1000 or even 1 million which should render it invisible.

Good quality 940nm LEDs should have cut off around 800nm:
http://www.mouser.com/ds/2/228/LEDEngin_LZ400R508-493352.pdf

So you shouldn't see anything from them but who knows what cheap LEDs are in those cheap flashlights. A cheap IR edge filter or bandpass filter should solve this.
 
A good IR filter with have 90%+ transmission in the correct wavelengths and 100x attenuation for other ones. The filter just need to be chosen correctly.

940nm is better as 850nm will obviously have bleed closer to the red spectrum.

Anyway I can test it and see what happens. A spectrum analyzer will give us more information on the wavelength spread.
 
For a laser I would narrow bandpass +/-2nm. But for LED the spectrum is given which shows from 825 to 1000nm so a 850nm side pass should give you 90% of all usable light and block the red you don't want. Yes you will lose 10% but it's not that bad esp while suppressing the red down to 0.001%

Unless the camera really isn't picking up 940nm and only the red light is what's actually illuminating it then I don't see how this won't work.

Science of the output spectrum from the led and the filter's transmission/suppression easily give the correct result...
 


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