Using thermal for stalking

[mchughcb]

It is lazy..... it is easy to spot deer..... it also makes it easier to stalk deer, especially if there are a number of deer....... fact. Yes you still need to use a bit of common sense but it takes a large amount of the skill factor out of stalking. Those that have stalked for a good number of years will know this, those that have done very little before the thermal will not appreciate how much easier it is until the day they forget it, fail to charge it, forget spare batteries or breaks down on them. In this case, they may as well return home.

If cover/terrain makes it impossible to approach deer without a thermal, you can always use the odd high seat...... but maybe that will mean taking up too much time. The only genuine case for Mr. Average is to be more selective, but even then, a decent stalker could do the same without one.

From what i have observed for the last few years it looks like the average deer culler on this forum can afford 2000 quid on a thermal but not 20 quid on putting a roof on their high seat let alone a door.

 

[mchughcb]

Thermals are here to stay, they are a tool and you use it as you see fit. I must reiterate they are not an X Ray machine and may not find your dead or injured deer. Please please do not go storming in after an injured deer with your thermal. Wait a suitable time or you will push it on. Check the shot site and analyse your findings before proceeding. I've had to track plenty of deer that couldn't be found with thermal.

Yeah not sure about that one. I mean im waiting for the head shot guru to wade in the explain why they waited 30 mins before approaching after they decapitated the deer just to be sure.

 

[rem284]

Last week i was out and thought I saw a beast with the mark1 naked eyeball. It was a good skelp off so i lifted the thermal up and couldnt get see a heat sorce. So thought it no a beast. I looked at it again with the mark1 and it moved. When i lifted the binos it was a beast after all. It was 400 odd metres away. So looked again with binos and seen another 3. I decided to get closer and ended up getting the 4. I cant understand why i didnt see them in the thermal.

 

[mchughcb]

Lazy stalkers use them.
They are fine for certain times, maybe for tracking wounded beast, but to use them just to spot deer is lazy in my opinion. Cant use them on Level 2 to spot deer. Use your knowledge and binoculars. I have even had one numpty ask to bring a drone out to spot deer about 2 years ago. I told him he could bring it out to stalk no problem. But I would bring my 12 bore, and blow it out of the sky! Needless to say he hung up the phone

Lazy stalkers and incompetent cullers?
Or
Incompetent stalkers and lazy cullers?

 

[rem284]

Lazy stalkers and incompetent cullers?
Or
Incompetent stalkers and lazy cullers?

All lol. Worst case of incompetent stalkers i know of was 3 guys given a forest for the roe doe season. They could be there as often as they wanted. They had a caravan so could actually stay on site. Just before the end of the season i was told be the man above me, ffs go in there to see what you can get. They 3 guys have only shot 1 and it was a mistake because they shot a buck. I went in one afternoon and got 5 and back the next morning and got 6. That was before thermals. It does beg the question if they had thermals would it have made them achieve acceptable cull returns

 

[devon deer stalker]

No such thing as a lazy stalker in Devon, or if you are you won't find your deer to start with, let alone extract a big red from a ball ache of a place you shoot it.

I have been stalking for over 25 years, learnt my field craft, and spent many an hour (or 2 or 3 or 4!) slowly walking through dense woodland using binos looking for a bedded deer, a twitch of an ear or a swish of a tail, and it worked.
But I have a lot of ground to cover, and as @Ronin says, its deer management and to make it more efficient I use a thermal, you still have to use all your experience in field craft to stalk into a shooting position.
I was happy using binos for years until I took a client out off here 2 years ago, he had a thermal, it was a revelation to me.

So I consider it a tool of the trade.

Cheers

Richard

 

[LuckyEddie]

From what i have observed for the last few years it looks like the average deer culler on this forum can afford 2000 quid on a thermal but not 20 quid on putting a roof on their high seat let alone a door.

Or doctors’ fees for FAC renewal!

 

[sikamalc]

Deer

That is your opinion.

Wandering around a wood having a nice morning out, maybe spotting a deer and killing it, if in season and safe to do so isnt doing the landowner any kind of service whatsoever.

You pass very little to nothing by using thermal for spotting.

The sole purpose of attaining deer stalking is to kill deer, reduce numbers or manage them on an acceptable level.

Thermal is, as I said, a valuable tool, which enables the user to be more selective when choosing which animals to kill.

You wish to do things traditionally, thats fine, take out a pair of jena bios, with a parker hale 270 and 6x42 scope and fill your boots.

Oh, hang on, werent the same discussions taking place in the 50's when chaps using open sights, saw an influx of "telescopes" on rifles, that made the game "unfair", the same argument over fixed power scopes vs variable , the same argument over the need for training and practice.

This is the same argument / discussion.

Times move on, deer numbers are at the highest ever, use the tools available to manage deer effectively.

can be managed very well with a good set of binoculars, knowing your ground, knowing the weather/wind on your ground and knowing your deer. I didn't need one 40 years ago when I started in stalking and having managed some huge areas in Scotland and England over this period of time I have never failed to for fill any criteria asked of me. Thermal have their limited use for deer stalking, but if you need one all the time it is not deer stalking in my opinion.

 

[finnbear270]

Last week i was out and thought I saw a beast with the mark1 naked eyeball. It was a good skelp off so i lifted the thermal up and couldnt get see a heat sorce. So thought it no a beast. I looked at it again with the mark1 and it moved. When i lifted the binos it was a beast after all. It was 400 odd metres away. So looked again with binos and seen another 3. I decided to get closer and ended up getting the 4. I cant understand why i didnt see them in the thermal.

Turn it on?

 

[Dan Newcombe]

Finding good people to help is an uphill struggle, even beyond them trying to pinch permission which i am sure does happen - just getting them to turn up is hard enough in my experience. We pay guys to help doing rabbits, if they did a good job then we would bring them in on the deer etc (that we don't struggle with getting on top of nearly as much as the rabbits) but we cannot find anyone reliable.

 

[Deermanagement]

From what i have observed for the last few years it looks like the average deer culler on this forum can afford 2000 quid on a thermal but not 20 quid on putting a roof on their high seat let alone a door.

I was only thinking about fitting some sort of canopy style roof to my seats. Now you've mentioned it again, I'll just pull up my HS models and take another look, especially after the weather we've been getting

 

[Deermanagement]

Last week i was out and thought I saw a beast with the mark1 naked eyeball. It was a good skelp off so i lifted the thermal up and couldnt get see a heat sorce. So thought it no a beast. I looked at it again with the mark1 and it moved. When i lifted the binos it was a beast after all. It was 400 odd metres away. So looked again with binos and seen another 3. I decided to get closer and ended up getting the 4. I cant understand why i didnt see them in the thermal.

"Mark I eyeball"

 

[Primate]

That is your opinion.

Wandering around a wood having a nice morning out, maybe spotting a deer and killing it, if in season and safe to do so isnt doing the landowner any kind of service whatsoever.

You pass very little to nothing by using thermal for spotting.

The sole purpose of attaining deer stalking is to kill deer, reduce numbers or manage them on an acceptable level.

Thermal is, as I said, a valuable tool, which enables the user to be more selective when choosing which animals to kill.

You wish to do things traditionally, thats fine, take out a pair of jena bios, with a parker hale 270 and 6x42 scope and fill your boots.

Oh, hang on, werent the same discussions taking place in the 50's when chaps using open sights, saw an influx of "telescopes" on rifles, that made the game "unfair", the same argument over fixed power scopes vs variable , the same argument over the need for training and practice.

This is the same argument / discussion.

Times move on, deer numbers are at the highest ever, use the tools available to manage deer effectively.

Amen.

 

[Monkey Spanker]

So, another advantage I've noticed with thermal is the ability to control muntjac properly due to the sex ratio of the cull.
Most cull records where there is relatively dense cover will show that far more muntjac bucks are culled than does. Bucks are far more adventurous and cover the territories of numerous does, and hence they are easier to spot. Does have small territories and often don't leave the areas of thick cover. Compound this over several years and you end up with a very uneven sex ratio and a continued population explosion of muntjac.
What I have noticed is that ratio culled by stalkers with thermal is relatively even and sometimes even favours more does. The reason being I believe, that there a far more does than bucks, but the thermal now gives a much better chance of spotting them. Coupled with a mobile high seat which can be moved around the smaller territories of the does, we now have a better chance to control their numbers effectively.
Culling female deer is the key to population control, but it is difficult when you rarely get a glimpse of them.
MS

 

[Ronin]

Prior to using thermal I was also effective at locating and killing deer, I haven’t lost any of those skills by using thermal spotting gear

I’m guess I’m not a recreational deer stalker and never really have been - though I don’t get many complaints from the landowners about deer impact.

On one area, deer impact has been reduced by 70% in three years, which had been assessed accurately through specialist computer program from using drone imagery

Thermal spotting equipment played a huge part in the success on that area

Whilst it may not be of use to everyone, I for one am a convert

 

[Tim.243]

It is lazy..... it is easy to spot deer..... it also makes it easier to stalk deer, especially if there are a number of deer....... fact. Yes you still need to use a bit of common sense but it takes a large amount of the skill factor out of stalking. Those that have stalked for a good number of years will know this, those that have done very little before the thermal will not appreciate how much easier it is until the day they forget it, fail to charge it, forget spare batteries or breaks down on them. In this case, they may as well return home.

If cover/terrain makes it impossible to approach deer without a thermal, you can always use the odd high seat...... but maybe that will mean taking up too much time. The only genuine case for Mr. Average is to be more selective, but even then, a decent stalker could do the same without one.

Mr/Mrs Average from what I read is most lightly to be stalking with an outfitter, with a good number of them offering a range of species/costings also Mr/Mrs would not be fitting a high seat.

Mine is used to great effect on foxes also these last few months on Muntjac as this season the weather has held back the drilling of crops also very few or no acorns.
One large block has been broadcast with winter beans then ploughed over, usually they would be out of the ground making a good draw for the MJ, they are still going to breed and need controlling.

My last 3 trips for Muntjac were blanks with one fox paying the price for using that trail in daylight, nothing to do with a thermal/bins or field craft the facts was the timing....
In my last 4 foxing outing's (10 foxes) I saw Muntjac feeding 3 hours after you could legally shoot them, given they only come out for short periods and hardly stand still I was 3 hours out in any case.

The term making it easy could reach back to using rotary's flappers life like decoys, also calling a Roe Buck going out of his mind for a shag with a caller....

If I sat in a hedge with a pocket full of cartridges on laid barley covered with pigeons or took a rotary, flappers on poles, net, decoys and a slab of rounds the second option combined with my fieldcraft would pay dividends..

Tim.243

 

[Primate]

Last week i was out and thought I saw a beast with the mark1 naked eyeball. It was a good skelp off so i lifted the thermal up and couldnt get see a heat sorce. So thought it no a beast. I looked at it again with the mark1 and it moved. When i lifted the binos it was a beast after all. It was 400 odd metres away. So looked again with binos and seen another 3. I decided to get closer and ended up getting the 4. I cant understand why i didnt see them in the thermal.

It has recently been alleged that deer on the Isle of Rum are evolving due to climate change. Perhaps they are now evolving to the rise in use of thermal imagers too, by wearing heavily insulated jackets to avoid detection

 

[rem284]

It has recently been alleged that deer on the Isle of Rum are evolving due to climate change. Perhaps they are now evolving to the rise in use of thermal imagers too, by wearing heavily insulated jackets to avoid detection
View attachment 142141

Aye they might have been issued with the thermal safety blanket from a first aid kit some tourist left behind their behinds

 

[LuckyEddie]

Finding good people to help is an uphill struggle, even beyond them trying to pinch permission which i am sure does happen - just getting them to turn up is hard enough in my experience. We pay guys to help doing rabbits, if they did a good job then we would bring them in on the deer etc (that we don't struggle with getting on top of nearly as much as the rabbits) but we cannot find anyone reliable.

Wish you were closer and give me a trial run.
Went out a various times just to have a mooch around and keep an eye on things; used to do a yearly inspection of high seats and fix those that were needing repaired without being asked by the main lease owner

 

[TomDeer]

So who is taking the 400 yard shots with thermal at deer at night and posting on facebook.

Only 400 yrds? Some people are so unambitious