Daytime thermal?
- Thread starter kenbro
- Start date
kenbro
Well-Known Member
Bet it doesn’t work as good as binos in the day though?
Thanks, Ken.
nun_hunter
Well-Known Member
I take mine into the woods and it's much better and finding deer and squirrels than binos alone. It'll pick up on tiny heat sources between foliage and far away that binos wouldn't be able to make out what was there.
Binos are great for more pleasure of looking at nature and spending time scanning and observing but if you want to find something to shoot then thermal wins.
_jon_h_
Active Member
Well no, binos are obviously are much more use for day time excursions, but a thermal is a lot more use during the day than a pair of binos are at night… if you get my drift.
As @nun_hunter says, you can find the tiniest heat source with it and then take a closer look with binos for positive identification.
kenbro
Well-Known Member
Op is really only asking about thermal sight use in day time.
Thanks, Ken.
Depending on where and when you are using it and the weather conditions, a thermal in daytime can produce excellent results it it can be completely useless
As has been said, when used in cool sheltered places like woodland it can detect heat sources that would not be seen easily with binoculars
On the other hand trying to spot potential targets against a background that has been heated by sunlight is a waste of time because the background temperature and the animal temperature will be so close to each other that the image will just be white
Try spotting rabbits on a sandy bank that the summer sun has been shining on and you'll see what I mean
Even after dark, the sandy bank will still be warm, making the rabbits more difficult to see than if they were on a grass field
Go to the same place in winter time and the rabbits will be much easier to detect
Thermals detect differences in temperature, not the actual temperature of an object (within reason) so there has to be a difference in temperature between the animal you want to detect and it's background
Since pretty much all our legal quarry (rabbits, foxes, deer) are mammals like us who automatically control our body temperature, the temperature of our potential quarry doesn't change much from day to night or from summer to winter
Therefore, it's the temperature of the background against which we see these animals that controls how well we can see them
Typically, in winter and in darkness, the background is cooler than it is in daylight and in summer, so winter night tend to give the best results with thermal and summer days the poorest results
Cheers
Bruce
My Sako 75 .243 lives permanently with an old Thermion XM38 on it and it’s my go-to for early season roe and muntjac stalking. Animals detected using hand held Telox XP50 LRF, visually identified and ranged using my trusty Leica 10x42 HD-B and then taken with the Thermion which I typically run in a higher mag PIP. Works very well.
I do it, and it works, but I much prefer an optical sight.
I will always take my thermal spotter and binoculars out together- great at picking up things that I wouldn't otherwise see but as noted above you will see tree stumps, branches, stones glowing hot when they warm up. Binoculars taken and used but on balance I would say that the thermal makes a daytime stalk more productive and interesting.
kenbro
Well-Known Member
Thanks Bruce.
Ken.
Hardy
Well-Known Member
Prior to all the leaf growth, in the daytime I was watching 5 squirrels running about in a large oak tree 260 yards away with my Axion XM38 spotter, obviously easy to identify, but the other day with the same spotter at the same location I could see a bit larger heat source up against a grass hedge line that needed binoculars to identify as a resting fox. If the fox had been upright and maybe walking it would have been a bit different
but not when partly hidden, using binos it was coloured and easily identified but I may not have seen it at all without the thermal.I had a wide panarama to view but with the Axion it jumped out as a heat source within one quick scan.
but not when partly hidden, using binos it was coloured and easily identified but I may not have seen it at all without the thermal.I had a wide panarama to view but with the Axion it jumped out as a heat source within one quick scan.
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Rake Aboot
Well-Known Member
Definitely faster than binos for scanning an open area for quarry.
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