Thermal Scope

The difference is £350 so just over 10% more? I would say that's good for a better performing scope, with better image quality, better magnification and a transferable warranty!

No, by today's rates E3400 is £2840 so the hike is £910 ie. 32%
 
I use a Quantum HD50 for spotting and an Archer for taking the shot. I did look into replacing the Archer with thermal but have issues using thermal only. Yes, with the thermal I can see the difference between a fox and a badger at say 150 yds but I would challenge any dedicated thermal user to easily distinguish a fox at 150 yds with the farm collie - its bad enough spotting a cat at 70 yds thinking it is a fox. I expect that some people have already made this mistake but have kept it to themselves.

Sorry but thermal does not give positive ID like night vision does IMO
 
I use a Quantum HD50 for spotting and an Archer for taking the shot. I did look into replacing the Archer with thermal but have issues using thermal only. Yes, with the thermal I can see the difference between a fox and a badger at say 150 yds but I would challenge any dedicated thermal user to easily distinguish a fox at 150 yds with the farm collie - its bad enough spotting a cat at 70 yds thinking it is a fox. I expect that some people have already made this mistake but have kept it to themselves.

Sorry but thermal does not give positive ID like night vision does IMO

Which thermal scope did you try out of interest?

Thanks
 
I use a Quantum HD50 for spotting and an Archer for taking the shot. I did look into replacing the Archer with thermal but have issues using thermal only. Yes, with the thermal I can see the difference between a fox and a badger at say 150 yds but I would challenge any dedicated thermal user to easily distinguish a fox at 150 yds with the farm collie - its bad enough spotting a cat at 70 yds thinking it is a fox. I expect that some people have already made this mistake but have kept it to themselves.

Sorry but thermal does not give positive ID like night vision does IMO


Yeah... but you wouldn't just blat away at it without observing the movement to confirm what you're looking at? Experience, knowledge and, ultimately, confidence come with use with any TI kit.....

With a 75-3 we're talking about a lot more detail than the Quantums provide.


atb

fizz
:cool:
 
Yeah... but you wouldn't just blat away at it without observing the movement to confirm what you're looking at? Experience, knowledge and, ultimately, confidence come with use with any TI kit.....

With a 75-3 we're talking about a lot more detail than the Quantums provide.


atb

fizz
:cool:

Fizz - Experience, knowledge. Been fox shooting 30+ years, shoot on average 80 per year and had my Quantum 4 years. I stand by my comparison of a fox and collie - a collie at 150 yds wandering around a field will look the same as a fox - don't know whether the 75-3 could easily distinguish the difference as I have never looked through one.
 
Fizz - Experience, knowledge. Been fox shooting 30+ years, shoot on average 80 per year and had my Quantum 4 years. I stand by my comparison of a fox and collie - a collie at 150 yds wandering around a field will look the same as a fox - don't know whether the 75-3 could easily distinguish the difference as I have never looked through one.

I'm definitely not calling your foxing/shooting experience into question...or anyone-elses for that matter. :)

What I'm getting at is that we're all still learning from a thermal point of view... I've been using an hd38s since they first came out...almost 3 years I guess. It definitely opened my eyes to fox and other animal behaviour after dark when they have no idea they're been watched. Sometimes with the 38s I've known instantly its a fox, other times it's taken a bit longer.

Behaviour is the key word here....I've not personally watched any dog's behaviour, on its own after dark but I'm guessing it will behave and move differently to a fox.

The 75-3 is definitely head and shoulders above the 38 performance-wise. Like you I've had/got my doubts and reservations on positive identification at distance but at the end it's my finger on the trigger so if there's any doubt I'd wait til I got a positive I/d. The main advantage is more time on the subject unless you've given yourself away with scent or movement. Even then I've found with normal NV (tubed, Drone, Xtreme) that you get some time whilst they work out exactly what's not quite right.

I'm still on the learning curve with the 75-3 but it's very encouraging at the moment.

Cheers

Fizz
:cool:
 
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Fizz - Experience, knowledge. Been fox shooting 30+ years, shoot on average 80 per year and had my Quantum 4 years. I stand by my comparison of a fox and collie - a collie at 150 yds wandering around a field will look the same as a fox - don't know whether the 75-3 could easily distinguish the difference as I have never looked through one.

+1 on this. Not seen a TI unit yet (including 640 sensors and 'non-commercial') that answers the question a sight picture can with the same certainty.
 
There's no doubt that the sight picture produced by a thermal spotter or scope is very different from that produced by traditional NV kit.
Whether or not that different sight picture is acceptable is clearly an individual choice.
It's different, and IMHO it's better in many ways and worse in some
I've been using thermal spotters for over 3 years and a 75mm, 640 thermal scope for about a year now, after using various bits of digital NV up to and including a Drone pro.
My preference is for the thermal scope, but as Fizz says it's a learning curve and as always you don't pull the trigger until you're 100% sure you've ID the target and ensured there's an adequate backstop.
Since i'm only shooting foxes with it, being sure that the animal targeted is a fox and not a dog, cat, hare, badger, or roe deer (no munties or CWD up here!!) is absolutely critical.
The bottom line is that it takes a lot of time spent observing potential targets to see how they behave and how they appear from all different angles and stances.
With enough practice, it's possible to spot a potential target at distances far beyond that possible with traditional NV kit and then to sit and watch and wait to see how it behaves before deciding if it's worth going after.
For targets that appear suddenly and are moving around at ranges less than 200 yards, the 75mm 640 or 384 scopes will produce an image that leaves an experienced user in no doubt as to whether or not it's a fox.

Cheers

Bruce
 
Fizz - to illustrate what I was alluding to about identification, last night I was outside a large partridge pen on one of the biggest commercial shoots in Devon/Somerset where the keeper was having partridges and a nearby pheasant pen raided inside the pen by what he thought was perhaps a mink (river nearby). By 11 pm having shot two foxes and at the point of calling it a night, I noticed through the thermal an elongated animal making it's way to the pen - switched on the n/v which immediately confirmed it to be a ferret or mink which I shot. Point is, with only thermal, it could have been the above but also a protected Polecat - it was only the n/v that could confirm it.

Sorry about photo - flash refused to work had to use head torch. Back of it's neck was covered in ticks.

IMG_0553.jpg
 
It has to be nv to take the shot with for me . This year alone i would of shot 1 third less foxs if I had been using a thermal scope . It simply would of been impossible to tell if they were actually foxs.
 
There's no doubt that the sight picture produced by a thermal spotter or scope is very different from that produced by traditional NV kit.

And that is the problem right there. It is not a sight picture - it's a temperature map. Experience is certainly part of it, but TI is inherently less able to ID than a true sight picture. I fully accept the point of picking up further away etc - but that's spotting and therefore not part of the conversation on actually pulling the trigger.
 
What you see when you look into the eyepiece of any riflescope, binoculars, NV device or thermal device is a sight picture.
How that sight picture is formed varies with the device.
Essentially, the only difference between the sight picture produced by a purely visible light device such as a riflescope or an IR based NV device or a thermal device is the wavelength of the radiation entering the objective lens of the device.
Since temperature is directly related to wavelength, describing the sight picture from a thermal device as a temperature map is a fair description.
However, the same can be said for the sight picture seen when looking through binoculars or a riflescope. it's just that some of the wavelengths and hence temperatures happen to be in a region of the electromagnetic spectrum to which our eyes are sensitive and which which our brain interpret as the colours of visible light
IMHO, It's how the brain interprets the sight picture that's the critical thing.
Going from the colour sight picture produced by a normal riflescope to the mono sight picture produced by tubed or digital NV devices requires our brains to adjust to a different sight picture. Most people cope with that without any issues, but there are a significant number of people who simply can't use NV because they don't "get" the mono sight picture.
Similarly, going from a mono NV sight picture to a thermal sight picture requires our brains to adjust to the lower resolution sight picture produced by the thermal sensor.
Some people are comfortable with the thermal sight picture, other less so.
Although thermal technology has made huge advances over the last few years, we won't be seeing any multi megapixel thermal sensors anytime soon, so the level of detail seen in a thermal sight picture is not going to improve dramatically.
AFAIK, the next step is commercially available " fusion" devices which combine both an NV and a thermal sensor with the ability to switch between them or "fuse" the images from both sensors together to try to get the best of both worlds.

Cheers

Bruce
 
Totally agree Bruce it's about training the eye. Id urge people to look through Clive's wt1 75-3 it's an eye opener.
 
To me it's not target ID that's the biggest problem - it's seeing what's between you and the target.
i currently have an XD50S spotter which I have had for a couple of years and am more than happy with, I then shoot with a Photon 6.5x50 (which for £400 is excellent) mounted on my .223, this combination has increased the amount of foxes I have been able to account for dramatically.
However on many occasions it is quite possible to see and ID a fox clearly that when you switch to the NV to take the shot is just not visible - the fox can be sat in a hedge, behind tall stubble, in reeds, behind a wire fence - and it doesn't take much to put a little 50 grain projectile off course.
Are the dedicated thermal rifle sights that much better than the XD50 and able to spot such obstructions ? Having not tried one I wouldn't know but I somehow doubt it.
So for me at the minute I will be sticking to thermals spotter and digital NV, this also gives you much flexibility to use the thermal as a spotter, for example when finding your dead fox in stubble or when it has run a way before dropping which you couldn't do with a dedicated rifle mounted thermal.
I do however like the look of the thermal add on units but for the reasons stated above I will be waiting until the technology improves further.
 
was out couple of nights ago with a friend who has an xd50 and compared it to my xq38. The xq had better clarity with the extra magnification. We were watching deer and horses at 50-200 yards clearly. To put it into context I found the thermal scope of the wt1 75-3 to be at least a 100 percent clearer than my xq.
Im sure people with nv and lamps have hit wire fencing and foliage which deflects a bullets a few times !
 
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