Okay, we have been out in the woods using the new FLIR RS Thermal Weapon scopes for the last four day, so forgive me for not answering emails and PMs as we were up at 4AM hunting all day and home again at 2AM to butcher out the night kills. Running full bore on 2-3 hours of sleep per day or perhaps a nap during the afternoon in a stand tends to run you down some....[
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It was a difficult time with the weather as it was record heat here with 100% mono-thermal environmental temperatures due to the rain and fog and 100% humidity, making it difficult to use both NV & Thermal, but we scored good and all had a [beeep] good time. One night we had clear skies and was the best for using all the high-tech gear and it was put to best good use that night.
I think the funniest story was when we put Victor DiCosola of TNVC on a hog trail by himself with my SIG 556, FLIR T-70/ACOG and DBAL-D2 laser illuminator, two other groups were a 1/4 mile away from him and heard sounder groups of hogs approaching in the night through the thick inpenetrable swamps all around us. Vic had probably a 30 foot clear shooting range from dense underbrush in the hardwood hammock all around him sitting in a chair. He did not know the other groups had heard the hogs coming up out of the swamps into the hardwood hammock as he was alone in the woods. But the hogs bypassed our two other groups somehow and headed up the trial that we had Vic setup on.
He heard quite a bit of thrashing and grunting all around him and low and behold he was surrounded by a large sounder coming right in the trail on him, see eyes he scrambled to get into a shooting position, hoping that the hogs right near all around him would not charge him, one shot right between the eyes with a handloaded Barnes 70 grain TSX dropped a hog in it tracks and the sounder busted out through the woods scrambling all around him. Probably would have been much safer to have been in a tree stand next time!!! LOL
Angelo Brewer of FLIR Corporation brought six of the FLIR RS Thermal weapon scopes with him, we sighted them in at laser measured 50 yards on a handwarmer and were shootin 1/4-1/2 groups in two minutes after first putting the scopes on, the scopes are super easy to sight in, for accuracy I would recommend shooting at 200 yards for final dial in. Three hogs were taken down with both the FLIR RS64-60mm lens, the FLIR RS35-60mm and FLIR RS64-35mm. All worked very well under the extreme environmental conditions and were simple to setup and adjust. If you can use a FLIR PS-32 or LS-64, you can use one of these thermal instruments as they are very intuitive to use and functional to adjust in the night.
Here are some pics from our hunts:
FLIR RS64-60mm on my SIG 556:
Guns and FLIR Thermals in trunk:
Rifles sighted in:
My shooting range on power line at night through thermal:
Angelos' Noveske on his stand:
Angelos' first sow hog:
Nicks RS35-60mm hog @ 125 yards:
RS35-35mm hog at 125 yards:
Vic on his stand after sunrise:
Group hog pic:
Vic with ANVIS and his nice tusker:
Finishing up dressing out the hogs:
More to come on the use and performance of the FLIR RS scopes later, stay tuned....