Thermal Works Near and Far and Even in Fog

Kirsch

Active member
I got out last night coyote hunting. My hunting area received about a foot of new snow. When I got to the area, the fog set in. The great news about thermal, is you can still see. It impeded the view some, but still allowed me to harvest these coyotes. As the night progressed, the fog lifted and the thermal view improved.

I had taken my Sionyx Night Vision camera to do interviews, stand prep, etc. It is hard to do this when you are hunting along. When I got back and reviewed the footage, it appears snow or something got into the microphone and the interviews were not usable. You can still see a few clips were audio wasn't necessary.

The closest shot on the video was around 50 yards. The furthest shot, I paced off at 550 steps. However, the snow was pretty deep and there was hills, so just taking a guess at 400+. The coyote was pretty small in my scope even at 4x power.

 
I killed a big 350 lb boar hog out behind my house last night, temp was about 55 degrees, no moon, completely pitch dark.

Was using both thermal and NV helmet mounted to navigate and thermal weapon scopes (FLIR) to target.

Pea soup thick fog made our NV virtually worthless, even the IR lasers were affected. I had to remove my eyeglasses since they were constantly fogged out.

Hiked a couple miles up to a couple of bait sites and a nice fat boar was on one, shot him with 6.5 Grendel @ 75 yards with FLIR T-70, could not even make him out with NV.

Thermal rules in the fog.
 
I shoot a 22-250 and I am sighted in 1" high at 100. I have slowed it down frame by frame on the original, and actually on the final frame before the shot broke, the dot is slightly elevated over the back right behind the neck. When the coyote is that far away and you loose quality in video recording, etc it can be really hard to see. When I paced it off, I was also thinking man that was a long shot. I ended up heart shooting the coyote, so the hit was a little low. In reality, I might have pulled the shot a bit as it probably shouldn't have been a hit.

My rule of thumb is if I believe the coyote is around 300, I hold on top edge of fur. Anything less, and I hold right on. Some is luck, but I have 3 coyotes in the last few trips that were at 300 or more. Yes, I can call them closer, but these were situations where it was my last chance at the coyote (multiples, spooked, etc). Historically, it seems like if I hold over the coyote past the fur, I tend to shoot over the coyote, so the reason I try to always be on fur.

The next question is how do you know the range. I do have a rangefinder, but I really don't use it. It is just more stuff hanging on the gun. By the time, a person ranges the coyote, it is probably gone or is no longer stopped. Rangefinders have a time and a place, but as I use a thermal more and more, I get a better gauge on distances. For the first year I owned a thermal, I paced off every shot so I knew what the sight picture looked like for a specific distance. I have gotten pretty good at guessing already. Once they start getting past 300 yards, there is a lot of luck involved.
 
I guess I'm going to give those longer shots a try. Obviously it is doable!

Nice shooting!

I didn't go out last night because it was so foggy. Wish I would have just to see how the Pulsar XQ-38 does in heavy fog.
 
Originally Posted By: SoftpointI didn't go out last night because it was so foggy. Wish I would have just to see how the Pulsar XQ-38 does in heavy fog. It will do OK. It limits the distance your thermal can see, but when the coyote is in range, you should still be able to shoot. It was around 10 degrees, so since it was below freezing everything was coated in ice crystals including me. I don't like hunting fog but if I waited until conditions were perfect, I would rarely go out in North Dakota.
 
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