can't believe I've only just found this forum after years of looking at (cheaper) ways of getting into night vision!A little about me;
I come from a shooting/country sports background, used to be a gamekeeper, as was my father (and his!) and we still like to keep our eye in whenever we get the chance.
My father was very strict with regards to shooting safety (and rightly so) and wouldn't let me shoot any gun until I was 13, by which time I was pretty confident around guns as it was my job to clean his ever day!
Learnt the hard way, was given an old Webley MkIII underlever with open sights and one tin of .22 pellets when I was 14, and told to clean up the pests around the house, chicken pen and rearing shed. It didn't take me long to realize that I needed something better and more accurate to do the job more efficiently, so I saved up my beating money and bought a HW35.......I was soon hooked!!
Since then I have progressed up to .22 rimfires and centerfires, now owning a 1416D Anschutz in .22LR and a .223 Sako with an aftermarket Brown Precision fiberglass stock (one of the first in the country) that I glass bedded myself, both are over 24 years old now and still going strong!
My 2 other weapons are a Browning B325 12g O/U and a Falcon FN12 in .177, all have accounted for huge amounts of quarry all over the country.
The latest acquisition was a NS200, which has opened up a completely different element to my shooting, especially on foxes. At first it was a matter of trail and error and getting used to the unnatural shooting stance, but eventually I honed my kit to make it work better. I changed my scope (NSX 5.5-22 x 50) which was awesome with normal lamping but didn't work too well with the NS200, I now have an MTC Genesis which works really well!
Had a pretty good spell since the last harvest, accounting for 52 with only a few misses (shooter error!) with some memorable nights action.
I generally walk (alone) with the rifle set up across my chest with a 3 point sling, with either a long bi-pod attached to the rifle or adjustable shooting sticks if the ground is wet or I know I'll have to shoot over crops/hedges etc. An Olight M20 Crimson has been the surprise find lately, bought primarily for navigating through woods and over gates without spoiling my natural nightvision, it has tuned out to be an amazing spotting tool. It has three settings, the highest being the most useful, and although the visible red beam only goes about 100 yards for identifying your quarry, eyes shine out like beacons up to around 500!!
The best thing about the Olight is it's small size and the fact that critters don't seem to notice it at all, I've had foxes, badgers, dear, rabbits, rats and owls so close I could poke them with my shooting sticks!
One night up at a friends farm in Worcestershire, where he had a flock of around 100 sheep on a huge long sweeping field that lifted up towards a wood around 450 yards away, I scanned the area with the Olight to see 50+ sets of eyes shining back at me, and instantly could see there were 2 foxes out there, as their eyes shine the brightest. I silently walked into a closer and more decent shooting position up on a rise and sat down and set up the rifle on the bi-pod, another quick scan and I could see they hadn't moved far, turned on the NS200, shot the furthest at around 180 up under the wood, and the other didn't seem bothered, so I shot him too at 170!
The NS200 is a good tool, but I have always thought it could be better, much better, so I looked into other ways.
I have always thought that the newer Smartphones could be integrated into the system somehow, as most have pretty good screens, lenses and recording facilities on-board, but trying to find a way of hooking one up to an IR camera, whether via cable or wirelessly has been very frustrating!
I'm not sure if it is possible to remove the IR filter on one, or if there's a filter that can be added to make the Smartphone camera see in Infra Red, that way it could be used directly attached to the scope, and become the monitor, camera and recorder all in one, with a decent IR torch like Marky610's Mk4 of course.
Thinking aloud here, and what better place to do it, my mind is already in overdrive since signing up yesterday and browsing the endless posts on here..........let the "better" nightvision times begin?
