On Mon, 18 Jan 2016 19:22:28 -0500, Frank wrote:
> Son just gave me a night vision monocular as a late Christmas gift as it
> was hung up in shipping.
>
...
>
> Wonder if it is useful blood trailing in the dark or seeing deer coming
> out just prior to the end of shooting time?
Not deer - apart from anything else the law here makes it illegal to hunt
deer "after the hours of darkness", without a special permit. An anti-
poaching measure. Also it is a photomultiplier - whilst it is sensitive
in the IR it isn't a thermal imager: the ranges at which deer would be
observed are typically too great for a handheld (I've an old Yukon one)
to be much use.
It is useful for shorter-range quarry like rabbit or hare.
Also, whilst top-end photomultipliers are very good, they're also very
pricey. In terms of price/performance, CCD-based solutions perform pretty
well. I use a Yukon Photon riflescope - again on rabbit and hare (it is
on a .22LR carbine) though I'm aware that some have had success with
them, on fox.