The purpose of thermal imaging and night vision technology

Why do you need night vision devices in hunting operations? This question is asked by many German hunters. By law, the Federal Hunting Law allows night hunting only on black and predatory game. While the predatory game has a natural nighttime activity, the increasing pressure of civilization has also caused that day-active native game species, especially wild boar, have become predominantly nocturnal.

As a result, hunters are increasingly forced to hunt at night in order to meet their shooting quotas and prevent animal damage, which can only be carried out using conventional optics for a few days a year.

Any hunter who has already hunted at night knows the feeling of a freezing night without having cut off hunting success. Maybe you could hear in the distance game or just with a high-quality optics just yet. But even the best riflescope will not help you if you can not clearly address the piece or the game blurs into an unidentifiable spot.

To be able to apply an accurate shot at night hunting, it also requires a suitable sighting and observation optics. The question which optics are available for this, you can only answer if you become aware of what makes the accurate shot in low light conditions or even darkness so difficult:

In bad light, the sighting is poor or impossible to see. As a result, you can no longer focus on the already clouded look on his sighting device. On the other hand, it may happen that one recognizes the sight but can not find the reticle on the game body or can not locate the target. A way out of this misery are night vision aids for hunting or optics, which allow the hunter to see at night. Basically, a distinction is made between these two technologies – thermal imaging devices and night vision devices.

Thermal imagers convert the invisible heat radiation from the infrared range of an object into a thermal image. They create a visible image through the different wavelengths of the temperature differences of the surfaces. In the process, this image is projected via the objective and several lenses onto an electronic image sensor. A thermal image in different colors is thus visible to the eye.

Another variant of optics for hunting at night, the night vision devices are also called image converter or residual light amplifier. These devices capture infrared light from the environment on a photocathode. The incident radiation triggers electrons, which are accelerated by a high voltage in a vacuum and release further electrons before they hit a fluorescent screen and produce by fluorescence the well-known bright green image.

The use of these devices must comply with the legal framework conditions when hunting in Germany. This is regulated in both the Federal Hunting Act and the Weapons Act. With the exception of a few holders of special permits, only night vision devices are permitted which have neither an integrated aiming aid nor can be mounted on a weapon and can therefore be used before or after conventional sighting devices. The use of night vision equipment is limited to the game observation or the correct response of the game.

The strengths of night vision devices of the various technologies are thus clearly for the night hunting in Germany on the preparation and follow-up of the shot. They allow a clean response of the game, the shot control and they allow an assessment of the background hazard. Thus, night vision devices improve indirectly when used correctly the hunting starting situation for applying the shot. The night hunt is thus made easier from a shooting technical point of view, thereby minimizing false shoots and paying greater tribute to the justice of justice.

Night vision devices and thermal imaging devices also find other applications in many ways. They enable a search in the dead of night and assist in the rescue of the fawns in meadows of the mowing victim. Thermal imagers have the additional advantage of being able to detect and even respond to wildlife even in fog or heavy rain and through vegetation.

Night vision devices thus provide modern technical possibilities and solutions to make night hunting more intensive and better suited to the game.