Night Vision Hunting- How far do you need to see?

[Digital]

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Lots of thermal and night vision products talk about being able to see hundreds of yards at night. Some even a 1000 yards with big price tags. But to effectively hunt, how far do you need to see?

 

[handloader]

Depends on where you are hunting. Woods, not so far. Bean field, long ways off.

 

[Granite3]

Very few folks can shoot much further than 100-150 yards at night.

Most of my shots have been less than 100 yards.

 

[ReservoirDawg10]

Depends on how far you plan on taking a shot.

 

[Sandybar]

I can see and identify targets out to 400 yards but with my night vision and or thermal. But at those distances I'm more likely to miss than hit. With a ir laser I wouldnt go past 100 yards for a sure hit.
I prefer clip on in front of my day scope so I can always trust my zero. I usually use a thermal to scan for targets and then take my shot with a gen 2 atn front of scope clip on that works amazing with a little help from and ir illuminator.

 

[Burdy]

To hog hunt at night? 50-75 yards. They are stupid. Ive snuck up on one at night with my MPX and shot it in the head at about 10 feet.
To coyote hunt at night? 100-200 yards
Thermal will identify far beyond that. NV will as well but past 200 its going to depend on either really good moonlight or the quality of your illuminator and the scope itself.
These are hard questions to answer because quality differences in NV and Thermal are huge. Additionally, if you are running pass through designs with your day optic, the quality of your day optic matters. As does ambient light and the quality of your IR light and/or laser/illuminator.
The hardest part for me of hunting at night is gauging distance beyond 250 yards across open areas. Its extremely difficult, at least for me. The cool thing is if you have night vision and a range finder, your range finder laser is actually IR, so you can see the beam through your NV. Kind of hard to manage by yourself, but if you are hunting in two man teams, you can get the distance.