Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Gamekeeper
Whether for predator control, spotting or surveillance, night vision is a key part of the keeper’s arsenal — but the lamp still has its place
Iattended a night-vision evening, put on by a local gun shop, some 10 or 12 years ago. One or two of us, while impressed with what we saw, were reluctant to part with the money — or didn’t think we could persuade our bosses to part with their money — to buy an image intensifier or dedicated night sight, no matter how much we wanted one.
There was a keeper there who quite rightly said that in a few years’ time we would all have them, regardless of the price, in much the same way that it took us a while to get our heads round forking out £100 for a pair of neoprene-lined wellingtons. And how right he was.
No longer a luxury
Ten years on and night-vision optics are no longer regarded as unneeded luxuries or big boys’ toys — they are now very much part and parcel of most keepers’ arsenals. Whether they are used for predator control, spotting or surveillance, the number of full- and part-time keepers who own them is ever growing.
The sights themselves have changed as well. The earlier ones were rather cumbersome, usually ex-military, rarely guaranteed, almost impossible to repair and very expensive. The newer ones are lighter, cheaper, far superior optics-wise, and have been joined by the new kid on the block: the thermal imager.
We still use a lamp but tend to use a combination of image intensifier and thermal spotter when we are sat out for a particularly difficult or lamp-shy fox, or if we are sitting out on a partridge drive waiting for foxes to appear and don’t want to disturb the birds with a lamp — very easily done, especially on a quiet, still night.
Our image intensifier is a scope-mounted model that clips into an adaptor on the front of our normal day scope. It isn’t the best by any means, but it is good enough to shoot foxes out to 100 yards, and negates the need for us to have a separate rifle with a dedicated night sight on it.
Our thermal spotter is a fairly new hand-held monocular. It is lightweight, the image is exceptionally clear, and it includes a rangefinder and an option to photograph or film what you are looking at — useful for intelligence and data gathering and the assessment of deer populations, for example.
One of the most useful things a thermal imager can do that a lamp and an image intensifier can’t is see through things. On many occasions I have spotted something in or on the other side of a hedge with the thermal imager that has been invisible in the image intensifier and impossible to see with the naked eye with the lamp.
You can spot foxes in straw swathes, rats in hedges and deer sitting in bramble patches. Things that you would never have 34 • SHOOTING TIMES & COUNTRY MAGAZINE spotted with the lamp can appear in the unlikeliest of places. It is quite an education to scan an area with the lamp and see nothing, change to the thermal spotter because you know a fox is working an area, spot the fox immediately and wonder where on earth it came from, and how you managed to miss seeing it in the lamp.
Long live the lamp
Will image intensifiers and thermal imagers ever replace the lamp? I don’t think so. The lamp has its place — it is quicker to scan a field with a lamp than it is with a monocular, and lamps can be seen by undesirables who will be put off poaching and stealing from farm buildings if they see someone is out and about. Not only that, but if your deer, hare or rabbits are being lamped by poachers, they will become lamp-shy and you will spot it sooner if you are still lamping yourself.
The exciting thing about improvements in technology and ideas that can be used and adapted by gamekeepers is, of course, what will come next. Because as sure as eggs is eggs, something will.
What it will be I don’t know, but when it does I expect I will be my usual cautious self and wait for the more adventurous of my friends to try it out first.
“One of the most useful things a thermal imager can do is see through things”