Ditching the binoculars

I have bought a thermal imager for spotting deer. I have a very good riflescope and I rarely use my binoculars out stalking. Do I really need to carry an expensive pair of binoculars around my neck as well as a thermal imager?

The advent of thermal imaging has been a game-changer for deerstalking. A good thermal device means you can detect deer that you would not otherwise have spotted, but you still have to identify them and, in most cases, confirm sex and age class.

With practice and experience, you can often do this with a thermal device. Once you have identified the deer as a shootable animal, you can put the scope on it, giving you the chance to confirm the target through conventional optics before taking the shot.

But there will be situations in which a heat signature is only partially seen, usually through a screen of vegetation, or where the thermal picks up animals at long range that cannot easily be identified. Then you do need good binoculars to establish what you are looking at. However good your thermal device, you should not be without binoculars. GD

How to spot it and where to find it: You will have to look hard for lesser stitchwort because it is small, as its name suggests, and is often hidden by other plants. A straggly perennial, it grows in low clumps in open woodland, on meadows and heathland, and along hedgerows and on roadside verges. With its long, narrow leaves, it almost looks like a grass, but for its tiny white flowers, which appear from May to September. Those flowers have five petals but each is so deeply divided they look like they have 10. The flowers only last around three days, but are quickly replaced by new ones to form a lovely display. Interesting facts: Stellaria, the genus name, means star-like, while graminea means like grass, a reference to the leaves. The common epithet, stitchwort, comes from the belief that the plant could cure that pain in the side during or after exercise known as a ‘stitch’. English herbalist John Gerard said of people using lesser stitchwort: “They are wont to drink it in wine (with the powder of acorns) against the pain in the side, stitches, and such like.” As part of the same family as chickweed, lesser stitchwort can be eaten, but it does contain small quantities of saponins, which can be toxic. NJS

Despite advances in thermal imaging, binoculars remain a vital part of the stalker’s kit