The case for night vision
A lot of my mates use thermalimaging devices and nightvision gear to shoot rabbits but I feel this is cheating because it makes the process too easy. I prefer to go lamping. What do you think?
Ed says: A lot of people use night vision and thermal, myself included. Like all forms of pest control rabbits soon learn what ‘the crack’ is. Night vision and thermal imaging aren’t a magic formula to solve a rabbit problem. Most rabbit populations need a mixed amount of control methods delivered in a way that has the goal of high-level reduction. Even though thermal imaging and night vision can provide discreet control, rabbits will learn what the noise of a gun and movement means, making them jumpy and time consuming to remove. For this reason I feel that if someone wants to remove rabbits and prevent the damage they cause in high numbers, ferreting followed by lamping from a quad bike with a .410 on arable ground is hard to beat. Stragglers can then be removed via night vision. If the problem is localised pockets then night vision is very good tool. All my night vision work is on foot as it’s more thorough. Lamping is normally done on a quad so I cover more ground. Night vision and thermal imaging are simply other tools in the box.