So I bought this night vision scope with the specific intent of handling some smelly black and white critters that have decided to make my back yard their home and my dogs their mortal enemies. This causes a specifically terrible problem in that my dogs are 2 german shorthairs and a pitbull/begle ugly mean mutt dog, so none of them are to eager to back down from a fight.
So here's the hunting grounds:
So it's about 37 yards to the little black container in the center of the first pic and about 17yards out to the fence.
So I go the Night Owl scope from Walmart for $262 bucks, so not exactly top end, but it looked good in the pic and is a 5x zoom with a infrared illuminator. It runs on 1 cr123 that is not included with the scope, so be ready to shell out a few extra bucks for a battery. It does come with some decent lens caps and a nice little carry case.
The first thing that bummed me out a bit was that I noticed it did not have a tripod mount on it, it didn't say anything about it in the specs but I was really hoping it would have one on there. The scope looked really nice and sturdy and well made. It had a focus ring on the eye piece but was to get it nice and dialed and and it actually was surprisingly clear. The one thing I did notice with the optics however was it sure as hell did not seem like a 5x zoom, my 4x scopes seem to zoom in more then this scope did.
Now on to the actual night vision part. This was a big disappointment. The first thing I did was take it into my walk in closet and shut the door to see what it would look like. Well turned it on to check it out without the illuminator first and there was nothing which wasn't to surprising since there was no ambient light, turn on the illuminator and it light up like a flashlight, so I'm thinking good start.
So on to the back yard now I kept my porch light off cause it was a nice full moon night, and coming from a military background and being familiar with NV optics this was more then enough light and should light it up like daytime. Well it didn't. i honestly couldn't tell much of a difference looking through the scope with it turned on or off, it looked identical. I could not see past the fence at 17 yds and could barely make out the tree line. So I figuered I'll flick on the IR and see what happens. Well that helped but if you're thinking your are gonna be looking at small critters scurrying around in the middle of the night you are sorely mistaken.
While I could make out my little shooting lane with the IR on I could make out my little black container even, The IR just seemed to get sucked up by the treeline and would not penetrate. So I would have to say that max range on this baby is 50 yds with the IR on and in a wide open field under optimal conditions on a nice clear night.
Now I did take it walking through the woods just to see what it would be like if you were out scouting around or sightseeing. Without the IR it was pretty much useless, you're better off not holding something up to your face. With the IR it did light it up a bit, but about 15-20 yds is gonna be your max in heavy tree cover.
So my recommendation would be if you are a hunter looking to spot or shoot game though this bad boy move on, or if you need to do any serious long distance or night time nav this is not for you and you are better looking at something like the Pulsar N550, look it up on youtube its sweet, I've used my buddies and want one but at $1500 start saving lol. No if you're doing something like maybe geocachceing at night, it's fun try it, where you kinda know where you're looking and gonna be pretty close it'll work. It might even be something cool to bring along caving with the IR it get deeper then any headlamp or small flashlight.
If you have questions feel free to ask but I got rid of this sucker after a day so I probably wont have the answer but I'll try. Thanks for reading
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