Anyone use a simple night scope around $500 and a nice accurate bolt rifle? Like maybe a Tikka or some such?

Maybe I should be asking what the differences are between night vision and thermal scopes are and is the AR platform better at hog irradication than a simple bolt gun?

If I ever got a suppressor I would get a bolt gun with thermal. Never demo a thermal bc you will save money for a year and a year to buy one.

Im halfway there. Ive got a Sightmark Photon XT which is a simple night scope. I've got mine sitting on a .300 Blackout AR. I've used it in day and night and it works great. If i had the dough Id save up for a thermal. I have a handheld FLIR thermal imager and its awesome.

The obvious difference is just pure semi-automatic vs single shot/bolt action. That shouldn't take any explanation. AR's allow you the ability to more easily mount extras like IR illuminators, flashlights, red dots etc.

Thermal allows you to more easily see targets, well before you'll ever see them with NV. It does come with a price. Lots of folks still using NV. Deerstrangler has the right idea with a NV scope and a thermal spotter.

Differences between NV and thermal are that NV allows you to see at night and see through glass (such as for driving through your property with the lights off. NV requires a light source to see. Good Gen 3 gear will allow you to see most nights with no artificial light source as the stars and moon will provide your light. Cloudy nights, particularly cloudy with no moon can render your NV scope of little use for hunting without using some other source for illumination and then you are sort of back to hunting with a gen 1 scope and an IR illuminator. It works, but isn't ideal. However, this is just an occasional problem, not an all the time problem. What is an all the time problem is that animal colors and patterns that work to camo the animal in daylight also work with night vision. If you aren't using an illuminator to get eye shine or to really brighten up what you are seeing, a brown coyote can blend very well into brown grass. Animals walking in the night shade of a treeline can be undetectable with NV.

With thermal, it is like the animal is its own light source because the animal appears to be "glowing" (at least in white hot, LOL). Coloration patterns don't matter. Hiding in the shade of a tree line doesn't matter. Any source of heat in a field will glow, but if you are hunting some place like a crop field, the things glowing the most will be animals. The downsides to thermal is that you can't see through glass for driving. Both NV and thermal are affected by fog, but thermal is more affected by humidity and stuff in the air (pollen, dust, etc.). During long periods of wet conditions, everything in the environment cools off except for animals. This will render much of what you see in the background (ground, grass, trees, dormant/unheated or cooled buildings, etc.) as being virtually the same temperature and will cause much of your background to just appear to be grey or with only very subtle distinctions. Animals and heat sources will stand out, but the rest does not.

In my opinion, for navigating purposes, NV is better. For hunting purposes, thermal is better.

By and large, both platform types have advantages and disadvantages, but I think thermal is much better for hunting than NV. That is why you see so many people going to thermal and not NV for hunting.

DUDE! Awesome explination double naught spy! I think you just cost me $2k...;)