Thermal that mounts in front of your day optic?

My personal experience with thermal imaging are the handheld Bullards we carry on the fire engine. I've never hunted with a T.I. scope and am thinking about one to mount ahead of my rifle scope. Do they work? If so, what would be some brands to look into?

I'll have to mount a pic rail to the stock ahead of the day optic. That's understood and no problem.

Saw an ad for the Armasight Clip-On X Riflescope at Cabela's.

Gen 2 + SD $1,899.00
Gen 2 + QS $2,095.00
Gen 3 Ghost $4,495.00

I can't financially go as high as the last one, but what is the difference between the first two?

This is night vision.

But will it still help me find hogs out to 200 yards? And kill 100 and in?

Anything over Gen2 should be good past 100 with illumination. The clip ons tend to move the point of impact, so you'll have to decide which way to zero the rifle.

How are you planning on using the nv?

Not sure what you mean.

Hey I'm a dealer for Armasight if you figure out what your looking for shoot me a pm. I just ordered a Zeus 640 last week and it should be coming in this week if you want to check out a thermal scope. It's a stand alone optic but you could compare it to what you have used.

Bring that sucker to Wolfe City this week. I plan to do some night time hunting. All my rifles wear a 20 MOA pic rail.

I'll let you know when it comes in and we can figure something out. I have been really impressed with Armasight so far.

Charles added me to the staff of tacticalgunreview.com

I can report the findings there and here as well. Right now I am researching what I want so that I know how much money to save.

That would be awesome

I have used this one and it seemed very good. I have used another brand as well but cannot remember the brand. I just used as a hand held though.

http://www.eotechinc.com/thermal-vision-devices/lwts-light-weapon-thermal-sight

Rifle mounted NV can be set up for precision one/two shots, or for rapid acquisition. Shooting single hogs at 150 yards is very different from trying to take out the majority of a sounder at 30-40 yards. Finally, many prefer to use an IR laser on the rifle and then use a head mounted PVS14 to see the target and aim the beam. Also, there are recoil tolerance considerations in that much of the equipment will tolerate less recoil than the nominal rating. Finally, rifle mounted NV is really lousy for spotting hogs; it's heavy and clumsy. Many who go for the dedicated rifle sight subsequently find they really want an additional NV unit for spotting.

If you're going to spend $2000+, you really need to understand how you want to hunt.

Been night time coyote hunting for decades, and the way I've always done it is a red lens spotlight. Some times have to aim for eyes, sometimes can see the body. I have access to thousands of acres of open ground. So consider me to be killing 100-200 yards most of the time.

I think you're on the right track for that kind of hunting. You'll want at least 4x magnification and a quality illuminator. You will probably want to use something other than the rifle scope for spotting incoming coyotes.

Standalone works better than clip on..
We have some Armasights coming in for review and we are also setup as an Armasight dealer

Need to know these things

Hogs and coyotes aint gonna kill themselves.

I have a half dozen thermal clip-ons that I use all the time, actually prefer them over a dedicated TWS:

Thermal Clip-Ons work GREAT.

Very cool!

If I wasn't paying on 70 acres and a rifle range I could do that.

Thermal clip-ons are generally more expensive than dedicated TWS are due to the extra lens collimation issues.

I mostly prefer clip-ons, although you certainly can use thermal during the day instead of a day optic, I mostly like to use my day optics during the day (zero worries about batteries dying on me!).

Here is a hog I ear-shot at noon with a TWS during broad daylight since it was the only rifle I had with me: