A buddy of mine recently decided to invest in a few nice thermals (it's good to have a buddy that likes toys). We've gone out a few times, but neither of us can get used to the eye strain caused when you go from looking through the brightness of the scope to the darkness all around.

Any tips/tricks or is this just part of night hunting?

Decrease your brightness setting. Also, I like white hot the best. The main colors in the scope are black and grey and heat shows up as white. Overall, the screen keeps a lower brightness setting with the darker colors. My buddy runs his on black hot. All the surrounding colors are white and light grey and heat shows up as black. Overall, this setting is much brighter to me with the lighter colors and kills my night sight the most. Play with your settings on the brightness and change up the different color options your thermal has.

Also, I change from right eye to left eye often. I can shoot both left or right handed. So I switch it up to have less strain. I won't constantly stay in the scope. It will wear on you. And make sure you are in focus. I'll check that to make sure I'm not straining on the focus part either.

ChadTRG42 - Thanks for the tips. We've played around with the setting a bit but probably need to spend more time with them. If I'm not mistaken we have them set to black hot. I'll try switching to white hot and lowering the brightness.

I like the idea of switching from left to right eye. I'm left handed but fairly comfortable shooting from the right.

I have a handheld thermal and have gotten used to it blinding me if I stay on it for any length of time. I only use my left eye to scout for game and "save" my right eye for the thermal scope. I also never stay on either thermal more than a few minutes at a time. Absent a handheld, just stay on the thermal rifle scope long enough to see if any thermal images are present. I also have a back-up thermal (A Pulsar Core Thermal) with a "green sapphire" screen that seems to be a bit easier on the eyes.

Good luck hunting!