I have a half dozen hogs at each of my feeders every night. Never see them during daylight on the cameras. Never hunted at night before.

Each feeder has a tower blind 100yds away. I don’t envision hunting in other scenarios than sitting in one of my blinds.

From my limited research thermal or night vision are what I need. I could see maybe going once or twice a month to shoot some hogs. What should I be looking at buying? Don’t need the absolute best but don’t want junk either. Just something that will work and do the job and not leave me frustrated.

Have you thought about hog lights on your feeder?

If you just have a single place (feeder) in mind to hunt, only a few times a year, you may be better off with a feeder light like UB suggested.

If you are going to make more of a sport of it and do that hunting more often, and expand your hunting areas, a Sightmark Wraith is your huckleberry.

If you are an avid, serious night hunter, and have the money, thermal may hit the spot.

If you've got the $, thermal and quality NV are nice. If you plan to sit in a stand and hunt over the feeders, quality LEDs are going to work as good and save lots of $. If you can, a combo of mostly red and a little green is best.
Kill em all.

The Wraith is an excellent option so long as you have a clear line of sight to the feeder. If you have narrow shooting lanes, then the IR illuminator light will largely be reflected back at you, making it hard to see down range. HOWEVER, feeder lights would alleviate this issue. The Wraith and feeder lights would be a great combination.

The cool thing about the Wraith is that it is an excellent daylight scope as well.

It is a gateway optic to thermal, however, so be warned.

I just started hunting with a Wraith, and im happy with it. I had a spare upper to put it on that didn't have an optic anyways, so it made sense for me. Now I'm looking at installing a long range IR spot on the back of my house since the feeder is 100yds away. In your case i'm not sure i would build or buy an entirely new rifle/optic, unless you just want to. If your looking for a budget option the feeder light might be a better solution.

I recently changed out the LED in my illuminator to a 940nm serving one of my Wraiths...

BIG difference in hunting brushy areas.

It was an issue looking through a barbwire fence that was close before, as well as brush.. That 940nm lets me see at several times better. Big difference.

That is really interesting. I have hunted with both 850 and 940 nm lights. Both reflect off of vegetation. If you have vegetation between you and the target, the vegetation will far outshine the target. Also, for the same amount of power, the throw (distance of shine) of 940 nm lights is much less than 850 nm.

The only thing I can figure out is that because the 940 is effectively less powerful than the 850, that you get a bit less shine reflected back at you and are not as overwhelmed by it on incident occlusions such as barbed wire.

The main benefit to the 940, true 940, is it doesn't glow.

Yessir! Not as much, anyway.

The reason I wanted to try 940 is that I'm pretty sure a few hogs, and even one raccoon was spooked by the glow.

Seeing better through fences and brush for me was just icing on the cake.

That was my take away as well.

The 940 still shines very well for me, distance wise too. I pretty much limit myself at a couple hundred yards shooting at night, and can see trally well past that a good bit.

Going out tonight with it. Hopefully I can get some video to compare it with video using the 850. Because what you see through the screen, and what the video looks like can be pretty different.

Just starting out, above is what you need. $50. and see if you enjoy staying up
all night to kill a hog.
Here is what I use. I've used the same one for 5 years now.
The light is a lot brighter than what is show in the description.
https://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/moultrie-feeder-hog-light#repChildCatid=1095910

I think I'd recommend in order:

- Feeder Light (if you're doing NV or just a light)
- Some kind of night scope. NV or Thermal (If you're going to jump in to thermal, skip the feeder light)
- Driveway alarm at the feeder so you don't have to always be paying attention. (You can hear it while watching movies on your iPad in the blind. )
- Handheld thermal monocular. The monocular will always be a great item to have, regardless what you shoot with. Scanning at night with a rifle mounted scope of any kind, blows big time.


Getting used to the frenzy after the first shot and settling on another, just takes some time/practice.

Have fun!
Charlie

As CharlieCTx stated above, a handheld thermal monocular is very useful. It doesn't need to be a real high-end model, either. While I'd like something better, I still a LOT of good use from my old Pulsar 1X 9Hz thermal monocular.

I got the ATN X sight 4k on Amazon for about $700, great day and night scope, with the streamlite ir illuminator 100yard shot is very clear if you have a clear lane even with no ambient light