I don't own a Themal, but have been on several hunts, actually used one to kill a few times and viewed via blue tooth. Every time, we've been able to get close, like inside 20 yards. Even on a dark night hogs were coming into view with my unaided vision in the dark they were so close. This was with really good quality gun mounted Thermal set ups.

Someone recently gave me the hand held FLIR. I've only tested it out at home on dogs and rabbits, so this is going to work great to locate hogs and downed animals that need to be tracked. To hunt with it, I've considered locating hogs, getting close then going to my AR with a mounted varmint light. So, say I have them at 50 yards, I power up the light while it's pointed up, way up and come down on them slowly, or hit the light while I'm at the ready and find them quick in my scope?

What say ya'll?

Better get ready to shoot in a hurry.

No matter the color of the light, red, green, white, etc. the hogs will spook when you shine it on them. Especially if it's bright. (The exception to this rule is like a feeder light, and the hogs have been conditioned to the light.)

If you are determined to use a weapon mounted light, get a light with a rheostat. (Dimmer switch) Then s-l-o-w-l-y brighten the light until you can see to shoot.

Next step up is NV like Sightmark Wraith. They are affordable and effective.

My method is to line up as well as possible, turn the light on( weapon mounted red or green) and quickly refine my aim and pull the trigger. I used to think that red had a bit of an edge but green has worked very well under the same circumstances. I felt the old weak yellowish halogen bulbs spooked them the least but all give plenty of time to shoot unless the hog has already been made nervous.

Feeder lights is the way to go. The hogs, or any animal get used to them going off and on with the motion sensors, and the lights that stay on.

BbarVRanch is right.

Even turning on the light slowly, or lowering the light slowly, which will help, will often fail with hogs where light has been used on them before.

I did some testing with red, green, and white lights years ago. White was just plain scary to the hogs. Red seemed to disturb them least, but hogs were hardest to see. Green was in between. Hogs did take notice quicker and hogs were easier to see than with red.

Don't believe anyone when they tell you that hogs can't see the lights (whatever the color). People often confuse behavior for capability. Usually, the claim goes something like, "I lit them up with my red (or green) Super Duper Brand light and they didn't do a thing. They could not see it." I have seen similar video where hogs have been lit up with white light and didn't do a thing. It isn't that they can't see the light. They may not be able to tell if it is red or green, but they are not blind to the light. The point is, they won't necessarily run or be startled if they have never been lit up before, but they learn fast.

I remember the Laser Genetics ads shows all sorts of animals being lit up with their (at the time) high dollar green illuminator. In none of their examples did the animals run away. So my hunting partner got one and the first time he lit up hogs for us, the hogs were gone before we could pull the trigger. He first thought we must have done something wrong (winded us, too much noise, etc.). So we found another boar. That boar bolted when it got lit up as well, but fortunately we were ready for it to run. He was quite disappointed that the animals did not respond as they showed in the ads. So he decided to use it around the house to kill vermin. Worked great for skunks. Tried it on armadillos and they just about disappeared. The grey of their shells did not show well in the green light, LOL.

If you are like most of us, you will bump up to something like digital NV after a few failures and then wonder what took you so long to make the change.

We've been using a FLIR scout for years with LED flashlights gun mounted. Works pretty well for us.
We use the FLIR for spotting and get close then turn on scope mounted LEDs for shooting.
Use it find down hogs too.
The scout is pretty neat but not like a thermal rifle mounted scope.
We have a PS32.