Over the past couple years I have been the beneficiary of the resources found on this site for my thermal acquisitions, so thought I'd post some info that may be helpful to someone else. I shoot with a Mark 3 Hunter 60 mm, and scan with a Reap 35. Prior to that I also had a Patrol. The Patrol is a great scanner. An issue for me was I could not come up with a helmet mounted dual PVS 14 solution that accommodated my eyeglasses.....at least without some trial and error for which this stuff is too expensive for that! Also, our hunting locations are a mix of woods and open fields. The Patrol is perfect for the woods at 1x. I found at several hundred yards it was great in letting me know something was out there, but in the fields with crops or grown brush then over a couple hundred yards I was reaching for the rifle and the Reap for positive ID. I wound up selling the Patrol, buying the Hunter 60 and converting the Reap to my scanner. This has proved to be a great combination for our hunting areas. However, I would not want the 60 mm without the Reap as a scanner. I prefer to shoot with higher base mag, and anything over 50 yards is where the 60 really does great. Closer in and there is a blurred effect due to the 4.5 base mag. It is less apparent with an actual critter, as I have shot hogs as close in as 30 yards with it, but this time of year with the foliage on the trees every leaf between me and the critter increases that blurred effect. So if one goes this route make sure you have something else with lower mag for scanning or you will be disappointed in the woods. When I sold the Patrol, I also let go of my Pulsar Trail XP 50, which was at that time doing sole duty as the buddy scope. So my plan was to acquire another scope that had lower base mag to use when I knew for certain I'd be set up on a feeder in the woods and swamps, and also be used to fill the need for an extra when I had a guest. I considered converting my Reap for this purpose, but I have come to enjoy it so much as a scanner I decided against that option. Had I done so, I had considered the N-Vision Atlas to serve scanner duty, but in the end decided that no matter which direction I went that if I was going to spend this much money the device better have a crosshair! I narrowed my choices down to the Mark 2 Hunter 35 or the N-Vision Halo 25. In the end I decided to go with the Halo for 2 reasons. One, just because of the hype and wanting to check it out. Two, the size along with the ADM return to zero mount allows the option of it being used as both a scanner and a scope. This way at least the guest does not have to point the rifle to enjoy the view. The day the Halo arrived was rainy. It finally stopped at dark thirty and the temperature held in the low 70s. With high humidity and everything wet, thermal conditions were terrible.......yet perfect for what I wanted to do which was compare both the Halo and Reap. I had already downloaded the manual of the Halo in advance so had a good feel for operations. It was easy to set up. First impressions lived up to the hype as the picture is amazing. I booted up the Reap and held it up as close as I could to get a binocular effect to get a good comparison. I run my Reap in white hot with low brightness to really make the critters stand out, so I had some adjustments between both scopes to get the picture as relative as possible between the two. The Reap is more of the old black and white television image, and the Halo has a greenish hue. The background features such as trees and tree lines, buildings, etc. showed a lot more clarity and differentiation with the Halo. No matter what I did to the Reap, I could not get the same image. Don't get me wrong, it was not a poor quality image by any means, but something about the color hue to the Halo gives it an edge.....in white hot. When I swapped to black hot the images were a lot closer. My neighbor's dog came out for his nightly jaunt. At 120 yards I could tell a difference in clarity with the Reap over the Halo. The dog is medium size, about 40 lbs., and at that distance the Reap picked out every detail such as eyes and hair. The Halo was a little blurred. I think this correlates to the Reap base mag being 2.5x and the Halo 1.75x. Also, the Reap having the extra 10 mm of objective could have been a factor. As the dog rounded the fence and got to 100ish yards the images were pretty close and as it came on closer in they were identical in details. So, the take away from this experience for me was the overall background image quality on the Halo 25 is better than the Reap, but the Reap 35 has an edge on critter clarity at a greater distance. Zeroing the Halo is pretty simple and I got that done with little issue. Initially I had trouble with the cross-hairs moving more than intended, but when I read the directions in more detail realized some nuances on how long the button is held moves the crosshair either 1 or 5 pixels...whatever that means. I also did a quickie online search at the range and found the crosshair moves either 1 MOA or 2 MOA. Not sure which is correct, I hope not 2 MOA! The Reap manual has detailed crosshair movements for each magnification level in the manual. A little more clarity on the crosshair movement in the Halo manual would have been beneficial. But in the end got it dialed in okay. Last night I took the Halo out for its first hunt. Unfortunately the pigs did not cooperate so I was not able to get the first kill, but do have some more takeaways. The Reap was serving scanner duty, and I had to tone down the Halo. We were in the swamp setup about 35 yards from a feeder, and the image detail which is so great was almost overbearing until I lowered the brightness. It was like my brain was processing too much! The temp was cool in the low 50s and I was wearing some very thin gloves, but found I had to take them off to use the button controls. It is not difficult with bare fingers, and I am sure with more practice it will become second nature, but there is definitely an issue for me with the gloves. My Hunter with the knobs is probably the easiest, the Reap I turn on the quick set menu so all I have to do is touch the joystick and it brings up basic commands. Gloves are not an issue on either of these. As far as preference.......I really don't have one. They are all great products. And these are like tools in the toolbox for me.....and the given purpose of each is similar to picking the right screwdriver depending on the type screw head. If I was for certain that in most of my hunting I was going to be shooting less than 150 yards with the occasional longer shot then the Halo 25 would be my choice. For my purpose of having a close in woods/swamp thermal the Halo is perfect. When we are cruising on the buggy or set up over open areas the Hunter 60 is ideal. If there is any question on ID I just shift to the rifle and usually have it figured before my hunting partner can even zoom. And as mentioned earlier, I really like the Reap as a scanner, and if I ever need to I can easily transition back to a scope. For eyeglass wearers, the Trijicon and N-Vision scopes have plenty of eye relief once the rubber eye caps are removed. I did put a Butler Creek flip cap on all of them. One other thing I really like about the Halo is the circle/dot reticle. I wish my Reap or Hunter had that feature. I do like my Reap has armor as I can break or damage about anything. The Halo "feels" better/balanced on my designated rifle than the Reap did. Not sure why, it just does. One of my upcoming observations will be how well a guest takes to using the Halo. With the Pulsar Trail being the buddy scope it was easy. Long battery life, AutoNUC, PIP so no zoom....just put it on white hot and hand it to them. All they had to do was focus and go with it. With the Trijicon and the Halo that will be more challenging as they will at minimum have to understand NUC. At least the Halo like the Hunter does not require much NUCing after initial startup. My Reap has to be NUCed several times in the first few minutes of operation, which can be a PIA. As I get some more time behind the Halo I will report back. We have another hunt planned for Saturday night, so hopefully that first kill will be coming soon.
