Night Vision Helmet mounted vs handheld thermal scanner

[Nodayhunter]

For those of you who have experience with both handheld scanners and helmet mounted scanners, which do you prefer?

I am debating on selling my bearing optics phenom scanner with a base magnification of 2x for the N-Vision Nox 18 with a base magnification of 1x and mounting it to a helmet.

I truly love my handheld scanner but I think the helmet mounted device would make my coyote hunting a bit nicer with the wider field of view at 1x ? Also worried I might miss the 2x base mag vs the 1x base.

Anybody with experience care to share ?

 

[SkyScrapin]

helmet all day ever day. You wont miss anything. From a spotting perspective, there's no better way to go especially when you track animals from first sighting to squeezing the trigger.

For shooting coyotes, I would still recommend a higher base magnification considering they may hang-up at longer distances.

We can get you rigged up too.

 

[GreenMushroom]

Ideally you would have both. The nox has that eye of sauron effect on 1x but it's pid is limited. We are actually looking to pick up one of those phenom soon to compliment our nox. Together with our coti it should cover all the bases. If both isn't in your budget also consider the flir breach. Breach + phenom roughly equals nox18 price wise. I'd recommend giving Robert at jrh a call to go over the options.

These pics were taken during the day but should give some idea. The bright dot to the left of the u shaped stump is a deers (swamp donkey) head.

1x

4x

8x monocular

Eta at 95 yds

 

[GreenMushroom]

helmet all day ever day. You wont miss anything. From a spotting perspective, there's no better way to go especially when you track animals from first sighting to squeezing the trigger.

For shooting coyotes, I would still recommend a higher base magnification considering they may hang-up at longer distances.

We can get you rigged up too.

Or these guys. These devices at least for me are major purchases and I've found the vendors here to be extremely helpful and knowledgeable. I've talked to several on the phone and my experience has been they're happy to share their knowledge and go over options without any pressure to buy it from them right now.

 

[SkyScrapin]

To @GreenMushroom 's point, the Breach is another option, but you will struggle with PID compared to a 640 unit, and that white hot head in the photo will stand out even less. you will see heat though.

Depends how important range and PID are for you, and for our coyote hunters, it's pretty important to spot critters way out yander.

@wigwamitus and @WhereNow&How are our resident breach experts

 

[wigwamitus]

Run Nox-18 on 1x when moving ... for a closer look bump up to 2x ... and an even closer look bump up to 4x.

Here's nox-18 at 1x

==
And at 2x

==
And at 4x

==

It helped a lot to see the critter move, but here's a critter at 500-ish yards ...

at 1x

is it a yote or a deer ?

going to 4x

==
At those sorts of distances, breach is limited to detection ... here's a breach detecting a cow at 600yds

Note the bright spot (this is artic pallet) ... that's the cow at 600yds

And here's the same scene with the Genesis A55

The 600yd cow is plainly visible as are other cows at 700-800 yds

Detection is definitely useful, but its not PID ... and this is a good example, because it shows an "edge case" where the breach CAN detect a cow at 600yds but not a cow at 700yds plus.

=

I definitely go head mounted. That frees up a hand. I can then spot while moving, hands free. I can roll on 4 wheeler and spot while rolling. PVS-14 on other eye.
For a 360, I spot and turn left 180 degrees, then turn right 180 degrees. So, I can do hands free 360s while on the 4-wheeler, though I do stop for that.
But can definitely spot while rolling and walking with spotter on head. And hands can be doing other things. Climbing over fences, holding handlebars of 4-wheeler, etc.

 

[GreenMushroom]

Nice comparisons. If you can swing it the nox helmet mounted and phenom on a neck lanyard would be an awesome combo and is what we're going to try next.

Environment also plays a big role. From those pics it looks like pid in open country is a lot better with the nox on black hot. We rarely use the black hot for anything other than taking pictures. In the heavy brush we're usually in we use white hot almost exclusively. We're usually looking for a blip or a glimmer and then working angles to get a better resolution and I've found white hot pops a lot better in that scenario.

 

[kirsch]

I will start by saying I am a seasoned coyote hunter but new to helmet-mounted NV and thermal. I know I am probably in the minority saying I prefer a handheld scanner. There are some definite benefits if you can go hands-free especially getting to and from coyote stands. However, I dipped my toe a bit in the water last year and tried it. I tried this on one coyote stand, and I was back to using a Phenom mounted on my selfie stick by the 2nd stand. For me, using it as a stand-alone scanner allows me total freedom to use it virtually for anything (besides driving lights out with NV which would be cool I admit). If you put a scanner on a selfie stick it relieves a ton of stress from your shoulder. My selfie stick on my Phenom has an internal battery, so it will run my Phenom for around 14 hrs also. I know some of my issues were lack of knowledge and proper setup. I really wanted to like it but I don't think a helmet will be back in my future anytime soon. I hunted -25F a number of times last year. I am not sure I could have gotten my head in a helmet with all my cold weather gear either.

If I was in a tactical situation, I would be a pretty easy target to someone with the right equipment but luckily coyotes don't shoot back. Since I am calling coyotes to me, my style of coyote hunting is more stationary. If I was stalking coyotes or hogs, my answer would probably be very different.

In most cases 1x is nice for navigating, but I personally don't love it as a coyote scanner. For those in really tight terrain such as trees, etc that is different. With everything looking so small, for me I lose a lot of depth perception and have a hard time judging the size of the animal. For a tournament last year, I borrowed a 1x, 640 Trijicon scanner. The picture was very, very good. However, at that low power, when coyotes showed up at distances, I really didn't know what they were. The detail was very crisp, but there just isn't enough size to get a good feeling for distance or type of animal. I know a lot of people want a wide FOV, 1x type scanner. I personally like something in the 2x range. The FOV on the Phenom is still fairly generous at 13°x10°. The only time I find it limiting is if hunting extreme hill country. I am not able to sweep an entire hill horizontally, so I may have to make two scanner passes to cover the entire hillside. For open country coyote calling, it is awesome.

 

[shoots100]

I used a hand held scanner for years, then a mounted breach/14 combo.
Sold the breach and 14, as I was swirling down the rabbit hole with both feet and a helmet.
After wanting a head mounted thermal again, but not wanting to spend big $$$$, I bought an AGM TM15 384 and an HD printed cradle mount.
Perfect for scanning while in stand, or I pop it out of the dovetail mount for handheld use.
While it's not in the 640 res NOX or breach class, it does have a 17.5 x 13.1 deg FOV and a 1280 x 960 res display, which adds up to a nice big clear display for scanning.
A Mounted thermal spotter does have it's positives, but most times I'm using them handheld and NV for navigating.

 

[BamaSE]

I have slow walked into appreciating the HMT over handheld. Initially I just used the Iray MH25 for driving. And used the Helion XP50 for sitting and watching and more often for stalking. But as I have gotten more used to the HMT and tweaked the setup for comfort and balance rarely go with the handheld scanner.

Even just sitting and watching the feeder it is so much more enjoyable than having to constantly bring up the scanner to my eye. Sometimes we sit for hours. In my fold out chair I kick back and settle in so the view in the screen is of the field or feeder……then “look under” the screen if I want to fiddle with the phone…..then roll my eyes up when I want to scan around. Brightness doesn’t bother me too bad but I keep the setting dialed down.

With the MH25 I drive the buggy, walk, stalk…..no problem…..I do flip it up and use the red light on my helmet if crossing sketchy ground or a creek….ditto using the low vis green lights on the buggy when driving across culverts and bridges where the margin for error is zero. The KAC bridge makes it super easy to flip up and down as needed.

We have not yet gotten to the 7th level of Hell in south Alabama….aka mid July-October…..so I may have other thoughts after trying to wear the helmet for prolonged periods once the heat and humidity really kick in. I am already dreading that.