Night Hunting without Visible Light

[rickt300]

Just ordered a Evolva Ir illuminator to put on my Latest model Photon XT. This sight has worked fine for me on several hunts but it is at it's best watching bait piles as it has to be focused for the distance you need to shoot, not so good for roving but ok for hunting from stationary settups.

[rickt300]

Mounted the Evolva on my Photon XT and what a difference! I can easily see out past 150 yards with the IR set on it's lowest setting which is farther than I would normally shoot at night. An incredible improvement over the onboard IR illuminator. The minus is the glare when the IR light hits anything near what I am looking at or under it is pretty bright. Eyes in the dark become easy to see way out there. The Photon is very user friendly being that I have to push one button to light up the sight and one button on the IR and I am ready to focus either the sight or the illuminator. The sight is mounted on a bolt action 308 and I am shooting a reduced load that makes 2400 fps with a 130 grain Speer hollow point. Can't wait to try it out but I am suffering from the flu and the five minutes I just spent outside in the cold chilled me to the bone.

[Sputnik]

It will be interesting to watch reports of the ATN X-Sight-4k Pro 3x14 and their Supernova IR illuminator coming out soon. They are supposed to be a cut above X-Sight II with 18 hours of battery life and numerous improvements. March is the target I believe, although Optics Plant is taking orders now and their estimated ship date is 7-14 days. I don't think it will be that soon.

[Bevo]

I have the Photon XT and Evolva mounted on my Aero Precision .223. As others said it works really well out to 150 yards with a clear sight line. I took two hogs with it last weekend.

[sierracharlie338]

Thanks bakabone!

Here is a good example video. This is one of my earlier videos and include cheesy music. My apologies. However, it will demonstrate the use of the IR illuminator (one almost exactly the same as the Evolva) and how it can reflect on close things and the reflection obscure distant things. This also includes smoke from the rifle. If you have a light breeze, this goes away very fast. If it is a still night, the particulates can hang in the air for literally 2-4 seconds and obscure your view because so much light is reflected off the smoke particulates.

I happen to like some blues! I enjoyed that video actually.