I went out recording owls last night.
It was a practice for an all nighter this weekend.
Our group of "boring white middle class birders" were loaned four
different sets of night optics from Cabela's for review. Three of
the five of us are professional birders and as you likely know I am
not one of those three.
More info see:
http://www.cabelas.com/
This is the same source for my Guilles Suit for full camo.
A prior member of this group will be doing the formal review of
different units and I will try and post his review when done. It was
my first chance to play with this techy device.
The generation 3 night optics binoculars are really amazing. Not
something that you want to use anywhere near street lights or even
tail lights of cars. My conception of them before starting was that
these were all about infrared spot lights and the optics picking up
what was illuminated. Boy was I wrong. The best set which was a
~$2,400.00 US pair and it has no illumination device at all. Looking
with them was like using standard binoculars but at night, but
everything was "daylight" in black and white. Actually green and
white. Somethings were different in that leaves were much whiter,
eyes much darker, and stars could be seen through the clouds.
The $150.00 generation 1 monocular was bright but the center of focus
was small and made it difficult to seach a landscape for unknown
targets.
I understand that the government paperwork is deeper than buying
firearms right now for these devices but they are finally available
in quality. I will get to spend another 12 hours with these devices
this weekend and really look forward to using them to get outstanding
sound recordings as I should know when the owls start to think that
we are getting to close. I won't have a chance to see and comment
what a frog looks like with them as it is still snow here but I bet
it is nice.
Rich Peet
Rich Peet
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