Have you ever used a thermal for hunting?
@devon deer used one legally in England while I hunted with him. It turned my Swaro optics into useless glass. I stood and watched Richard thermal the surrounding areas. I’d used my glass to try to pick the deer out of the thickets after he found them with the thermal.
In the West, using a thermal to glass a ridge a few minutes will tell you if animals are in the basin. Game changer. There’s no reason to sit on a glassing point for a morning if ten minutes of thermal show no animals.
Thermals will increase kill percentages.
As you experienced with me
@brymoore the thermal imager is a game changer for locating deer/vermin.
It does increase your success rate, but the difference being between where I live and where you live are poles apart.
No public hunting, all private here.
We are pickled in deer, anything that makes the culling of deer more efficient isn't frowned upon by the Government.
My thermal is a tool to get the job done, whilst I am a hunter (I think I proved that in Montana) in the main over here I am considered a culler.
The government even issued me a night licence to reduce the deer population in one of my areas, thermal coupled with a day/night vision scope helped a lot.
As you say, you pick a high vantage point, scan for maybe 2 miles, locate, then hunt.
So for me it's efficiency, locate, switch to binos, and either normal glass or day/night scope.
Deer go to either the game dealer, I sell them on, or eat the meat myself.
We are overrun with deer.