I wish they would allow these for color blind hunters to track blood. I'd buy it in a heart beat.
they are allowed pretty much everywhere I hunt...
where are you located? thermals arent allowed?
Im not sure most thermals would help much trying to find a blood trail unless it was super fresh (still very warm) and there was a lot of it..
where mine has worked wonders is finding the heat of a downed animal at distance.. as an example, I shot a whitetail doe last season.. she took off into the wood line.. I gave her about 15 minutes, then decided to go find her..
there was reasonable blood.. a very clear lung hit (frothy and pink).. but the woods were super thick.. so once I got about 20 yards in and didnt see the body, I decided to go back to the side-by-side and get the thermal..
I went back to where I last found blood (20 yards into the wood line).. turned the thermal on, and began to scan..
Found her less than 30 seconds later.. just another 25-30 yards from where I was standing... the problem was she piled up under a tree and was about 3/4 covered in leaves.. she must have taken a dive into a big pile under the oak she was near.. so with the naked eye she was super hard to see (brown doe covered in brown leaves)... I had to get within 10 yards of her to actually "see" here with the naked eye... but the thermal picked up her heat signature immediately..
Its also great for "spotting" game in the first 30-45 minutes Im sitting in the blind before first legal light.. I'll sometimes use the thermal to "clear" my approach to the blind in the morning and look down the path to my blind, and beyond the blind to the feeder to make sure Im not going to disturb something as Im trying to get in to position to start the hunt.. then once Im in the blind, I'll use it to scan the wood line around the blind, and all the way down the shooting lane (Ive got about 350 yards of open field that parallels old telephone poles and telephone lines) to see if anything is approaching before sun up...
Once the sun is up, its not really of any value... until game is shot.. Its a handheld.. not mounted to a rifle, etc.. and I can "see" anything it can "see" coming down field to the food plot and feeder...
