Best Thermal Scope for Coyote Hunting

The four specs that decide everything

Ignore the model names for a minute. Every thermal scope on the market is a combination of these four, and price tracks them almost perfectly.

• Sensor resolution — 384×288 or 640×480. This is the single biggest price driver. A 640 sensor gives you more picture to zoom into before it turns to mush
• NETD — thermal sensitivity, measured in millikelvin. Lower is better. Under 25 mK is good, under 20 mK is excellent. This is the number that decides whether you can still see on a humid night
• Base magnification — the optical magnification before any digital zoom. A "3–12×" scope is 3× optical and the rest is cropping the sensor
• Refresh rate — 50 Hz or 30 Hz. On a coyote running a fence line, 30 Hz smears and 50 Hz does not

NETD is the one people skip and then regret. Resolution is what gets advertised because it is a big number that sounds like a camera. But two scopes with identical 384 sensors can look completely different in the field if one is 25 mK and the other is 40 mK, and the difference shows up exactly when you need it: heavy dew, fog, a warm night when the ground and the animal are closer in temperature. That is most of the season in a lot of country.

Base magnification is where the marketing gets slippery. A 2–16× sounds like more scope than a 3–12×, but if the 2–16× is 2× optical then everything above about 6× is digital zoom on the same pixels. You are not seeing further, you are seeing bigger and blurrier. Look for the base number, not the range.

The detection range number is nearly useless

Every thermal box quotes a detection range. It will say something like 1,800 yards, and it is technically true and practically meaningless.

Two reasons. First, those figures are calculated against a man-sized target — roughly 1.8 m by 0.5 m. A coyote is a fraction of that heat signature, so the real number for our purposes is a long way short of the box.

Second, and more importantly, detection is not identification. The industry uses three thresholds:

• Detection — you can tell something warm is there
• Recognition — you can tell it is an animal rather than a fence post holding the day's heat
• Identification — you can tell it is a coyote and not somebody's dog, a fawn, or a badger

Identification is the only one that matters, and it is a small fraction of the detection number. You do not get to shoot at a heat blob. Anyone who has spent a night behind a thermal has watched a “coyote” resolve into a jackrabbit at eighty yards, and the whole game is being able to tell before you commit.

When you are comparing two scopes, compare them at the range you actually shoot, not at the number on the box.

On my own Thermion 2 LRF I can identify a coyote at 600 to 700 yards when it is out on an open flat or a pivot. That is a real number from my country and it does not transfer to yours. I do not deal with much humidity, and humidity is exactly what takes identification range away, so if you hunt wet air you want that number from somebody who does.

The worst mis-ID I have had did not come from a thermal at all. It came from a light. I had a pair of eyes and a body that was the right size, and I nearly shot a mule deer fawn. I did not, and I have thought about it plenty since.

That is the argument for thermal in one paragraph, and it is not about seeing farther. It is about knowing what you are looking at before you commit. It is a safety question before it is a hunting one.

What to buy, by what you can spend

Entry, roughly $700–2,500. This is where most predator hunters actually buy, and it is where the AGM Rattler line sits. Modest base magnification, and honest performance inside the ranges most coyotes get shot at. Check the sensor before you check the price, because the Rattler name covers two very different scopes. The cheapest one is around $695 and that is a 256×192, which is a real scope with a real limit on how far out you can tell a coyote from a dog. The 384×288 version runs around $1,395 and is the one worth stretching for. HikMicro and InfiRay compete here and have got noticeably better in the last two years.

Mid, roughly $2,500–4,000. A 640 sensor or a much better NETD, usually both, plus a 50 Hz refresh. Pulsar’s Thermion line lives here and it is the default recommendation of most people who hunt a lot — the Thermion 2 XQ50 Pro runs around $2,000 and the LRF version around $3,000. This is the band where the picture stops being something you tolerate and starts being something you enjoy. Every Pulsar riflescope is decoded here if the model codes are the thing stopping you.

Serious money, $5,000 and up. The Trijicon REAP-IR Mini — the 24mm Type 3, around $8,999 — and the top of the Pulsar range. Genuinely better glass and genuinely better sensors, and well past the point of diminishing returns for anyone not doing this for a living.

I am a Pulsar guy and you should read the rest of this page knowing it. I have hunted behind the Trail, the Apex, the original Thermion and the Thermion 2, and I scan with a Helion. I have not hunted behind the AGM or ATN entry scopes, so I am not going to name a pick in that band. Plenty of sites will, and none of them have looked through one either.

If the budget were there I would love to run a Trijicon. It is not, so I do not, and I am not going to tell you how one holds up across a season I have never hunted with it.

Whatever you buy, the scope is not the whole system. A thermal scope with no scanner means glassing through a rifle, which is both slow and a bad habit. Most people who hunt thermal seriously run a handheld monocular to find and the scope only to shoot.

Buying used, and the discontinued models

Thermal holds value badly, which is bad news for sellers and good news for buyers. A three-year-old flagship often outperforms a new entry-level unit at the same money, because sensor and NETD improvements have been incremental while prices at the top have stayed high.

The older Pulsar units — Trail, Helion, Apex, the original Thermion — and the ATN Thor HD generation all turn up used regularly. If you are shopping that market, the same rule applies as anywhere else on this site: check what it actually is, not what the listing says it is.

Two cautions specific to thermal. Export restrictions are real — these are controlled items, sellers will not ship some of them internationally, and that includes private sales. And check whether the warranty transfers, because it varies by brand and on a scope costing this much it is worth real money. Pulsar’s does transfer on proof of purchase or a serial number, and they repair out-of-warranty units too, which is a large part of why a used Pulsar is a safer buy than most.

What I would actually buy

I run a Pulsar Thermion 2 LRF, and with the same money I would buy it again. That is the whole verdict. The mid band is where this page spends its time because it is where I spend mine, and the rangefinder is the part I would not now give up.

Whether to upgrade is a budget question, not a spec question. The newer models are nicer. That is true and it is also not the point: if you are killing coyotes with what you already own, keep the money in your pocket for a while longer.

What changes that math is the other side of the trade. There are people trying to get into this who cannot spend three thousand dollars on a scope, and your used unit is exactly the way in they are looking for. Selling it does two jobs at once. Somebody gets started, and you have paid for a good part of the upgrade without touching your own money. See what the older Pulsars are going for on eBay before you decide yours is not worth listing.

If you are still working out whether thermal is even the right answer, night vision is cheaper and worse in fog, and a good light is cheaper still and works fine on a lot of ground. What you already own matters more than what is best in the abstract: the gear list covers the rest of the kit, and how to call coyotes is what actually brings one close enough for any of this to matter.