If you’ve already dipped your toes into the thermal waters with a riflescope — which is what most first-time thermal users typically start with — you’ve already discovered how the ability to “read heat” can change the hunting game, day or night. But you’ve probably also discovered that the addition of another piece or two of thermal gear would be useful and really help round out your hunting toolkit.
The trouble you run into with a thermal riflescope is that if it’s your only piece of thermal gear, your only method of scanning the fields and woods for game is to point your gun everywhere you want to look. That’s unwieldy and awkward, to say the least, but it’s also a major safety concern, especially in the dark. You really need something you can hold in your hands to easily scan with, so you can keep a watch out for game without waving your gun around the woods, and which you can easily put down when you’ve spotted a target and need to bring your gun up.
Binoculars are an obvious solution to this, and they work very well for scanning, but there’s another (arguably superior) alternative you might not have considered: a thermal monocular like the Armasight Warden 640.
A monocular is, of course, smaller than a pair of binos, which makes it incredibly handy to stick in a pocket or hang around your neck so that it’s always accessible. At just a single pound, the Warden 640 is so light and easy to carry that you’ll barely notice it. And the other major benefit to a monocular over a binocular is that it preserves your night vision in the off-side eye. You might have noticed that after looking through your thermal scope for a while, when you come off the scope, your dominant eye is no longer adjusted to the night, and you can see almost nothing, despite the moonlight. This can be inconvenient if you’re walking through woods, stalking or recovering game, not using thermal constantly. Binoculars temporarily ruin your night vision in both eyes, but a monocular preserves your night vision in the off-side eye that hasn’t been looking through the lens.
When you’re scanning the woods looking for hogs, coyotes, or even downed game, you want fast performance so your image doesn’t skip or lag. The Warden 640 is built for this, equipped with Armasight’s Iron Wolf platform and the ArmaCORE 640x480 thermal sensor for exceptional clarity and smooth 60Hz performance. It’s made for quickly scanning large areas, with an expansive 22 x 18-degree field of view. The 35mm germanium lens offers sharp, high-contrast visuals and detects heat signatures up to 1,300 meters, even in total darkness, fog, smoke and harsh weather. With 2X optical magnification and a 1X-4X digital zoom, you’ll see clearly on the OLED display. Of course, it’s fully waterproof and build for the elements (IP67-rated), packed into a rugged, compact, lightweight housing.
But it wouldn’t be an Armasight product without some high-tech features, like video and image capture, USB video streaming, multiple color palettes, and image enhancements for optimal in-field performance. Simple three-button controls are intuitive and easy to use, and the whole thing runs on 2 CR123A batteries with a battery life of 4 hours at 20 degrees C (68 degrees F). On top of that, the Warden 640 comes with a three-year warranty.
If a thermal monocular was not on your radar, you might find it’s the solution to the dilemma you’ve already been having about how to scan the woods safely and efficiently while hunting, scouting or recovering downed game. The Warden 640 is purpose-built for this exact use, and it’s a perfect addition to a hunter’s thermal toolkit.
