My new (old) little .177 bullpup.

Ja it is an amazing piece of kit.
Unfortunately it is not mine, but I’m lucky enough to be able to get to use it 👍🏻
For pest control it is a game changer. For hunting, it feels like cheating!
So I only use it for pest control 👍🏻

What I mean is the thermal scope is amazing for finding game (pests/rabbits) in the darkness of night.
It makes it possible to quickly and easily shoot 20 or 30 rabbits in a few hours, in total darkness.
For me that’s culling/pest control, and the thermal scope is an amazing tool for that job.

Hunting, for me, is very different. For me hunting revolves around the principles of “fair chase”, meaning the animal should have every chance and opportunity to use its well developed senses of hearing, sight and smell, it’s ability to be stealthy, to use its natural camouflage etc, to outwit the hunter. The animal deserves the opportunity to be able to escape unhindered if it detects me (no cages or fences), I also don’t hunt from a vehicle or with in 200m of a vehicle. I believe in walk and stalk. Getting close, on foot. Stalking is sadly a dying art these days.

For me, to be a hunter you need to see the animal before it sees you. You need to approach the animal with out being detected (that’s called stalking for the millennials), and get as close as you possibly can before you make your lethal shot to take that animals life.

When you have done a perfect stalk, when you have been staring at that animal for ages, when you can see it’s eyes, but it hasn’t seen you, when you have been focused and fixated on it while planning your approach, feeling and reading the wind and keeping it in your favour, when you have felt your pulse racing and noticed your hands trembling as you close in… then you are hunting!

Not bashing anyone or how they may choose to hunt, but in my humble opinion shooting an animal from 600m away is not hunting, it’s target practice.
You don’t need to get out into the bush to do that, you can do it at any shooting range. If someone thinks killing an animal from half a kilometer away is hunting, then they have missed the whole point of going on a hunt.

Weather I’m hunting a stag or a warthog or a rabbit, and weather I’m using a rifle or a bow, it dosent matter, the principles of fair chase still need to apply if I want to call it a hunt.

For me a thermal scope is an amazing tool, it is the pinnacle of our species technological marvels and inventions… but it dosent feature in the principles of Fair Chase. It dosent just tip the balance in the hunters favour, it completely skewes the odds.
Fricken amazing pest control tool though 😉

I'm in 2 minds on that.
I can see your point but query your view on distance shooting. You have to be out there to find the animals, which in itself is hunting. Your Activly looking for an animal to shoot. That's hunting. Stalking is a differnt thing.
I'd also point out deer are pest animal, and as you say thermals are wonderful for pest control.
If I'm looking for food, why wouldn't I take a long shot? I'm not there to play cat and mouse. Do you consider a 60m shot on hare in an open paddock hunting? I do, Im still out there, fact the hare is in the open and I won't get any closer doesn't lessen that. The skill needed to to shoot that distance is higher (I'm a springer shooter).
I apply the same to any animal.
Don't get me wrong the object of the hunt is to get as close as possible without spooking (for shot assurity) but if the opertunity arises for a long shot... its what guns were designed to do.

I agree with what you say about fair chance and respect for animal, the actual thrill of the stalk and trying to play the quarries senses.
That however does not dictate what and what isn't hunting really. Sitting on quad and shooting long distance is no differnt to me walking a paddock with a spot light, picking up a hares eyes and shooting. With a 22lr I can honestly say the shooting range will extend substantially at which I shoot at. The alienation of the animal shot at distance ends when you get to it. When you pluck it/skin it, butcher it.
But as you say , its my view needn't be anyone else's.

Well can't be any fairer than wearing a high vis. And I thought I'd got into uncomfortable awkward positions!
So did you get it?