Christmas came early! Pard DS35 & TA32

Bummer, I'm probably getting coal again then..... Haha

Awesome good on you

The hand held little thermal is very nice. Easy to use, one handed operation, and the image u see in the view finder is very detailed and sharp. I don’t know all the technical terms for sensor size and pixels numbers etc, I just know it’s nice!
After using the old model Pulsar Thermion XP50 for 8 months, I can tell you the little current model Pard TA32-19 handheld has a better, sharper picture than the big, old model, XP50 Thermion rifle scope.
It is also SO much easier to walk around in the dark using a small handheld to see what’s going on around you, then it is to walk around with a rifle permanently in your shoulder, using the scope to see what’s going on around you!!!

The DS35 day/night scope, well, I am very impressed with this scope. Infact I was blown away by it this evening.
I spent a good few hours today setting it up and fiddeling. Setting up the balistic calculator took some effort too.
Was painstaking and tedious measuring heights and getting all the parameters correct so you can just range the distance and the scope works out the drops and shows you where to hold over…. Hummm! 🤔

I went out to a permission this afternoon for some rabbit control and took it along just to test it in a paddock.
I was planning on using a normal day scope for the rabbit control and just testing out the DS35, expecting to still need to make some tweaks before I can use it with confidence.
Well, I put up a triple spinner in a paddock, walked back to 10m and shot the small spinner.
Dead on. Good.
Walked back to 21m and shot the big spinner. Dead on. Good.
Walked back to 35m and shot the big spinner again, Dead on. Wow.
Walked as far back as I could go, back to the fence 47m and shot the big spinner. Still dead on!
I am impressed!!! The 3 “longer” shots were clover leafed in the middle of the spinner!

After that I thought well it’s good to go, so I used it for the rest of the afternoon and into the night, and took my first few bunnies with it.

During the day it is a full colour, very clear, sharp and easy to use digital scope. It is just about as good as any normal optical scope by day. The reticle I have it set on acts like a FFP. By night it is a black and white, infer red scope and just as easy to use as during the day.

So far I’m really loving it. My only gripe is it goes through battery’s faster than I was expecting!!!
But it uses 18650 rechargeable battery’s, so once my wallet has recovered a little, I’ll be getting a few spare ones to keep in my pocket, a quick battery change and we should be good to go all night long.

Small spinner was 10m. The 3 shots on the big spinner were 21m, 34m and 47m, all standing with shooting sticks.

New pard looks great Pete. I have the NV008S but without LRF and love it. Complete gamechanger for night shooting vs a regular torch. 

So Ive had a few chances to use these two new pieces of kit.

I am still impressed with the DS35-70, but man it can eat battery’s.
As soon as I have a bit of cash again I’m going to get 4 spare battery’s and a multi charger, then that problem will be solved. Luckily the 18650 rechargeable battery’s are very common and easy to find online.

I used both the scope and the hand held thermal tonight. The handheld thermal also uses an 18650 battery (they are identical and inter changable, so a few spare battery’s will work in either one) but it seems to be a bit less demanding on power then the scope and a fully charged battery will probably get me through 2 nights of pest control, so 5 or 6 hours use. The DS35 infer red scope I used sparingly tonight, and put it to sleep when ever I was not using it. Used it for about 2hours tonight (sparingly) and I finished with about a quarter battery left. If I had 2 or 3 spare fully charged battery’s in my pocket I would easily be able to do a full 5 hour session and not have to worry about turning on and off and on and off 👍🏻

A funny thing happened tonight with the balistic calculator in the scope.
I had a rabbit sitting at the base of a tree, behind a barbed wire fence.
LRF said 56m and the calculator worked out an aim point. I shot and lost sight of the pellet. Sounded like it hit the tree above the rabbit. Rabbit didnt move. I repeated the whole excersize, and got the same result!
Now I was getting annoyed. Was the fence messing around with the LRF?? Was the calculator wrong or was I doing something wrong??
Anyway, 2 more missed shots later I told my self I was just wasting pellets, it was a lucky bunny, and I moved on.

Next rabbit was ranged at 27m, stright forward shot, calculator worked out an aim point (this is when I should have picked up there was a problem!) and I shot, over its head 😡
Then I thought, hang on. This profile has been zeroed at 30y, which is 27m, so the calculator should have told me to aim dead on, no hold over, but it gave me an aim point about 1.5 mil down…???
Something’s not right. I was sure that I had changed the profile to the correct one earlier, but I went through it all again, it all seemed correct. I ranged an object at 27m again and this time it gave me the correct aim point 🤔

So I don’t know if it was the LRF (I don’t think so) or the balistic calculator (maybe) or if it is my Inexperience in using the scope/selecting the correct profile, making sure everything was right before I started shooting…?
I’ll put it down to my i experiance with this new scope.
What ever it was it cost me 2 rabbits. But the scope was fine after that for the rest of the night.
Managed to get 8 rabbits.
When I got home I added up all the rabbits I have shot on that permission, and the last one I shot tonight was number 100 on that permission 😳

It’s a game changer 👍🏻