I live in Texas and just bought 40 acres of prime wilderness in Oklahoma. It's a beautiful piece of land in the middle of nowhere, so the only sounds you hear are of nature, and the only light is the remarkable country sky. This has been a lifelong dream that has finally come true. I love to be outdoors with nature and enjoy camping, bushcraft, and, of course, shooting.
I wanted the perfect hunting setup: lightweight and maneuverable. As a long-range shooter, I love bolt-action rifles, so naturally, I set out to find a lightweight bolt-action. I landed on the Sig Cross with a 16" barrel in 6.5 Creedmoor topped with the Sightmark Wraith Mini thermal. I also mounted a Sightmark Mini Shot M-Spec M1 red dot at 45 degrees as a backup/daytime option.
After a five-hour drive, I arrived for a two-day night hunt at my beautiful getaway. This was a perfect time to test the Wraith Mini Thermal. We arrived just before dark, so I set up my rifle in my tripod, built a fire to light our camping area, and made dinner before we set out for an all-night hunt.
Our hunt started with a two-hour stalk of the property. We slowly walked and stopped for a few minutes, listening for any sound of boars and using the Wraith Mini Thermal to look around and spot any signs of activity. Our two-hour stalk turned into about three and a half hours of walking, seeing only opossums and raccoons. We decided to head back to camp near the feeders and post up for the rest of the night in our blind. After about 45 minutes, we heard the rustling of leaves being walked through. Were these the pigs we had been waiting for? We quietly got on our rifles and looked toward the noise. Just an armadillo.
The Sightmark Wraith Mini Thermal was absolutely amazing at picking up heat signatures. It was easy to spot all the little animals, and I was even more amazed that it picked up bugs. I could see some flying bugs and bugs crawling on the trees. At this point, we decided that we wouldn't have a successful pig hunt, but we would spend another few hours in the blind playing with the features and settings in the thermal. I found that I liked the white-hot and black-hot settings the best. The black-hot was easier on the eyes and showed more detail when you spotted an animal. The white-hot made any heat signature of the animal unmistakable. I found myself using white-hot most of the time when I'm in the blind and black-hot when walking around so as not to throw off my vision as much. I love the mil reticle that the scope offers because I'm very familiar with them from long-range shooting. The only thing I was worried about was running out of battery, so I opted for the Mini QD battery pack that clips onto a Picatinny rail. After a whole night of hunting, I had only used 1/4 of the battery life. The rifle and scope combination worked out perfectly.
Night two was spent mostly hanging out around the fire and relaxing. We did walk around a little, seeing if we could spot any pigs, but after an hour, we went back to camp and sat around the campfire, occasionally looking down the firing line about 125 yards away from the feeders. Again, there were no pigs, just mice and raccoons. We ended up shooting all the mice that would come out in the open, so the night ended with a bang. Literally.
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