04/08/2026
No animals were harmed in the making of this video! This is purely a demonstration of the technology.
This short clip I took a few nights ago at 60 metres highlights why we use the latest technology available and how important it is for small animal pest control.
The video was recorded through my DNT ThermNight 335 scope which is multispectral. That means it has one sensor for visible/IR light and another sensor that detects heat signatures, allowing the images of both sensors to be displayed on one screen at the same time.
At the start of the video, the main display is in thermal mode with the picture-in-picture (PIP) showing night vision. I then switch them around so the main display is night vision and the PIP is thermal to show the difference.
With thermal alone, it's extremely easy to spot where an animal is, but often all you can see is a small heat signature. You can't reliably identify what it is, and you certainly couldn't select a clean, ethical shot. With night vision alone, it's much easier to see the detail of the animal. In this case the cat is looking directly at me making it easy to spot thanks to the eye shine. But if the cat had been looking in the other direction without the eye shine it would have been much harder to detect, especially while hunkered down in a hole like this.
Multispectral technology combines the best of both worlds, making it much easier to both locate and positively identify animals. When it comes to small animal pest control, that level of identification is incredibly important.
For this client cats were not on the target list because the neighbouring properties have pet cats that help keep the mouse population under control. Thanks to this scope I was able to quickly identify that this wasn't a target animal and simply move on.
It's a different story when targeting larger animals such as pigs, deer, and goats. Their much larger heat signatures often make a thermal-only scope sufficient for positive identification but the additional visual detail provided by multispectral equipment still gives you more information, helping you make better-informed decisions before taking a shot, especially in scrub/bush situations where a thermal scope won't show up all the twigs etc in the bullets path.
Technology like this isn't just about making animals easier to find—it's about making target identification faster, safer, and picking shot placements much more responsible
