By Jason Vincent
When packing for a trip I always have a list of must-haves. Admittedly, 50 percent of these items never get used, but they’re all potentially important to the success of a particular hunt. The list changes with each trip, but some things make the list every time.
Once these items are packed and I’m ready to head out, I always do a last-minute walk through of the small office at my house where I keep a lot of my gear. One or two extra things usually get added here, and this is how I found myself packing the iRay RICO MICRO thermal on several recent trips.
Thermals have come a long way in the last decade. Image quality stands out as the greatest improvement, but advancements in processors have also allowed many of them to become more compact. This is important when you’re deciding what extra gear you’re going to take into the field. The RICO MICRO is very compact. No reason to leave it behind.
Designed mostly to be used as a “clip-on” thermal, the MICRO will attach to a picatinny rail in front of your weapon’s primary optic. Put more simply, you use your riflescope to look through the thermal. This has several advantages. First, you get nighttime capability with a standard setup. Second, you no longer have to dedicate a rifle solely to a thermal optic, limiting that rifle’s use to just those instances where you’re hunting in darkness.
Because clip-on thermals attach and detach quickly from a rifle, they also make for great handheld options when all you need is a device for scanning and locating. In this role, they make recovering game taken before last light much easier. You simply go to the animal’s last known location and start scanning the direction of travel for a thermal heat signature. If the blood trail stops, this becomes even more important. This is why the MICRO keeps making it into my pack and I’ve recovered several dead animals this way. On one occasion in the last year, I located a wounded animal that took me on a chase deep into the woods for a final kill shot. This animal would have died a slow death with no retrieval had I not taken the MICRO with me.
The RICO has some additional features I don’t use, but more serious night hunters do. On board recording allows hunters to record their shots and the unit’s Wi-Fi signal allows them to send the footage directly to their smartphones. We’ve all seen the videos and they’re great, it’s just not an option I use.
To compare size, the MICRO is roughly the size of a hip flask of bourbon. Pack both for your next trip.
Cost: $5499
Pros: Size, image quality, versatility
Cons: Thermals are still expensive, but so is a hunting trip with unrecovered game.
