Even with temperatures in the 70 degree F range, dark trees and rocks under direct sunlight get quite warm by midafternoon. Scanning bushes and heavy cover, some individual trees and rocks would stand out. While it’s not hard telling a tree from an animal, a big rock could sometimes resemble an animal lying down.

I got best results after temperatures got to around 50 or 60 degrees. While temperature makes a difference in distinguishing animals from terrain, ambient light does not. If temperatures are the same, the LTO Tracker displays the same image whether it is light or totally dark.

Indoors, late on a very dark night, I tried it with the house lights turned up bright, then switched them off. Even in near-total darkness the image was unchanged. It’s kind of spooky actually.

Over the course of taking some hundreds of big game animals I haven’t had to do much tracking of wounded game. Use enough gun, select a good bullet, learn to shoot well enough in the field to place shots accurately, and they seldom go far. But I can recall incidents where the Tracker would have saved me some anxious moments.