The Talion XQ38, named after the French word for retaliation, lives up to its name as one of the best thermal scopes for nighttime varmint control. Whatever pest comes out of the woods to destroy property or upturn farmland, the Talion will be ready to deal with it. With its five weapon profiles and 50 zeroing distances, this scope can be mounted on a different rifle for every critter. Users can mount it on a .308 for boar then mount it again on a 10/22 for raccoon hunting a few hours later the same evening without having to zero it again. Thanks to the Talion’s weapon profiles, transferring the scope from one weapon to another is as easy as switching weapon profiles and distances in the scope’s menu.  

However, the act of zeroing the scope for the first time might be odd to a first-time Pulsar user. The Talion lacks the windage and elevation adjustment knobs of a traditional riflescope. Instead, zeroing is done through its digital interface, which can potentially save the user more ammo than traditional zeroing. 

For some users of daytime optics, the one shot zero technique is employed to save ammo. In it, the rifle is placed securely in a gun vise, a shot is fired, and the scope’s windage and elevation are adjusted to align with the bullet hole. The issue with the one-shot zero technique is it can only be done if a shooter’s rifle is held securely in an immobile gun vise, as any slight variations will offset the scope’s minute adjustments. The Talion does not have this problem. 

Many of Pulsar’s scopes come standard with the one-shot “freeze zeroing” function. This unique feature allows users to take a single shot and zero the rifle without the use of a gun vise or even particularly steady hands. Using the “freeze” function, the scope takes a photo of the target down range. To use the freeze function, the user must first determine the distance of the target and feed it to the Talion through its menu, after which the device will enter zeroing mode. A small, red cross will appear on the Talion’s digital display, which can be adjusted via windage and elevation controls in the windage/elevation sub menu. With this function, a shooter can fire once, freeze the target, make his weapon safe and adjust his windage and elevation without worrying about weapon sway or making inaccurate follow up shots.  

The Talion XQ38 also has phenomenal image quality in both daytime and nighttime thanks to its 1024x768 and <40 mK NETD. This versatile optic can be used either at day or night with 9 hours of battery life and comes fully equipped with a high-tech suite of features including integrated Wi-Fi for Stream Vision 2 support and 16gb of memory to store its high-quality photos and videos.