South Texas Field Test
Six nights, three operators, two ranches, 4,200 acres. We ran the Merlin hard in working-ranch conditions outside Cotulla. Here is what we learned.
We needed to know if the Merlin held up under real working conditions, not catalog conditions. So we sent two pre-production units to a hog-control contractor running nightly thinning on two adjoining South Texas ranches. The brief: hunt normally, beat the gear up, tell us what breaks.
Here’s what happened.
Setup
Two ranches outside Cotulla, totaling 4,200 acres. Mixed terrain — heavy mesquite, cleared sendero, working pasture. Three operators rotating across six consecutive nights, late May. Conditions: dry, daytime highs in the upper 90s, nighttime temps 72–78°F. New moon week.
Each operator ran one Merlin for scanning, paired with a daytime LPVO and a quality weapon light for the actual shot. Standard hog-control loadout for that region.
What we counted
- 38 hogs taken over six nights
- Sounder sizes ranged from a single sow up to a group of 14
- Average detection distance: 280 yards (thermal scan)
- Average shot distance: 95 yards
What worked
Detection range. We were finding sounders well before the operators could have spotted them with traditional optics or even night vision. On night three, an operator spotted a group of 11 hogs at 412 yards in tall grass — would have walked right past with night vision alone.
3× zoom on the stalk. This was the unexpected MVP. On three separate stalks, the operator used 3× to confirm sounder composition (no piglets-too-small-to-take, no errant cattle in the line of fire) before committing to the approach. One stalk was aborted because 3× revealed two ranch dogs in the group.
Battery life. Each 18650 ran ~5.5 hours of continuous use in scan mode. Two batteries got each operator through a full night with margin. Hot swap took 8 seconds.
Heat tolerance. South Texas in May is brutal on electronics. The unit ran continuously for 4+ hour sessions in 78°F ambient with no thermal throttling or image degradation we could detect.
What didn’t work
We’re going to be honest about this because that’s the whole point of running a real field test.
The wrist strap broke. Operator dropped a unit on night two when the lanyard attachment point failed. Unit survived the drop (good), but the strap design needs to change. We’re already revising it.
Glove operation. The button layout is workable but not optimized for cold-weather gloves. South Texas in May didn’t surface this, but a Wyoming February will. We’re testing a redesigned button cluster.
SD card door. The hinge feels too light. Hasn’t failed yet but we don’t trust it for the long term. Moving to a friction-fit cap design for production.
No audio recording. This wasn’t a complaint from the operators but came up later — they wanted to narrate over the video clips for post-hunt review. Audio recording is now on the production firmware roadmap.
What this means for you
If you hunt hogs commercially or seriously — meaning, you measure success in stacks not stories — Merlin earned its place in the South Texas rotation. We’re not going to claim it beats a $3,000 Pulsar Helion, because that’s a different tier of hardware. We will claim it beats the $500–$700 alternatives we tested against, because we did the work.
The unit goes into production with the strap, button, and SD door revisions. First customer orders ship August.
By Merlin Team
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