Night Rabbit Hunting with the DNT ZULUS 4K Day and Night Vision Scope

Originally published in AIRGUN EXTRA, this article follows Rich Saunders as he uses the DNT Optics ZULUS 4K day and night vision scope to tackle rabbits invading pony paddocks in fading light conditions.

I doubt the Oxford English Dictionary would agree, but to my mind, there are many definitions to the term "pest".

Crop-raiding woodpigeon are a fiscal pest to farmers; grey squirrels are a pest because they decimate woodland ecologies, and no one likes rats because of their ability to spread disease.

However, few pests have the potential to significantly injure or even kill. But in horse and pony paddocks, rabbits are nothing more than fluffy assassins thanks to the holes and scrapes they dig. If you've ever seen a horse at full chat, the prospect of it putting a leg down a hole doesn't bear thinking about. At best it's an expensive vet bill. At worst, the horse or pony will have to be destroyed.

That's bad enough if it's your own horse or pony of course, but if your business is to look after other peoples' bloodstock, the long-term financial impact can be catastrophic.

It's no surprise then that most of the paddock owners I know live in constant fear of the peril that rabbits pose.

One of my closest permissions is also one of my smallest at no more than five or six acres. A small stable block houses horses that belong to the owner and her clients.

The challenge is that, despite the paddocks themselves being relatively small, they sit in the middle of a large parcel of farmland that is crawling with rabbits. Believe me, I've tried several times to convince the farmer to let me at them but without success…so far. That said, recognising the danger "his" rabbits present to the horses, he's ok with my pellets leaving the confines of the paddocks. He just doesn't want me targeting rabbits on his land. The upshot is that no matter how many rabbits I shoot in the paddocks, there's a conveyor belt of replacements waiting to take their place.

So, as you might imagine, I spend a lot of time there. It took a while to find the sweet spot between visiting often enough to have an impact and not going too often and making the rabbits ultra-wary. I've settled on a trip every five or six weeks.

My most recent visit coincided with the purchase of a ZULUS 4K digital day/night scope from DNT Optics. Having zeroed it at 30 metres, I'd used it for several squirrel shooting sessions where, thanks to a 3840x2160 pixels 4K Sony Starvis 2 CMOS sensor, the image quality in terms of brightness, sharpness and colour was truly impressive.

However, although I'd used the scope at night, most of the time rats were the target and the few rabbits I'd shot were at relatively short range. I'd used a sub 12 ft/lbs rifle for those trips, but the need to remove as many rabbits from the paddocks as possible, plus a desire to see how the ZULUS 4K performed at longer distance, meant swapping over to my 65 ft/lbs .25 calibre FAC-rated FX Impact M3.

Unlike DNT's compact ZULUS HD V2 and ThermNight scopes, which have an integrated IR torch, the tube style ZULUS 4K resembles a traditional glass scope and requires an external illuminator. Designed with ten profiles to allow different ammo and distances to be saved to its integral memory, it can easily be swapped between different rifles. After another session on the range to zero the combination and set up the ballistic calculator, I was ready for my trip to the paddocks.

Rich paired his high-power FX Impact M3 with the DNT ZULUS 4K, which is light, compact and ideally suited to airgun pest control

Full-colour hunting in the fading light

I arrived at sunset, intending to set up in time for shooting in the dark. However, as I pulled into the yard, I could see a rabbit in the paddock in front of me. It was sufficiently far away to ignore me as I got out of the truck and inserted the magazine into the FX Impact's breech.

Trying hard to look casual, I sauntered to the fence, placed my beanbag seat on the top rung and rested the rifle on it. Despite the fading daylight, the image even on 12x magnification was remarkably clear. The ZULUS 4K's laser rangefinder is activated by a single press of the rear-most button on the eye-bell and it registered a distance of 59 metres. A second press fires up the ballistic calculator, which indicated 2.7 inches of holdover.

Taking a few seconds to get my breathing under control, I placed the green hold-off indicator on the rabbit's head and let the shot go. It hit with a meaty thump and the rabbit rolled onto its side, instantly dead.

I took advantage of the ZULUS 4K's low light capabilities to add two more rabbits before it got too dark and I returned to the truck to attach a PBiR-X torch to carry on.

The DNT ZULUS 4K's low-light performance and ballistic calculator enabled Rich to confidently bag a few bunnies as dusk closed in

The rabbit shoot continues after nightfall

A quick scan with my DNT HOUND H635R thermal revealed the ghostly white heat signatures of several rabbits, the closest of which was only a few feet from where the first rabbit I'd shot still lay. There were a couple more in the next paddock and two more on the extreme right border.

A slight breeze from the right settled my mind: I'd start on the left and move across to those far-off bunnies, hoping they'd hang around for a bit.

It was a short walk to the fence I planned to rest on to target the first rabbit, but I took a slightly extended route to avoid setting off a security light. Picking my way through the dark, I arrived at the fence. Another quick check through the HOUND thermal revealed the rabbit happily munching on the grass, plus two more that had emerged in the hedgerow.

I nestled my rifle into the bean bag cushion once again and woke the ZULUS 4K up from standby mode, picking up the rabbit in the monochrome image. Then with the PBiR-X infrared torch turned on, it popped into clear relief. Placing the square laser rangefinder box on the bunny, the ZULUS 4K confirmed a shot of exactly 50 metres, which the ballistic calculator converted into 1.3 inches of holdover from the 30 metre zero.

The rabbit was still oblivious to my presence and carried on cropping the short grass. Rotating the collar on the top turret, I zoomed in to 13.5x and held the green aim marker fractionally behind the bunny's eye.

The rifle popped and I caught sight of the 31-grain Panther pellet as it flashed through the IR beam. A brief mist of blood cleared from the air and the rabbit slumped to the ground, giving one final twitch before resting gracefully on its side.

Having satisfied myself the rabbit was dead, I scanned the area to the right where I'd seen the other two rabbits, expecting them to have scarpered at the sound of the pellet strike. To my surprise, they were both still there and seemingly unconcerned at the demise of their buddy only a few yards away.

I recycled the rifle's sidelever and shifted to steady my aim on the beanbag. This time the ZULUS 4K's rangefinder and ballistic calculator indicated a shot of 46 metres or 0.8 inches of holdover.

One rabbit was slightly closer, a few feet into the field. The other lingered on the edge of the hedgerow. I took aim at the closest one only for it to hop a few feet to the left. I didn't bother ranging it again and took the shot as it stopped to wash itself. The pellet hit with a hollow thump and the rabbit folded, instantly dead.

Tracking to the right again, I cranked the sidelever once more and picked up the second rabbit still sat in the hedgerow. It turned slightly to face away from me. Fearing it was mere seconds from bolting, I didn't bother to re-laser the distance and dropped it cleanly with a shot through the back of its head.

The DNT ZULUS 4K's clear night vision viewing enabled Rich to make swift and effective work of the after-dark rabbit cull

More bunnies in the bag

Three shots and three clean-as-you-like kills in as many minutes is about as good as it gets, and I must admit to feeling a little bit smug as I clambered through the fence to collect the rabbits before a fox found them.

Locating them with the DNT HOUND was easy and as I made my way back to the truck. I looked through it again to see if the rabbits I'd seen in the next paddock were still there. They weren't, but a couple more had emerged and were closer.

I dropped the three shot rabbits to the ground again and made my way along a fence line to the edge of the next field where I placed the beanbag on top of another fence.

One of the rabbits had disappeared from the field, but I soon re-located it, or another one, in the edge of the hedgerow. Once again, the ZULUS 4K's rangefinder and ballistic calculator performed their magic.

The shot was 45 metres and the scope's ballistic calculator informed me it was applying 0.7 inches of holdover. The rabbit was facing slightly away from me, but thanks to the stability of my bean bag and fence rest, I placed my shot just forward of the rabbit's ear. The pellet struck and it did a full somersault, crashing into the lowest twigs of the bushes before coming to rest.

The HOUND thermal spotter reveals the unmissable heat signatures of more rabbits, enabling Rich to pick off even more of the pests

Successful conclusion to a swift and effective pest control session

More from a sense of hope than anything else, I swept the rifle to the right and was amazed, not for the first time that night, to see the second rabbit still without a care in the world.

It was in the next paddock and sufficiently far away from the bottom rung of a fence to give me an unobstructed shot. I twiddled the focus collar on the ZULUS 4K and, once the image was sharp again, lasered the distance at 56 metres, which equated to 2.2 inches of holdover.

My heartbeat resulted in the reticle rising and falling slightly at 12x magnification, but I timed the release of the shot just right and, once again, the pellet zipped across the paddock and hit home for the eighth single shot kill of the night.

Carrying the rabbits, my rifle and beanbag back to the truck required two trips so it was hardly surprising there were no more rabbits to see through the DNT HOUND thermal spotter by the time I'd finished. Still, I'd only been shooting for just over an hour and could hardly complain at what had been a short but very sweet session with the DNT Optics ZULUS 4K.

Rich in action with the DNT ZULUS 4K

RICH'S KIT

GUN: FX Airguns Impact M3 .25 FAC

SCOPE: DNT Optics ZULUS 4K LRF

THERMAL: DNT Optics HOUND H635R

INFRARED ILLUMINATOR: PBiR-X

AMMO: Panther Heavy Metal 31 grain

JACKET: Jack Pyke Half Zip Sherpa Fleece