Got a Rico MK1 G-LRF GH50R (3x-50mm-640res w/laser range finder). Been on about 5 or 6 hunts with it. DRT % on 1st shot at groups of hogs has been about 50%. The other 50% run when taking “neck” shots at 50-100 yards on Primos Trigger sticks tall tripod. Can’t seem to hit any runners.. or even trotters. . Thought it was me or maybe zero was off/shifted the first couple times. Went to the gun range 3-4 times to confirm zero was good over the course of the past 2 months. Only made very minor adjustments each time as in a possible 1” shift in POI at 100 yards between range trips). I zero 1.75” high at 100 yds fwiw.
Started looking more into it and am seeing that some are/were complaining about IRay scopes having a delay/lag between the time the scope processes what it’s seeing and when it puts it on the screen for the shooter to observe.
After reviewing some videos, it does look like my shots are late or behind them or like I’m not leading them enough/at all on the videos. I’m not an amazing shot, but I have a decent ability to hit the runners and make well placed shots. These last couple hunts I’ve been very focused on not rushing my follow up shots on runners. My shots have “felt good” in the moment but the hogs continue to run off appearing to be uninjured and I’m not hearing impacts.
From what I’ve read, IRay claims it’s only an issue where the video is playing back at 101.6% speed, and that there is no actual lag between what the scope sees and the time it takes to transfer it onto the display screen for your eye to see. But if the videos are being taken in real time with what the scope sees and my eyes are seeing something a second, or .25 of a second later, then that would explain why all of my shots on the runners appear to be a hair late and not have enough lead, when in my head the lead feels perfect on some of these shots at the running pigs. Most of the time I am stalking them to 50-75 yards before taking the first shot. These have been in wide open fields and on some of these groups, I have time to take 10 or 15 follow up shots. Obviously the last handful of follow up shots on some groups, the pigs are getting out past 200 yards. But the first 5-10 follow up shots these hogs are less than 150 yards away, and some less than 100.

Does anyone have any update info on this possible issue?? I will work on getting some of the videos put on here

Here’s a link to my YouTube channel with videos of other hog hunts with pulsar and Trijicon scopes I’ve used in the past and been able to hit runners.

https://youtube.com/@whenpigsdie6103?si=4fB-T-y2319x0TWn

This is a lie. All electronic scopes have some lag. The question is whether or not it actually affects you. If you can't see the lag and you know now to look for it, then lag likely isn't your issue. That may be what they meant to claim, but physics says otherwise. The scope is literally delaying the real time image at the point the heat energy hits the front lens, gets focused on the sensor and is converted into electrons and that go through all sorts of processing before being rendered by the display screen inside the scope and projected toward your eye out.

This is a long explanation. You probably know a lot of this. I am just including it for others who don't know it.

The test I use is this... First, it is MUCH easier to do with the scope off the rifle because you need to physically swing the scope around for this test and a rifle's momentum will slow the direction changes and skew your results. Second, with the optics to the eye and turned on, lens cap off, looking at targets in focus down range, start swinging the optic back and forth without coming to a delayed stop at end end of travel. As you are swinging right and changing to back to swinging left, the transition is supposed to be sudden and quick. I do this with both eyes open to see the difference. My left eye will register the change of direction faster than my right eye will register the change of direction in the scope when there is noticeable delay, but some people can do it just fine looking through the scope and feeling the disorientation of movement not coinciding which what they are seeing visually.

What you are looking for is when you swing and change direction suddenly, do you experience a very brief visual disorientation where you hit the apex of your swing and start back the other direction and if you see/feel like the image in the scope is still going in the original direction right after you change direction? Then image lag may be an issue. That means you can visually see the lag happening, like your image is being broadcast on a delay. Ever try watching a game or other event in real life while watching it on TV? You see the real event on time and then it happens on the TV, right? There is image delay. As the end watcher ONLY watching the TV, you won't even know the delay is there because the image is smooth, If you can compare the action on the TV to what is actually happening in real life you will definitely notice the delay. FYI, live TV broadcasts are often several seconds behind reality and this is often done for a variety of administrative reasons (personnel can edit out curse words by players before they are broadcast over the air, for example) and well as some delay being introduced by the electronics.

Some people confuse this with refresh Hz lag which should have nothing to do with your issue. Refresh Hz lag where the image is jumpy all the time because the frame rate is slower than the action you are seeing. Your scope, IIRC, is 50 hz and not 7 or 9 hz (like the old FLIR Scouts). You don't see quirky, jumpy movement like 1920s movies shot at 10 or 15 frames a second. The human eye readily notices such jumpiness below 25 frames a second (and some still noticed it at 30 Hz which was common for ATN, Flir, and Armasight scopes back from about 2000-2015) and you notice it when you see other things move, like watching your dog run around the yard. Does it look a little like it was filmed in stop action animation? That is going to be refresh Hz lag.

You can have a smooth image with no refresh Hz lag, but still have the image delayed by X amount of time, which you need to see if you can discern. I got a chance to play with an InfiRay RS75 1280 last year and noticed it did have image lag. I figured it was because the processor wasn't quite up to speed for all the extra resolution. It wasn't real bad, but I could discern it.

While you can't see image lag (usually) when tracking on a running hog and trying to lead it properly, you would be leading it X (lag time) amount too little. So you would be trying to aim at where a hog was 1/8 of a second ago, for example. Well, how far did the hog move in that 1/8 second? (see below) You are already trying to do a correct lead based on the amount of time that the bullet takes to arrive on target and you now need to add that amount of additional time to your leads and then just hope that the hog isn't making direction changes between the time you decide to take your shot and the bullet arrives on target.


A hog running FAST at 30 mph is covering 528" a second. So if you had a 1/8 second delay, that hog would have covered 66"
A hog trotting 10 mph is covering 176" per second. So if you have a 1/8 second delay, the hog moved 22"
A hog walking at 3 mph is covering 52.8" a second. So if you had a 1/8 second delay, that hog moved 6.6" between the time it actually moved and when you saw it move.

Your delay is probably more along the lines of 1/16 or 1/32 seconds, so the amount of correct needed would be less, but a correction would still be needed if your goal is to hit a particular small area on the hog.

Thanks Brian. I appreciate the time you take to reply like this. This all tracks with what I’ve been searching, reading and my understanding of it, including an old post on LSB that we were both involved in years ago 🤠. I wonder if the internal video recording and/or the use of the LRF during or just before shooting is slowing the processing speed at all. It does appear that the delay/lag time is greater with this scope than with the w-1000, IR Defense, Trijicon and pulsar scopes I’ve used in the past, as well as what seems to match the lead times that most other successful shooters use on running hogs when watching their videos over the years. I also went back and watched some of yours and Todd’s old videos on leads and technique a couple weeks ago before my last couple hunts to confirm and double check myself to make sure I hadn’t changed the way I’ve been shooting over the years compared to this spring. I don’t have a huge sample size, but 95% of all the runners/trotters I’ve shot at from the past 7 or 8 sounders I’ve shot at since I started using this scope have run away unscathed. I think I’ve only knocked down 1 runner this spring, on over 50 shots at runners, and maaaybe hit 1 or two others that kept right on running and were never recovered. I know I’ve fudged some of those shots myself or just missed, but I also know that on average I typically do a lot better than that and that some of those shots I was certain were going to yield dead hogs in the field as I was breaking the trigger on them.

As in the way turning on more features of the original X-sight from ATN caused other features to crap out? Possibly. If the processor isn't of sufficient capacity and speed, you will bottleneck functions and cause slowed responses.





You can be an unwitting part of the problem when changing optics, which is sounds like you may have done. I run into this frequently when changing between different makes, models, etc. While a 3.0x thermal from Brand A should look like a 3.0x thermal from brand B (all the other published specs being similar or the same), you may actually perceive them very differently due to things like the differences in how big the display looks in the eye cup to you, dimensions of the display screen, reticle size and shape, icons, etc. The 100 lb sow in Brand A may look to be a different size when seen in Brand B, despite all the other aspects being comparable (resolution, Hz rate, pixel size, native mag, etc.). For example, have you compared scopes with the same native magnification and noticed that the image that you see isn't showing things in the same sizes? That is because native mag of the objective lens only gets the image to the sensor. What most sellers don't talk so much about is how big the display screen is inside (physical dimensions) and how much magnification is being produced by the ocular (because that display screen inside is TINY). Ever looked in a thermal (or digiital NV) and thought the display was too small? Ever seen one zoomed so much the edges are blurry? There is a lot of variation and that can mess with you.

Several years ago, I used a 2x thermal that had a display that appeared larger in size and I found it to be very easy to use after I got used to it. Basically, when I looked in the optic, all I saw was display. I didn't see tube or the armature holding the tiny screen. I saw screen and nothing else. Edges were blurred. My personal scope at the time was a 3x Armasight that had a nice display, but despite being the same resolution, everything appeared smaller as compared to the 2x scope and that was due to ocular magnification of the display. The image wasn't as nice, but I had a much easier time getting hogs on the ground because I felt like I was shooting closer or larger hogs.

Same with the reticles, icons, and things that you use as visual landmarks inside of the scope in helping assess how much lead you want to apply. These can mess with your sense of relative perspective within the display and cause you to misjudge things distances.

The same goes for the dimensions of the display that will mess with your sense of size perspective, or can. For example, 1x1 displays are different to work with than 4:3 or 16:9.

When the image does appear larger to the user, it may look like the hogs are closer than they really area and so you adjust your lead accordingly until you get used to the fact that while they look 30% closer than the last optic you used, they are the same distance away, or vice versa when the display appears smaller to you and it tricks your mind into thinking the hogs are farther away and you adjust your lead according...and so don't do as well.

Sounds like, however, you should have enough time behind this scope for it NOT to be you still getting used to it, however.

Watch this guy shoot and the lead he uses. https://youtu.be/7nm-_95rRIc He usually uses 308W but this is mostly BO @ 1900 fps. And he is GOOD. Missed one the 2nd time I used my IR, and it wasn't moving fast.
Not only sensor to display processing time but time to save the video to the internal drive or send it to phone.

The formula for lead would be approximately
(bullet flight time - delay time) x animal velocity= distance animal moved. Delay time is unknown, I used .025 sec (.050 may be closer) which is half the refresh rate. Estimate a trotting hog (nose end) moves 1.5 ft for a 100 yd 2200 fps bullet. From vid I mentioned above, he leads by about a foot and gets behind the shoulder (100 yds) on runners. He states he had trouble adjusting to the slower BO load (vs 308W). With the 308W he's quite good on running hogs.

So with a 300 BO traveling at 1900 fps, that should be a 150 grain bullet, using various BCs (not sure of exactly which bullet, so I tried several) for an average flight time of 0.17 seconds at 100 yards. If he is leading 1 foot in front of the hog and hitting behind the hog's shoulder, call it 2 feet from nose to impact, that is a 36" lead on the impact. So that would mean that the hog was moving a smidge over 12 mph for it to move 36" in 0.17 seconds of the flight.

You said it wasn't moving that fast and your assessment seems spot on.

I am going hunting tonight. I am going to use a different IRay scope. The MK1 RH-35 (2x-35mm- 640res). Both scopes use the same processor “Matrix III”. I will also do some side by side movement comparisons with my old Trijicon Reap-IR that I sold to my friend and also his Pulsar.

I compared both IRay scopes to the Trijicon Reap-IR 35mm (this is the actual scope that I used to own/hunt with that I sold to my buddy), and the Pulsar Trail XQ38 (same make/model of scope that I also used to own/hunt with). I would look through the scope with both eyes open. Non scopes eye would focus on the gun’s suppressor. I would swing right and then left and quickly come to a stop. The Trijicon was instant. There was absolutely 0 noticeable lag. They looked like they were moving together 100%. The pulsar was either not noticeable at all, or if it was noticeable, it was the tiniest fraction of a fraction of a second that a human eye could possibly notice. Both IRay’s had a noticeable lag. If I had to quantify it, my best guess would be .15 of a second?? If you think of a slightly elevated heart beat, and the two pulses that it makes within a singular beat, like the up tick and then the down tick of a single beat on a heart monitor, it seemed about like that much lag time before the IRay scopes caught up to the final stoping motion of the scope’s actual movement stopping in real time (not the time between the start of one heart beat and the start of a second separate beat).

We got on a group of ~25 hogs they were spread out and the hogs on the right were 50-75 yards away, and the hogs on the left were 125-150 yards away when we started shouting.I chose to use the other scope tonight (MK1 RH-35 2x-35mm-640) instead of the scope that I’ve been using that I haven’t been able to hit the runners with (GH-50R 3x-50mm-640 LRF). I tried increasing my lead by about 2 ft? I was able to hit a few runners (of course not as many as I’d like 😝) but it was hard to make those adjustments on the fly so I was probably screwing some of that up myself. Plus as Brian mentioned there are still those other smaller variables that can influence a shooter in the moment on perceived hog distance, size, speed, etc due to other attributes of a given scope, like zoom, display size etc and what your eye sees. The RH35 gun is same caliber/load as I was using with the GH50R, but a slightly shorter barrel. (2500fps vs 2375 fps, which should only account for a 5% adjustment in total lead change if velocity were the only singular variable, so about 2” of lead adjustment. 2375=95% of 2500. My normal lead of 18” in front of the nose = 3ft total lead for a neck/shoulder impact. 95% of 36 inches = 1.8 inches).

I am still reviewing video, but I know I hit at least one runner closer to the back legs when trying to sustain an increased lead compared to my previous normal shooting.

COOL! So you did the test and could see results. I am sorry that there is actual lag as those are high dollar. That is very good information, though. Thank you.

For the most part, you can try adjusting your lead farther to compensate. It won't be 100% as sometimes hogs do things like change directions, but if you are tracking on a runner, chances are it is just running straight for the most part and so with slightly increased lead, you will score fine hits.

This has been a good read for a number of reasons. First, the lag issue is something to be aware of and test for whenever someone gets a new scope. That is a good test to perform Brian and thansk for sharing that.

Also, thank you for sharing the inches covered in time for the varying speeds, thats very helpful as well and while I have hit moving hogs before, I find I miss more than I should, and I know I haven't lead them out as far as I should with this info in mind. My problem is I get so few chances these days to practice, my hunting area is such that I get one shot and then before another second the hogs are all in the bush and you have no follow up opps.

Still, the above posts are good info to know

Yes and thank y’all for the input. Like you said Brian, increasing the lead would work for the most part, unless the hog suddenly changes course. I find this to happen most often when there are multiple shooters. If someone else breaks their shot just before mine the hog could change course before I see it in the scope and respond to it. That said other shots can cause me to flinch or pull the shot I’m about to take regardless of the hog changing directions.

Texas Buckeye- watching thermal videos of others who are a good shot has been very helpful for me to get my lead times down. That said be away are of the lag issue so you aren’t timing your leads according to a scope with a different lag rate than yours.

I have the IRay Rico Mk1 50mm 640. 50hz refresh rate. I have also had difficulty adjusting lead time to account for processing delay. Minimize the delay by turning off any non-essential functions like wi-fi, microphone, video recording, etc. in fact, using Brian’s test method, toggle those things on and off to see if one function causes more delay than others.

It is amazing when you actually crunch the numbers on just how little movement can make a big difference on required lead holds.

Cool, so it really is a processor overload issue (processor slows down normal functions when ancillary functions are turned on).

Yeah, doing the math between bullet flight time and target speed and you can end up with some interesting points of impact.