Pulsar LRF N970 Riflescope

Pulsars’ LRF N970 is essentially third generation from their earlier N550 and N870 units and designed to work in all lighting conditions. The advantage of digital NV is it’s generally cheaper and cannot be damaged by sunlight like an intensifier tube can be.

It offers 3.5x optical magnification, but it can be digitally enhanced up to 14x in 0.1x increments, but it takes a long time to spin it through the 100+ clicks to go from minimum to maximum mag. Fourteen reticles are available in four colours, so allowing you to tailor your ret, target and background for best performance! I generally stayed on green with a small dot surrounded by lines at 3, 6 and 9 O’clock. Placing the reticle on a fox at 250 metres was no problem but 175m rabbits are a little tricky. More magnification sometimes helps but the image is digitally zoomed, so will begin to pixelate quickly.

Pixels

The OLED screen with a 640x480 pixel image is good quality with a flat display and not difficult to retain position on with 67mm of eye relief with the rubber eye cup, which blanks out any unwanted light. The dioptre on the fast focus eyepiece is generous from -4 to +3 compared to -2 to +2 on a regular scope. A sharp image was never a problem and the text on menus is well defined. These displays are complicated but generally intuitive, though thorough reading of the instructions is to be recommended to provide maximum functionality!

Everything is controlled by the right side function dial with central press/hold actuation button. A rotary knob (upper right) turns the unit on and through three laser illumination intensity levels and is easy to feel wearing gloves. The image focus dial is up front on the lower right side, it’s a small knob and always has, and always will be a slight mistake! For a right-handed shooter it’s a long way to reach and may need both REGULAR and FINE adjustment.

I used the 970 on a 223 for most testing, set up at around 100m. The depth of field is OK and as you’re accepting a limited image quality anyway with digital NV, a bit of fuzziness on known quarry wasn’t a problem! In daylight, where you would expect image quality to be better, the focus was actually more regularly tweaked. After spending a lot of time on a Yukon Photon, I would definitely want to add a smaller aperture facility to the N970, as when visible or IR light is plentiful, massively improves image quality.

One shot easy peasy

Changes like brightness, contrast, magnification and range settings are available with one touch of the control knob’s centre button for speed and simplicity. Main menus are better addressed in quite concentrated moments, to avoid minor changes that might make huge mistakes possible; zero for example! A remote video cable, carry case and video cable are supplied, along with a 2-year warranty. One shot zeroing has been made much simpler by duplicating the reticle. You aim centrally on a ‘shoot-n-see’ target in daylight. A second reticle emerges in zeroing mode to guide toward your bullet’s impact point via windage and elevation adjustment.

Just keep the main reticle on the original aimpoint and dial the new one, press enter and all sets up easily. As before, the reticle moves across the image display, in what used to be known optically as a moving reticle, so it is ‘backwards’ but still simple to adjust. It remained zeroed throughout the test and of course, when zooming, it might appear to move a little but realistically, this is usually user- assumed error, rather than a real problem.

You can set zero for five distances on each of three rifles, so with three guns setup with a Picatinny rail, swapping the sight back and forth with a torque wrench will give you a versatile sighting tool if required. This Digisight is perhaps the most versatile available for mounting, as the underside Picatinny rail clamps can be set in three positions, optimising the eye relief as the scope reaches, generally rearwards, toward the shooter. Each ‘click’ when zeroing moves the impact point 17mm on target at 100 metres. 100 total clicks available in either direction give 1.7 metres of square movement on target for primary zero. This isn’t massive but I didn’t have issues on any of the rifles I tried and we aren’t talking a multiple adjustment precision scope for extended ranges or tactical match shooting.

Generous run time

Power is supplied by 4 x AA batteries that locate beneath the eyepiece under a screw cap. Run time with Lithium’s was excellent and I was never caught short on my 2-3 hour trips out. Longer nights through the winter may encourage me to add an external power supply, connected through an external jack. An EPS3i with charge indicator will give about 9 hours’ continuous use, which is far more than I would need with very little added bulk, fastening unobtrusively to the short picatinny mount on the left side of the 970.

Auto shut off is available from the unit when tipped/down or left/right beyond 70 and 30° respectively if actuated in the setup menu, but given the battery life capability, it’s hardly a concern! I often tip the unloaded gun sideways on sticks (‘gangsta-style’) when observing so don’t want it to turn off. There’s a ‘cant’ warning indicator that shows you tipping the rifle offline. When shooting in darkness this isn’t actually a bad thing and like all the displays, was obvious and distinctive, no tiny little markers like some competitors show!

Ready, steady, go!

Powering up takes just over 2 seconds with no messing around through tenuous menus, just a simple Pulsar logo and boom, it’s ready. It will focus down to 3 metres for small calibre airgun use indoors, but depth of field is critical and needs continual adjustment. When you get out to 50+ metres this is less of an issue and I found the 970, although quite large and tall on the gun, is very usable with a normal feel to my muscle memory on the rifle. You end up with quite a vertical head position but on light recoiling guns I found sight picture easy to maintain, with many of my own bullet strikes into stubble fields easily visible both when I hit and missed quarry.

Rabbits are somewhat delicate to the centrefire calibres and impacts were shown vividly on body shots when pest controlling, the reticle and image is simply not fine enough to make headshots at longer ranges on rabbits destined for the table. I rarely used the higher levels of magnification, as I was keen to benefit from the included rangefinder which when actuated (one press to turn on, second press to rangefind in yards or metres) from a central button atop the Pulsar, always reset magnification back to 3.5x.

The field of view was very appealing; I could both spot and track quarry at extended ranges depending on the background; well over 250 metres on a fox. Moving quarry against stubble wasn’t that hard-a test but rabbits nestled in tramlines at just under 200 metres were just visible and engaged if required. The image quality available on close range rats invading the stubbles from a headline at 20-25 metres from my shooting position was quite stunning in full darkness but the external F900 illuminator was what made all this possible. In both standard 50, and larger 70mm head sizes, it extended spotting and shooting ranges dramatically compared to the inbuilt laser for which you can subtract maybe half of the distances I have quoted.

End game

A friend of mine has used the 870 almost daily for two years, so when we went out to test both units side by side, his opinion was greatly appreciated. Image quality and range available, seeing clearly into fields at over 300 metres was a decider, the improvement over the 870 is about doubling capability. Pulsar’s quoted maximum observation of an ‘animal’ whose height is 1.7 metres of 500 metres is believable. But quarry animals range in size, so realistically without an additional illuminator (just using the one on board), a fox at 200 metres is getting very vague but this will almost double with additional illumination. I specifically remember a fox at 250 because I missed it, but the shot never even dawned in difficulty on me because walking over freshly turned earth, it was almost as clear to me as in daylight.