You can get night vision much cheaper than that, it just isn't as clear. They go by generations. I believe they are 1st gen, 2nd gen and 3rd gen. Each progressively gets less grainy and clearer. You can get first gen night vision at walmart if you want it.

I don't see what good it would do you to hunt with? Unless you can find a way to mount it to a bow and aim with it. It wouldn't be bad for scouting at night or playing with in the tree stand if you are in your stand real early before it gets light out. I was in the stand one morning and there were two bucks fighting near me, but it was too dark to make them out. A night vision scope would have been cool so I could have watched them. I don't see how it wold help you shoot one though?

I am pretty sure you can get them as a scope for a rifle, but they are pretty expensive. I think some people use them for varmint hunting at night or something. Mostly for sniper type stuff would be my guess though. I had a friend when I was a kid that his dad had a thermal scope on a rifle. You had to have a pack that you carried around with it for it to work. It basically showed a thermal image of what was infront of it. It was pretty cool, you could see mice and other animals in a corn feild at night. Except they were weird colors depending on the amount of heat they gave out. I have no idea what he used it for or how much something like that cost that many years ago.

As far as actually using something like that to hunt deer with, yep, poaching no doubt about it. No different than spot lighting them in my opinion.

Paul