Nevada Thermal Ban: Regulation 526 Would Outlaw Thermal From July 15 to December 4

What Regulation 526 actually says

Today, Nevada bans thermal and night vision only while you’re hunting or locating game mammals and game birds.² Coyotes are unprotected, so a dedicated coyote hunt with a thermal is legal under state law. Your county can still stop you; that’s covered on the Nevada page.

Regulation 526 adds a second, much bigger prohibition. As amended by the commission in March, the draft reads that a person shall not possess or use thermal, night vision, light-gathering or infrared devices “while hunting or taking any wildlife” from July 15 through December 4 of every year.³

Three things in that draft do the damage:

• “Any wildlife”: coyotes, bobcats, foxes, everything. NDOW’s own summary of the first draft said it in plain words: no wildlife may be hunted with thermal in those dates, including coyotes.⁴
• “Possess”: not just use. A thermal in your pack on a late-July coyote hunt would be the violation, same as the current game rule works.
• Statewide: the first draft covered only management areas 11, 22, 23 and 24 in eastern Nevada. The commission struck the areas and made it apply everywhere.⁵

Night vision and infrared are on the same list, so for those four and a half months your only legal night setup would be a light. Lights stay legal for coyotes at state level. That window also swallows the first three months of contest season, including the state championship.

There’s one exemption. The rule doesn’t apply to employees or authorized agents of the state, a county or city, or the federal government acting within their duties.³ Government trappers and contractors keep their thermals. You don’t.

Where it stands

It isn’t law yet, and it isn’t dead. The rule went through a workshop on March 13, 2026. Commissioners amended it from four eastern areas to statewide, moved the start date from August 1 to July 15 at the Elko advisory board’s suggestion, and voted 7–2 to forward it to an adoption hearing.⁵

Since then it has come up for adoption once, at the one meeting nobody could join remotely:

• May 8–9, Reno: Zoom available. Regulation 526 wasn’t on the agenda.⁶
• June 26–27, Winnemucca: no Zoom; the agenda said the meeting would not be broadcast or take virtual participation.⁷ Regulation 526 was on it for adoption. The commission voted 8–0 to pull it so it could be heard at a meeting with Zoom, because it was “important to the sporting community and public.”⁸
• September 25–26, Stateline: Zoom available. Regulation 526 wasn’t on the agenda.⁹
• November 6, Las Vegas: Zoom available. Regulation 526 isn’t on the approved agenda.¹⁰

Word went around after June that it would come back in September. It didn’t, and it isn’t coming back in November either. The Nevada Predator Hunting Association says thermal was taken off the November agenda, and called it “another good sign but not a guarantee it’s over yet.”

The next commission meeting is January 29–30, 2027, in Reno.¹⁰ The commission can still change that date, and it hasn’t set that agenda. If 526 is coming back, that’s where to look first.

Adoption isn’t the last step, either. Commission regulations go to the Legislative Commission, a panel of state lawmakers, before they take effect. The contest regulation sat there for six weeks after the commission adopted it and passed 7–5.^{11 12} A thermal rule would go through the same review, and lawmakers would get a vote on it.

One correction to what’s going around online: some posts say the ban runs to December 31. That was the 2025 version. The current draft ends December 4.³

The reason it exists is big game, not coyotes. The commissioners backing it were blunt about that in March. One said that without a full ban there’s a loophole: anyone caught with a thermal during deer season can say they were hunting predators.⁵ The game warden chief told them one thermal citation had been confirmed over the past couple of years, with others under investigation, and that the devices are small and easy to hide.⁵ A warden captain walked them through an Oregon saturation patrol that found 50 people using thermal unlawfully during a single deer hunt.⁵

The rule had a rougher draft before this one. In 2025, NDOW floated a ban on thermal for all wildlife from July 1 to December 31, with the penalty jumping from 3 demerit points to 12.¹³

Lincoln County’s resolution

Resolution 2026-07 is short. Its findings say coyotes left unmanaged can devastate livestock and mule deer, that their presence in rural communities is becoming a public safety issue, and that thermal helps you tell your target apart at night, “and therefore provides a high level of safety.”¹ It resolves that the county fully supports thermal for hunting and managing predators year-round. It passed 3–0 on October 19, signed by Chairman Mike Reese.

A county resolution doesn’t bind the commission. Thermal for hunting is set in the Nevada Administrative Code, and only the Board of Wildlife Commissioners writes that. What a resolution does is put a county on the record before the vote. The Nevada Predator Hunting Association says it’s been sent to other counties to pass the same thing.

Lincoln is ranch country, and its resolution leads with livestock and mule deer, not with hunting gear.

We’ve seen this fight before

If this feels familiar, it should. Nevada spent a decade arguing about coyote contests, and the pattern was the same: a proposed ban, urban counties for it, rural counties against it, and a commission split down the middle. Here is every date on the timeline above, with its source.

• 2015, contests: two petitions to ban contests. The first was dismissed as incomplete and the second was voted down.¹⁴
• 2016, contests: commissioners drafted a no-contest policy, then dropped it because a policy can’t be enforced.¹⁴
• 2019, contests: a bill to outlaw contests never got a hearing.^{15 11}
• November 2, 2020, thermal: NAC 503.1455 takes effect, banning thermal and night vision while hunting or locating game mammals and game birds. Coyotes aren’t game, so it doesn’t reach them.²
• March 2021, contests: the commission voted 5–4 to take up a ban.¹⁶
• November 2021, contests: the commission voted 5–4 against it. Clark County and Reno had backed a ban; Elko County voted to keep the contests, and 17 county advisory boards testified against the ban.¹⁵
• 2023, contests: another bill to ban contests died in an Assembly committee.¹¹
• 2024, contests: a ban petition was withdrawn and a subcommittee studied regulating contests instead.¹¹
• 2025, thermal: NDOW floated a ban on thermal for all wildlife, coyotes included, from July 1 to December 31.¹³
• November 8, 2025, contests: the commission adopted a contest regulation 6–3: contests run September 1 to March 31 and you need a hunting or trapping license to enter.¹¹
• December 18, 2025, contests: the Legislative Commission approved it 7–5.¹²
• March 13, 2026, thermal: Regulation 526 workshop. Amended from four eastern areas to statewide, July 15 to December 4, and forwarded 7–2.⁵
• May 8–9, 2026, thermal: not on the agenda in Reno, a meeting with Zoom.⁶
• June 26, 2026, thermal: on the agenda in Winnemucca, a meeting with no Zoom; pulled 8–0 to be heard at a meeting with Zoom.^{7 8}
• September 25–26, 2026, thermal: not on the agenda at Stateline, a meeting with Zoom.⁹
• October 19, 2026, thermal: Lincoln County Resolution 2026-07 passes 3–0.¹
• November 6, 2026, thermal: not on the agenda in Las Vegas, a meeting with Zoom.¹⁰

Contests survived by getting regulated instead of banned. That’s worth remembering, because thermal could go the same way.

Hold onto those contest dates, too. Regulation 526’s window, July 15 to December 4, covers the first three months of the contest season the commission just created. The Nevada State Championship Coyote Calling Contest is usually the second weekend of November, and it’s been a 24-hour hunt for more than a decade. Under 526, every team in it would hunt the night half without thermal or night vision. It isn’t the only one. Nevada has more than a dozen contests a year,¹⁷ several of them run through the night, and plenty land in the window: the Winnemucca Archers held theirs November 1–2 in 2024.¹⁸ The commission would be creating a contest season and then taking thermal out of the busiest part of it.

My take

The commission is chasing a real problem. A thermal on a deer hunt is a huge advantage, yet it’s already illegal! I don’t defend anyone using one to find bucks.

What I can’t stand is laws stacked on top of laws. Thermal on big game is already regulated, and 526 regulates it again by banning it for everything else. The contest rule did the same thing: you now need a license to hunt, in a contest, an animal Nevada doesn’t protect and doesn’t license anywhere else. It’s asinine. Keep piling rules on top of rules and eventually they tie us in knots.

But this rule takes the tool away from every coyote hunter in the state to catch people who are already breaking the law, and it does it during the months coyote hunting gets good. November is prime fur. Fall is when the year’s pups are out on their own and come to a call hardest. Meanwhile the government’s own trappers keep their thermals under the exemption.

Thermal is also the safest way to hunt at night, and I don’t say that lightly. Years ago I worked for a company that made predator hunting lights. Around New Year’s of 2014, law enforcement in Colorado called the company. I didn’t take the call; a coworker did, and afterward he told us what had happened. A man hunting at night had shot and killed a young man he mistook for a coyote. The young man’s hat had caught the light, and the shooter thought he was looking at eyes. The news reports from San Miguel County that week say only that he was mistaken for a coyote, about 10:45 at night, on a hunt with friends.¹⁹ It was devastating to hear, and it has stayed with me.

That never would have happened with thermal. A light shows you two shining points and asks you to decide what’s behind them. I’ve been there myself: years ago I nearly pulled the trigger on a set of eyes that turned out to be a deer. A thermal shows you the whole animal, the cow behind it, the cat down the fence line and the person standing where you didn’t expect one, before you ever touch the trigger. Lincoln County put safety in its resolution, and they’re right.

If the problem is enforcement, fund enforcement. The Nevada Predator Hunting Association said the same thing in March: have game wardens check hunters’ gear in the field, and go to the legislature to raise illegal thermal use from a misdemeanor to a gross misdemeanor.⁵ Even the commissioner who pushed for tougher penalties agreed the activity is already illegal.⁵

How to weigh in

Regulation 526 is decided at an adoption hearing, and the commission takes public comment there, in writing beforehand and at the meeting itself.²⁰ If it passes, the Legislative Commission still has to approve it before it becomes law, and it can object and send it back.²¹ That gives you three places to be heard: your county, the commission and your legislator.

The governor appoints the commission’s nine members.¹¹ Keep it civil and keep it short. Say where you hunt and what you actually do.

Until then, nothing has changed. Thermal is legal for coyotes in Nevada today, subject to your county’s rules. The Nevada coyote hunting page has the current law, the state-by-state thermal guide has the rest of the West, and if you’re shopping, here are the thermal scopes I’d buy. I’ll update this post when the January agenda goes up.

If you hunt Nevada, add your voice below. Tell me what you hunt and what this rule would cost you.