Vag,
Sounds like you are on a budget. Passive shooting at night costs money, however active shooting is a lot cheaper.
DNS and the other gurus know more about thermal than me.
By active I mean with lights and lasers that the animals can see.
Active
If you are shooting by yourself then unless you have a truck with a fixed light mount or you are static and have lights that can point in place, or remote control, you're going to need a light on the gun. Shooting with a separate light is much easier because you can swing it around without having to swing the gun around with it. With separate spotlight then I recommend a decent collimated reflector like a 240mm diameter with a 35W or even 75watt Xenon HID globe, adjustable for focus. Plug it into the vehicle's cigarette lighter socket, or clip onto a battery: either vehicle's, or Li-ion in your backpack for walking around. For example, his hand-held spotty is made by Lightforce (which is the parent company of Nightforce). Adapting it to a 75W ballast is DIY with a soldering iron, but they are sold with inbuilt 35W ballasts. Don't use incandescent/Halogen globes, it's cheap but ancient tech.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]19922[/ATTACH]
Gun-mounted needs to be more compact and lighter. I recommend a Laser Excited Phosphor 'LEP' flashlight (different tech to the standard Light Emitting Diode 'LED'). LEP is a collimated beam which is perfect for a scoped shot. A light that is all throw and no spill means it can be compact and light. LED is harder to collimate so for the same reach it will need to be bigger, and end up too bulky and heavy for a gun. The downside is LEP is more expensive.
Here is the Acebeam W10 GenII rifle mounted, On the top of a standard hunting rifle scope, and offset with 1" DD mount on a Picatinny rail. The battery is a newer, larger lithium-ion 21700 rechargeable (5000mAh) so it runs for longer while still in a compact 1" profile. Olight make a LEP version of their Valkyrie, but it is only 250lumens and more suited for handgnus. It runs off 2xCR123 batteries and unless you have a taxpayer supply of batteries this can get expensive quickly. Weltool's tactical LEP is the W35, however it is 335lumens and takes an 18350 rechargeable (1200mAh). When collimated, The Acebeam's 450lumens gets out to 400M. For the avoidance of doubt, the results when up close on the target is from a vehicle's headlights.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]19918[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]19919[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]19920[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]19921[/ATTACH]
Passive
If you want to go passive and use a NV device with a scope then I would look to mount it behind the scope, not in front like a PVS22. It's a lot cheaper mounting a PVS14 behind and it also doesn't need collimating with the scope - you just need to make sure the scope's parallax is adjusted. Another upside of mounting the PVS behind the scope is that you are magnifying optical not digital view. Mounting a NVD behind a red dot has been around for a while but it's 0 magnification so that's a limitation. You can mount an NVD behind a normal day scope if you have a long rail and room to get your head back, and the illuminated reticle is lower intensity. You will need to push the day scope forward to give room for the NVD, so will need continuous rail on the receiver like an AR. An adjustable stock helps here too: collapsed short for day scope use, and extended long for nighttime with NVD. Mounts are available to mount NVDs behind scopes.
You'll probably also need an IR light to see the game properly for at least half the month, when the moon is not up or full. On a full moon you can get away with no external illum, and even non-illuminated reticles, but only if there is enough contrast downrange at the target, which is not always guaranteed. Once you turn on a normal illuminated reticle it flares in the PVS, unless you can lower its brightness or put up with lowering the NVD's gain. Nightforce has Digillum where one of the three brightness ranges is pretty close to NVD friendly. March has an after-market replacement switch module that lowers the reticle to below naked visible, for NVD shooting. The March night reticle is perfect, but the scopes are not cheap.
Be aware IR torches always bleed into the visible spectrum and are seen by animals and humans as a dull red glow. They may know something is there but less intensity means less spooked.
Passive night shooting is not cheap, whichever system you go with.
Sounds like you are on a budget. Passive shooting at night costs money, however active shooting is a lot cheaper.
DNS and the other gurus know more about thermal than me.
By active I mean with lights and lasers that the animals can see.
Active
If you are shooting by yourself then unless you have a truck with a fixed light mount or you are static and have lights that can point in place, or remote control, you're going to need a light on the gun. Shooting with a separate light is much easier because you can swing it around without having to swing the gun around with it. With separate spotlight then I recommend a decent collimated reflector like a 240mm diameter with a 35W or even 75watt Xenon HID globe, adjustable for focus. Plug it into the vehicle's cigarette lighter socket, or clip onto a battery: either vehicle's, or Li-ion in your backpack for walking around. For example, his hand-held spotty is made by Lightforce (which is the parent company of Nightforce). Adapting it to a 75W ballast is DIY with a soldering iron, but they are sold with inbuilt 35W ballasts. Don't use incandescent/Halogen globes, it's cheap but ancient tech.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]19922[/ATTACH]
Gun-mounted needs to be more compact and lighter. I recommend a Laser Excited Phosphor 'LEP' flashlight (different tech to the standard Light Emitting Diode 'LED'). LEP is a collimated beam which is perfect for a scoped shot. A light that is all throw and no spill means it can be compact and light. LED is harder to collimate so for the same reach it will need to be bigger, and end up too bulky and heavy for a gun. The downside is LEP is more expensive.
Here is the Acebeam W10 GenII rifle mounted, On the top of a standard hunting rifle scope, and offset with 1" DD mount on a Picatinny rail. The battery is a newer, larger lithium-ion 21700 rechargeable (5000mAh) so it runs for longer while still in a compact 1" profile. Olight make a LEP version of their Valkyrie, but it is only 250lumens and more suited for handgnus. It runs off 2xCR123 batteries and unless you have a taxpayer supply of batteries this can get expensive quickly. Weltool's tactical LEP is the W35, however it is 335lumens and takes an 18350 rechargeable (1200mAh). When collimated, The Acebeam's 450lumens gets out to 400M. For the avoidance of doubt, the results when up close on the target is from a vehicle's headlights.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]19918[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]19919[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]19920[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]19921[/ATTACH]
Passive
If you want to go passive and use a NV device with a scope then I would look to mount it behind the scope, not in front like a PVS22. It's a lot cheaper mounting a PVS14 behind and it also doesn't need collimating with the scope - you just need to make sure the scope's parallax is adjusted. Another upside of mounting the PVS behind the scope is that you are magnifying optical not digital view. Mounting a NVD behind a red dot has been around for a while but it's 0 magnification so that's a limitation. You can mount an NVD behind a normal day scope if you have a long rail and room to get your head back, and the illuminated reticle is lower intensity. You will need to push the day scope forward to give room for the NVD, so will need continuous rail on the receiver like an AR. An adjustable stock helps here too: collapsed short for day scope use, and extended long for nighttime with NVD. Mounts are available to mount NVDs behind scopes.
You'll probably also need an IR light to see the game properly for at least half the month, when the moon is not up or full. On a full moon you can get away with no external illum, and even non-illuminated reticles, but only if there is enough contrast downrange at the target, which is not always guaranteed. Once you turn on a normal illuminated reticle it flares in the PVS, unless you can lower its brightness or put up with lowering the NVD's gain. Nightforce has Digillum where one of the three brightness ranges is pretty close to NVD friendly. March has an after-market replacement switch module that lowers the reticle to below naked visible, for NVD shooting. The March night reticle is perfect, but the scopes are not cheap.
Be aware IR torches always bleed into the visible spectrum and are seen by animals and humans as a dull red glow. They may know something is there but less intensity means less spooked.
Passive night shooting is not cheap, whichever system you go with.