homesick, depending on the NV you buy, you could easily pay for NV what the less expensive thermal costs. For example, a Pulsar Apex XD38 will cost you less than $3K, handle recoil up to .308 and work quite well at 100 yards and less.
You can go with digital NV that will allow you daylight capability as well, which is nice, and it with the cost of an IR illuminator (absolutely needed for digital NV at this point, like low end regular NV), you can set up for well under $800 and likely much less than that. Your choices at that price point are really the Sightmark Photon II which has a lesser quality image but is technology that works well, or the ATN X-Sight HD, which has lots of bells and whistles and a nice image, but the preceding X-Sight was fraught with problems and the jury is out on the new HD version. If it performs as advertised, it will be cost effective.
The problem with low end traditional NV and digital NV is the need for an illuminator. You are fine in an open field, but in a busy environment with lots of stuff in the foreground, overillumination of the close stuff can make it hard to see your target. On calm nights, the smoke from your rifle firing may result in you being blind for 1-5 seconds until the smoke clears, the IR light reflecting off of it like a smoke screen. That is the downside to IR illuminators. I hunted with Gen I and Gen II+ traditional NV and digital NV for 3 years or so, using IR illuminators. You can certainly be successful going this route, but you have to work through the problem.
Here is one of my videos showing the problem with reflectivity of an object in the foreground...
https://youtu.be/Zy1LBsRyHGg
Here are a couple of videos showing the white-out produced by the smoke after firing...
https://youtu.be/SkCXUWvgVuQ (two examples in this video, the 2nd example is with a hog and the problem was really bad then)
https://youtu.be/-LqjPNmhahs
This video shows problems with foliage reflecting light and also smoke...
https://youtu.be/m6y2dX6IpOw
I had a Pulsar Apex XD38a thermal scope for only a short while and didn't get a lot of video with it, but here is a good coyote example...
https://youtu.be/lUP3hb2HJ6w
This guy hunts a lot with the Apex XD38a and has a bunch of videos with it. He doesn't always state distances, unfortunately, and some of his shots are not short range, but you can see he gets plenty of utility out of it.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC85NxcimufzHNuZq71yEPpw