Night Shooting Lights

[6pt-sika]

I am finding myself in the market for a gun mounted light for shooting hogs , deer etc at night . We have damage control permits for about 1,500 acres for deer , coyotes and wild pigs and about 20 acres for bear as well .

The larger piece is deer-pig-coyote only and the land owner says we'll only see them at night as he's somewhat the hunter himself !

This is something I've not done before , as I always though spotlighting to be below board(as far as deer and bear are concerned) . However it seems I need to give it a try now .

I am wondering for those of you that do this type of thing do you have better success with a green light or a red light ?

My friend that does this with me has a red light and he claims the green doesn't work . He got his a couple years ago to hog hunt in Arkansas and I think he killed about half a dozen pigs in the last two trips .

Anyway I'm just curiouse before I decide to plunk down the Benjamins !

We have military throw away thermal imaging equipment so we can see them and then turn the light on later and take the shot .

 

[6pt-sika]

My friend has this one .

http://www.elusivewildlife.com/products.htm?section=22&p=productMore&iProduct=423

It can be had in green or red .


Also found this jewell !

https://stalktech.com/shop/the-most-powerful-red-led-flashlight-on-the-market-today/

For all intents and purposes the cost is a wash .

Both of them have lights up into the $400 range . As long as it's decent out to 200 yards it'll do all I need or want .

 

[griffshrek]

Night master 800 I cant rate this light enough

 

[6pt-sika]

Night master 800 I cant rate this light enough

I'm more intrested in opinions on red versus green to be honest .

 

[6pt-sika]

I googled that Night Master 800 and it looks pretty decent although it's n the UK . I think I'm beter off to buy one of those readily available here in the US .

 

[kevhumps]

http://www.dereelight.com/nightmaster.htm
There you go, and far cheaper than we get them over here! Get the extra battery cell and red led option. If you need a bit extra range the Xsearcher has a larger lens. Can't fault em, I've got two, one on the rifle, and one for spotting. Only way to improve them would be to build a dimmer into them,or an external switch.
Kev.

 

[tikkathreebarrels]

I'd say red is/was usually favoured over green light for lamping foxes in the UK. That said, I had an amber filter on my lightforce lamp. As a shooter I was always more interested in what light "worked" for my vision than in the theory of X is better than Y. Going back to the OP's last comment I'm wondering why you'd bother with anything else if you're able to use NV to find your quarry. Hope this helps.

 

[6pt-sika]

Going back to the OP's last comment I'm wondering why you'd bother with anything else if you're able to use NV to find your quarry. Hope this helps.

We don't have Night Vision scopes , we have a couple hand held thermal imagining monoculars .

So instead of sweeping the field all the time with the red light and wasting the batteries we can use the thermal imaging monocular every so often and not turn the light on until we see a hot spot .

 

[fizzbangwhallop]

I googled that Night Master 800 and it looks pretty decent although it's n the UK . I think I'm beter off to buy one of those readily available here in the US .

Hi 6pt,
Or you could build your own easy enough... this guy asked just about the same question on here and there are other threads... look for Sunnranger:
www.nightvisionforumuk.com Login
Basically... a Sunnranger is......

Buy a UF-T20 torch for less than $20 - these are really good but the original beam diverges too quickly - it's the quick zoom facility that's makes them so useful.
So, buy a ready made pill or change the T20's pill to an Oslon Black coloured LED and a new single (battery) driver to match. If you can use a soldering iron although it's less hassle to buy one from Sikastag as advertised. I guess that's around $30-$40 odd plus P&P to the US
Buy a Yukon Ranger head - $65 odd. The T20 just needs it's head cutting back to the threads to get the Ranger lens fitted and into focus.

Way cheaper than the Nightmaster and a tighter beam at 150m - matches the field of view on my Zeiss 6-24x56 on 12 power at this range and still enough light to i/d and shoot by. There's a new thread started today on getting an even smaller focus by removing one of the lenses in the Yukon.

The NM in red is brighter when you open out the beam on the Sunnranger to match it - down to the driver and the 2 batteries in the NM (Yeah, I did try 2 in the SR - didn't work).

And if you were using NV you could always use an Oslon Black IR pill instead.

's me.

Cheers

Fizz

 

[Akeld]

Using Lightforce lamps I've tried most of the filters, to my eyes;
Green -doesn't seem to spook the animal but it very hard to define the animal
Red -better than above but really restricts the distance of the beam
Amber - probably the best of the colours, good clarity but can haze the sight picture
White light - can spook the animal, but if they have never been lamped it won't, gives a very clear sight picture

I take two lightforce 170 lamps, one scope mounted without filter and one hand held with amber filter. I search with the amber light and shoot with the white light, best of both worlds for me