Which flashlight is best for night hunting?

December 28, 2022

Today it is commonplace to go into a dark room to light your way with a flashlight. And we don't even think about the evolutionary development placed in this small box. It's the journey from candle to LED light bulb. How did it all begin? More than three thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks poured a combustible mixture oil-based mixture and lit this prototype of a street lamp. The Chinese invented their first famous lanterns, with rice paper, bamboo, and a miniature burner that heated the air in the structure and lifted it into the sky. The Romans wrapped an oiled cloth around the inside of bronze bowls for illumination. In Europe, the first street lamps were made in the early fifteenth century on the initiative of the mayor of London. Parisians at the same time were obliged by the local authorities to put oil lamps or candles in the windows overlooking the street at night. Street lamps in European cities differed in design, but they had one thing in common - they shone brighter and brighter from year to year. Wax was replaced oil, was replaced by cheaper kerosene, then came gas, and later installed electric light bulbs. It is hard to believe that the first electric lights worked on cumbersome "batteries", where two carbon electrodes acted as a source of current. At the end of the nineteenth century, for the first time in New Jersey, American inventor Thomas Edison made a presentation of his relatively inexpensive light bulb for those days. One hundred light bulbs turned on simultaneously, each consuming one hundred watts of electricity with a lifetime of one hundred hours, caused a sensation. Already at the beginning of the twentieth millennium, a tungsten filament appeared in his laboratory, and then the insides of the bulb were filled with gas. But the world saw the first pocket flashlights at the end of the nineteenth century, after the creation of a solid electrolyte by the German Carl Gassner. First flashlights were made of paper tubes, a lamp, brass reflector, had a kilogram weight, minimum efficiency and high cost. In addition, the first flashlights did not shine, but flickered. And only the reduction of batteries gave an impetus to their popularity. Already at the beginning of the twentieth century the number of flashlight users in the USA passed the ten million mark. From this point we can begin the countdown of the development and introduction of various flashlight modifications. Flashlights were introduced in sports, tourism, public utilities, special forces, the army, the police, and just to ordinary people. A waterproof flashlight was developed. Bright halogens were introduced, replacing incandescent vacuum tubes. They gave way to economical and bright LEDs. And now you're faced... to choose a flashlight for hunting. It's kind of simple, and the flashlights consist of three parts - the body, bulb and battery or batteries. When you get into the subject, you realize the choice is not an easy one. An incandescent bulb versus a LED. What's the difference? Incandescent bulbs are the clear losers to LEDs. They get hot quickly and fail. LEDs give a bright light several times the power of a regular light bulb without heat with almost fifty thousand hours of service life. When choosing a flashlight, be guided by the indicators. Brightness is measured in lumens, indicating how much light your flashlight will produce. The brightness of the LEDs directly affects the length of luminous flux and is measured in meters. Candela measures the concentration of light.

The types of flashlights every night hunter needs
Hunting at night is interesting and full of surprises. Many have heard about it, know everything in theory to the smallest detail, but have not participated. Tracing a game at night is a real quest. It is not a driven hunt in which though there are nuances but you will not return home without trophy or its part. The team will help you. Paddock hunting is fundamentally different. You and the beast are on an equal footing. Well, almost equal. While chasing the prey you sometimes become the beast yourself, following the trail obeying your intuition. And he walks away, turning on all his sense of smell and a sensitive nose. And to approach it from the leeward side, even knowing the place of its permanent dwelling, not to mention the exact shot, is a task with many unknowns. To some extent you get a head start having in your arsenal a good flashlight with white powerful light and red and blue additional light. This gives you an opportunity at a distance, up to forty feet, without scaring the animal, to see the trophy in its entirety, to assess its trophy qualities, sex, age. But most importantly, your gadgets in the form of flashlight and color filters will guarantee you a trophy under one indisputable condition - if you can shoot accurately.

Nozzles for handgun flashlights
Purchasing a quality handheld flashlight does not preclude having a handheld flashlight, to mount on your weapon. If you do not use night vision or thermal vision, having a single handheld flashlight is not enough for you. It is used to locate game, but it is almost impossible to shine and shoot at the same time. It is also inconvenient to search in the dark for a beast by the glint of the eyes with a flashlight mounted on a gun.

Headlamp
It is indispensable in the field at night. You have two hands and why not free them by attaching a flashlight to your head? It will help you get to your destination faster, and if necessary, see the glint of a beast's eyes on the ground. Note that the earliest designs of the headlamp refer to miners who attached carbide or wick lights to tarpaulin hoods to free their hands, dangerous for working in the mine. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Americans presented the first battery-powered lantern. It consisted of a bulky battery pack, mounted on a belt and connected by wires that were constantly tangled. Climbers in those same years put flashlights in a bag and held it in their teeth for night descents. The solution came unexpectedly. When ordering cases to store batteries of carbide spelunkers, they decided to experiment by tying, with a rubber garter, the battery packs to the back of the head, and fastening a flashlight to the forehead as a counterweight. This was the first example of a helmetless headlamp.

Feeder Lights.
Some types of hunting fail inherently without the use of a feeder light. For example, hunting wild boar for bait at night. Agree, it's hard to control the light and make an accurate shot at the same time. A feeder flashlight allows you to see the target, freeing your hands to shoot without scaring the animals with the light. These lanterns have different uses. Some are mounted on the feeder and shine down from above, others are mounted on trees or poles and point horizontally at the feeder. They work either on batteries of direct current or on energy of the sun. Convenient control modes. Either with a manual, activated motion sensor, or you choose the desired mode yourself. When buying, remember a few tips. It is more convenient to use a lantern with the light downward attached to the feeder, then the visible area of light falls clearly under the feeder, which does not frighten the animals. It is important to choose a light that allows you to observe the trophy. An average is considered a safe distance of at least forty feet. The color of the light used is usually red, green and white. The red light is safely tolerated by wild boar, for example. Green applies when you are far enough away from the feeder. Dark pigs can be seen better with it, and at the same time, it is more irritating to the animals. If this feeder is used for deer during the hunt, the intense lighting will frighten them.

Blood Tracking Lights.
Either blood tracking lights. It is important for the hunter to make an accurate shot at the target and kill the animal immediately without causing it to suffer. Sometimes it happens that an animal with a wound walks away from the place of the shot. And here we need to find the wounded animal very quickly judging by the blood left behind. A special flashlight that gives a "blood tracing light" helps in this. Although, in fact, there is no magic light with which you can see the smallest drops of blood. Remember, UV is a poor aid when searching for blood on the ground at night. Natural and other factors influence the positive results in our case. For example, the terrain where not all light sources will show quality results. The factor of autumn makes us reckon with the fallen leaves, which in addition to yellow, houses and red shades, which is confusing. There is no universal light source for detecting the blood droplets of a wounded beast. A very bright white light, and naturally, your good eyesight, will help you track the blood.

What is the best color of light to keep the animals from being spooked?
We mentioned in passing the specifics of using colored light, for your camouflage. The question is ambiguous. It all depends on the characteristics of some animals that perceive colors very differently than humans see them. For example, lynx, wild boar, coyote do not perceive green and red in natural color at all. For them, they are shades of gray. The debate about the best color between red and green has been going on for a long time, but there is no unequivocal answer. Both red and green are excellent choices. We recommend red, though. We feel that this is a universal color. At the same time, when hunting wild boar, green is better. This probably has to do with our eyesight, where the eyes perceive green more softly than red, and so the black color of the animal at a distance, with the green beam, is seen better. Although feral pigs don't have very good eyesight as it is, so maybe we shouldn't bother. Although there is an undeniable fact. Human eyes adapt much faster to the darkness when the color is red. So if you hunt only wild pigs, choose green. If you decide to diversify your diet and hunt in the dark for a variety of game, choose red.

In conclusion, lanterns in the hunter's equipment play no small role. Quality flashlights. But if you finally decided to buy this necessary gadget, do not be lazy to choose the best option. Familiarize yourself with the technical characteristics of the future acquisition, compare different manufacturers, go to various forums of hunters and get the opinion of others. And of course, you know the main rule of choosing a quality flashlight. It comes down to the place of its application. And where you plan to use it is no secret for you.