I primarily use my lights at work (police night shift) in an urban environment.
I have never had that much preference for tint as long as I could see.
But I am also outdoors a lot for fun, camping, fishing and hunting in the woods.
The areas that I frequent the most are typical central and south Texas scrub brush (mesquite) and cedar. No big forests of pine etc.
I will be hunting feral hog and javelina in south Texas later in February.
What tint range have you found works the best for navigating outdoors at night?
Specifically blood tracking animals in the dark (ferals only after dark, TX state law).
the process is looking for blood in the dark, on the ground and in the grass. sometimes the drops are very small. sometimes you have to look for a while.
I have only used the higher K ranges in the past (what I had).
being older now and sometimes needing readers, I was wondering if the lower ranges would be easier on the eyes.
Just my opinion but outdoors the warmer the better, as long as it meets your max output. I would go with something hiCRI also, might help with the blood.
Warmer tint seams to be easier on my eyes, less tiresome.
I experience less atmosphere feedback with warmer, IDK how to explain.
I have tracked a few dear in my day. When the blood runs out, no light will help.
I have not tracked with any hi cri lights, didn’t have em back then.
thx for the advise guys. I just ordered a couple of lights that cover the lower range. heading out in a couple of weeks. hopefully I will have some pics to share.
Yes, a blue light does make blood easy to spot. UV does a okay job as well but I prefer a blue led or filter. Gives me much more usable light as well as making the blood pop a bit.
I just took a $3 SK68 and put a CREE of some forgotten variety blue LED in it.
I agree that the warmer tints are more to my liking for outdoors and hunting. Also, if you are planning on building a red light for shooting hogs/javelina at night, I recommend the xp-e in photo red, which is more like 650-670nm than the newer xp-e2 in 620nm red. Supposedly, that color of red light is harder to see for animals, and makes it a better shooting light. I built a zoomie t-20 with pressure switch with a photo-red xp-e and driver from mtn electronics. You could use a buck driver since red leds are lower voltage than normal leds:
But that driver only has one mode, so if you are using it on full power for scanning the field for a longer period of time, it may be the way to go.
Or, what I did for a shooting light mounted to the gun was use a 7135 based driver because it has different modes. One tap on the pressure switch gives me really low red light if I'm close to the target, like at a feeder. Then another tap or two and you can ramp it up to high current for longer range. The 7135's heat up due to the much higher voltage, but the light is on for such a short period of time it's never been an issue. That's why it's my choice for gun-mounted light instead of a longer-time use scan light.
Love the photo-red tint for a shooting light. Find it here:
Once you see the photo red next to the regular red, its a huge difference and it seems to spook animals less. There are a lot of people who just use a very warm tinted light with success too though, just my $0.02
I have a nice blue light that I purchased hoping it would be useful for blood tracking and have experimented with it and found it of no use and do not carry it at all anymore. A white light is far superior in tracking but I have not experimented with the different tints on actual blood.
