Thread: Spotlighting tips and tricks

Originally Posted by bully

When you jump out and rest on the bonnet, be aware of scope height, you can shoot the bonnet if your not watching the barrel, iv seen it and it makes it hard to shoot straight after because your still laughing at your dumb mate shooting his truck. Haha.

Sage advice. And you're right, it takes years to stop laughing.

As others have noticed too, the cold white beams are great but they don't light up the eyes as well as the warmer yellow light of the traditional spotlights. Instead of looking for eyes you actually need to look for the animals. Unless you're directly on the eyes with LED and HID lights they don't reflect the same and I find they also seem to reflect dew-drops more often too. That said, I still prefer my 240 mm 'satellite dish' HID.

I always used to wonder how it was my mate could see possums/rabbits I couldn't pick up and it took me a couple of years to understand that his helmet-mounted spotlight was the advantage he had over my handheld. Having the beam up near your face gives you a much better chance of picking up a reflection. Of course with the LED/HID lights that's no longer so important but till relevant.

Reflection of the scattered light off your vehicle roof is another problem you can encounter, especially with a white or lighter colour paint job. It buggers your night vision. Mitigate that by building a bit of a platform out over the roof to rest your gun and store your ammo on. Incorporate a power outlet in the framework for your spotlight and it keeps things tidy, avoiding that sudden darkness that comes with somebody accidentally pulling the wires apart.

And FFS, put a fuse in the line to your handheld spotlight. I can tell you some good stories that demonstrate the importance of this. Needless to say it gives you years of campfire entertainment, laughing about the misfortunes of others.... so long as it's others you're laughing about and not yourself.