If you do any type of recreational hunting or fishing, then you already know the importance of having dependable, high-quality lighting with you. In fact, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to state that while hunting methods across the country have hardly changed in a century, advancements in lighting may be the single greatest contributor to the unparalleled growth in recent years in professional and recreational game hunter registration in Australia.

Spotlights help to provide the confidence and accuracy that’s needed to successfully hunt target and pest animals after dark without the risk of injuring another hunter, or failing to dispatch your prey in the quickest and most merciful manner possible.

Make no mistake: these lights are stronger, brighter, and more durable than they’ve ever been, and they’re must-have items for anyone who hunts, camps, or just wants to keep a spare light in their vehicle for roadside emergencies.

Hunting Lights That Make Hunting Safer and More Effective

Let’s be honest: it’s pretty amazing when you consider how much the spotlights used by hunters and fishers have changed in only a decade. The biggest change, however, has been in the globes, as long-distance hunting LED lights, along with high-powered HIDs and halogens have largely replaced the incandescents and xenons that were standard-type globes for so long.

Innovative, high-performance globes have become irreplaceable in helping to make hunting and fishing at night safer, more effective, and even more ethical. The advantages that they afford modern hunting lights in intensity, lifespan, and even power usage over conventional illumination sources are remarkable, and you don’t have to look far to see how beneficial they are.

• LED lights. Instead of expending as much as 95% of their energy as wasted heat, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) boast up to 80% efficiency in an instant, full-intensity light production for up to 50,000 hours.
• HID lights. High-intensity discharge (HID) lights typically only last 25,000 hours, but their extremely bright, 6400-lumen outputs enable them to still produce 1 lux output at a beam length of over 2,700m.
• Halogen lights. With lifespans of only 5,000 – 6,000 hours, Halogens are shorted lived globes, but their warmer, less intense output is not only less likely to startle prey, but their superior diffusion qualities make them easier for hunters to see at night.

Along with HIDs and halogens, modern LED hunting lights have more to offer than just higher-quality globes, though. From their specially designed Fresnel composite lenses to their ergonomic polycarbonate handles, today’s hunting lights are better suited for hunting than their oversized predecessors ever were. And nowhere is this suitability more prevalent than in how they filter light.

High-Performance Colour-Filtering Gives Hunters the Advantage

Hunters have known about the advantages of light filtering for a long time. Although most prey animals don’t have trouble seeing at night, many of them don’t perceive colours very well. This colourblindness provides an edge that hunters can use to their benefit, and colour-filtered halogen and LED lights for hunting are just what they need to make a difference.

Colour-filtered halogen and LED spotlights are designed to reduce the light intensity that would ordinarily alarm most animals, without restricting a hunter’s ability to see the target. These lightweight, fully-focusable spotlights can be adjusted from a wide pattern beam to a long-distance spotlight, and feature the following colour filters:

• Green. Low light green filters are ideal for both tracking animals with poor night vision, and for having the least amount of negative impact on a hunter’s night vision.
• Amber. Amber filters are especially good for spotting targets from long range, or in rainy or foggy conditions that would otherwise restrict visibility.
• Red. While the low intensity of red filters would normally prevent hunters from spotting prey at long range, it’s also the colour that’s least likely to spook prey animals at short range.

Although every animal can react differently, a colour-filtered halogen and LED hunting light can give you a decisive advantage at night that old-style torchlights simply can’t match. And even when it comes to their portability and ease of use, today’s hunting lights are light years ahead of torches from only a generation ago.

Power Choices That a Big Difference When You’re On the Trail

No matter if you’re tracking a mob of hogs from 500m with a remote-controlled, roof-mounted torch, or fishing in the shallows with an IP-69-rated handheld, there’s a full range of modern hunting light accessories and features designed exclusively to make hunting and fishing at night more convenient. And not surprisingly, convenience counts most when you’re talking about how hunter’s lights are powered.

Whether it’s from a vehicle’s battery bank, or a handheld’s internal battery source, power is one of the most critical factors facing anyone who hunts or fishes at night. Roof and window-mounted lights should be able to easily take power from your vehicle, while handheld lights need long-life power sources that don’t tie a hunter down with bulky battery packs or unnecessary weight.

Fortunately, today’s lights and hunting products come with a wider range of powering and charging options than ever, including:

• Rechargeable internal and external lithium-ion battery packs;
• Vehicle USB, or cigarette plugs; and
• Inline fuse, or alligator clips to harness vehicle batteries.

Suffice it to say, with such a broad selection of powering options for modern, Australian-made LED, HID, and halogen lights, hunting and fishing at night have never been safer or more effective.

The Final Word

At the end of the day, proper lighting is about more than just successful hunting and fishing at night. It’s about safety. High-quality illumination allows you to find your way around your campsite, and it helps other hunters and fishers to be able to see you as well.

Long-distance hunting LED lights, together with HIDs and halogens, help you to stay on target and safe when you’re on the hunt. If you’re tired of lugging your old heavy torches around every time you’re ready to do some night hunting, these are the lights that are going to give you an advantage.