Hey buddy. . . got a light?

In spades, my friend.

Last night a friend and I decided to do an equipment check for a foray into the wild world of hunting predators. I bought an el-cheapo WorkForce 1Mil candlepower spotlight and spiced it up with a little red brake-light tape, and then bolted on some picatinney mounts that I had lying around. Llllllllllllllike a Glove!!!!

The rigged spotlight works perfect, and before I put the red tape on the lens I did a side-by-side comparison against my Surefire 6P and Streamlight TLR-1, with 65 and 135 lumens, respectively. The tactical lights held their own. I was particularly impressed with the TLR-1; it cast a long perfectly white beam out to the 120 yards that I could see, and it had a nice bright cone for searching that lit up anything inside of fifty yards. The 6P was quite nice as well, although I need to get the 120 lumen head for it.

We sound checked the various calls that my friend had, and we managed to call in a huge owl. That thing just about scared my heart out of my chest; he came in all stealth-ninja and landed in a tree about ten yards away. How they can soar through the woods with a five foot wingspan and not make a freakin sound is downright amazing. I don't know much about owls, but this one didn't seem to appreciate the red filter on my spotlight. Does anyone out there know if they can see the red light spectrum?

We weren't at it for very long; last night was mainly about finding out if our gear worked or not. This was all on my friend's property, and he has seen an abundance of coyotes, foxes, and bobcats recently. Night time hunting works for both of us in particular - working through the week from dark to dark is the norm, and when we get home it's time to be a daddy for a few hours until the kids go to bed. I didn't get into the woods for deer season the first stinkin time this year as I didn't have the time to go; not that I had anywhere to go anyways. There is a subdivision or a Starbucks in every patch of what used to be woods that I hunted in my youth.

I have a feeling that shooting coyotes in the dark may turn out to be awesomeness. In my humble opinion, the AR platform was taylor made for the role, and I'm going to be playing around with different gear until I find out what works the best.