LED color for headlamp
Equipment
Too many rainy day hunts on my old headlamp. Battery box leaked.... leading to batteries leaked... a mess. Headband about shot anyway.
Looking into new headlamp and wondering what "color" LED is best for blood trail? Seems "white", "cool white", etc. several options.
I know Zebra has a good following, rugged versatile design. My old fenix was nice in that it had two lights, a flood and a spot.
What is out there these days?
The first and last time I used an LED headlamp for bloodtrailing, (and that was many years ago) I was sorely disappointed to say the least. Blood just didn't show up under LED light. Maybe they're better now. If at all possible, I go out to the truck or camp and get a Coleman lantern with a reflector screen attached, or at least a full size flashlight, for any but the most obvious tracking job.
Lots of good headlamps out there. I prefer Black Diamond. I have had no problem with tracking deer using a newer LED headlamp. What does not work, is the red LED. On my field test, the red LED was worse than the regular LED. Now, that is the red LED on the regular headlamp, I don't know about the red LED blood trailing specific lights that are sold.
Instead of a headlamp, I prefer a handheld light for bloodtrail. That won't work if you're backpacking in but if not, my 500 lumen light from the local Ace hardware has a lot of power. Picked up a dead pig from 50 yards away last March, instant glare from his eyes. A 1000 lumen light from home depot is only $30.
LED blows the old Coleman lantern away nowadays. I heard about the coleman lantern for years and I've used it and it works but it's heavy, akward, makes you sweat because you're right over it, etc. For blood trailing go with a flood style reflector instead of a distance beam and also watch how many lumens you use. 500 is about tops as more than that will actually make it hard to see blood because it washes out the color and all you see is a big white spot. I prefer around 200 lumens. Also note though that most all of the cheap flashlights WAY over rate the amount of lumens they actually have. If you think you're getting 1000 lumens for $30 you're kidding yourself. Plus 1000 lumens is for a search light, not a blood trailing light.
A good headlamp would be the Streamlight ProTac HL head light. It's 600 lumens for searching and then has 2 lower levels for blood trailing and extended battery life.
Also be careful of candela ratings as they don't mean a thing when it comes to anything besides long distance search lights. That is, of course, if they're actually rated accuratley. There is no official rating for lumens or candela so some of the better know light manufactures set a standard that they all use so they can accuratly compare lights, most of the cheap lights just pull a number out of the air.
I'm color blind so it would be nice if there was a headlamp that made blood 'glow' for someone with a handicap!
jims, I wonder if that's even possible? I remember a company that offered a light that was supposed to make blood stand out better, they may still sell it, but it was a POS. My buddy bought one and half way through the first tracking job with it we put it in the pack and pulled out a cheap flashlight that worked better.
