Visible Green Laser Designator Wanted for Ring Mounts / Fox Hunting

[PeterD]

I have looked at all the rifle laser posts and none of them seem to be asking for what I want.

I have been fighting foxes who have killed half my livestock and I have killed all the easy ones in the day time with a varmint rifle and various calls.

I now am left with the older foxes who are gun shy, and are white light shy when night hunting.

My next choice is to go with a green laser designator, NOT a dot point.

I have a 50mm lens on the end of the rifle scope for extra light gathering ability but it does not have an illuminated reticle in the scope.

I need a blance between enough illumination to light up the reticle but not too bright, you can rely on the lens inside the animals eyes to focus the light energy on the back of the retina and then back out again lighting up their eyes at night. This is good for lower power/more diffusion with larger circle focused in but may not have enough energy to illuminate the reticle.

Focus ability is a key criteria. A fox is 25 cm to 30 cm tall and I want to put at least this size circle in focused laser light out to 100 yards/meters to 150 yards/meters for long distance spotting (if I can get a suggestion of a good inexpensive laser that meets my needs I might get two and mount the other one to my binoculars for a spotter mate to look as well). Most shots in the day time are a lot closer 10 to 35 yards/meters out so being able to focus it to a larger circle to get at least a 30 cm circle in close is also a plus.

While being able to adjust windage and elevation sounds nice, I don't know if I'd rather just have a fixed mount and just ensure the illumination circle covers enough of the field of view in the scope to identify the fox and get the shot off.

I've visited all the regular sites, ebay, Deal Extreme, AliDirect, and all the Chinese sites and all they have done is make me angry at how they add in every search terminology for what I am looking for even though their particular laser product does not even do what the terminology words say just so they get more hits. I also cannot trust the numbers, they will advertise a 20 or 30 mw laser and the first dot point under description will say 10 mw output. They even take commercial web page material from retailers in the States and just copy it onto their product when their product is not the OEM nor does it have the same specifications.

So trust is low.

I then came across this forum, read the Green laser forum and FAQs but either they are not written to present the information readily accessible to someone with a need specific to mine or are just hopelessly buried.

So can someone point me to some answers on how much output power is needed for night designator/flashlight illumination but not too bright to spook the animals (I already have read that some hunters say wild pigs can see the green wavelength and bolt just as if hit with a white light spotlight whereas coyotes seem to not be able to see or do not seem to react to the green spectrum laser illuminators. I am hoping foxes are like the coyotes.

Cheers,
PeterD

 

[daguin]

Search up "varmint hunting lights".

Primos and Optronics are a couple of makers.

You want a scope mounted light, with a RED lens

Red registers as "black" in the mind of a colorblind predator

They can "see" a green light as "white"

Some will react to the green light. Some won't. Virtually none react to the red light

Peace,
dave

 

[PeterD]

Thank you for the reply. It has convinced me. It to spend too much effort nor too much power in search for a solution. But I also have pulled from a fox forum the details that encourage me in this pursuit:


Can foxes see in color?
We don't have exact specs on this, but tests indicate that foxes see about the same range of colors as dogs, meaning they have dichromatic color vision. Dogs lack the ability to see green, specifically, and apparently can't tell green from red or yellow. (This condition is found in humans, as well, and is the most common sort of "color blindness.") What this means is, you should not let a fox borrow your car, because they can't tell the difference between a green light and a red one and are likely to run the intersection.


So green is in for a good chance of not being detected by foxes.

I don't own but have use of the neighboring farms red light but it is a massive spotlight for car mounting and doesn't seem to throw light far (spilled diffusion to the sides) and red appears quite dark and throws false reflected colors (not much of an issue compared to navigation chart reading in the dark).

I also have a 1200 lumen Cree led flashlight that throws a decent amount but suffers from spilt diffused energy off to the sides. An old tale I heard was to put a green cover over a light for foxes so this also gives me more hope for green application for foxes.

I searched the lights mentioned for varmint hunting but they appear to be cheaper sub 200 lumen led lights. When adding on the filter and taking into account lost energy from side casts and passing through the filter I don't get a warm and fuzzy feeling about the reach in distance you would get from them. Add in a bright moon lit night and their effectiveness diminishes greatly.

I'll have a play with filters on my Cree and look at a low power green laser that is simar to retail models but 1/3rd the USA price and 1/5th the local price in this country. A focused lens Cree torch would be about $360 USD but just under $600 here so it's sill more attractive to experiment with a laser option that could be shipped direct from China for $100 or less.

Cheers,
PeterD

 

[Sigurthr]

As far as finding a trustworthy Chinese site to order from... the only one I can really recommend is Lazerer.com . The guy who runs it is a member here and is very active and has an excellent track record. You can have every laser you order from them tested on a LPM (output meter) and they will include a print out of the results. If exact output power isn't a priority, I can recommend Laserlands.net, but they do not offer the output test service, and lasers from them have been reported to be underspec by some others. I have had no problems from them at all with any of my (many) orders however.

As far as using a laser hunting illuminator goes, all you really need is a powerfull enough laser in a host which is focusable. You'll have to manually focus the laser's beam to the distance/size of spot you wish, but it's not much different from focusing an old camera (just twist the barrel!). What's powerful enough for your needs? Hard to say for sure.

A high power green will be rather expensive, as far as lasers go, because it uses an indrect method of light production called DPSS. So keep it in mind when you are comparing prices, Green will be the costliest wavelength (as far as RGBV wavelengths go). Since green lasers are so much more inefficient than red/blue/violet they expend a lot of energy as heat, so they tend to have much lower duty cycles. This could be important for your application. 100mW does not appear to be enough to spread to a nice wide spot at 450ft though, I can tell you that. My 95mW 532nm laser will do fine when diverged up to 300ft out, but really no more. 200mW could probably do it just fine though.

Reds don't come in as high of powers as the other wavelengths, but are generally much cheaper because they use a direct diode light production. Our eyes are far less sensitive to red wavelengths than any other visible colors, so even if it is the same output power as another color, it won't appear as bright or be visible as far out. My focusable 200mW red is not operational yet, otherwise I'd hop outside and see how well it works for your needs. 200mW red is definitely less visible than 100mW green though.

 

[PeterD]

Green is right smack in the sweet spot for depleting the chemical rhodopsin in the human eye's rods. That's why it appears so bright so you don't need the higher mw output to see it. However once the green is off you will no longer have naturally adapted night vision which could be taken as a minus.

Red, the longer wavelengths especially, deplete the rhodopsin very slowly so to the rods it appears dim and you can use it much longer. When red is turned off you more quickly regain your natural night vision.

I have to take a look for my old web site which now only exists in storage as I had a lot of material on ocean navigation and frequencies optimum for night vision preservation in the red spectrum.

Rhodopsin breaks down rapidly with star light but as the area is so small for a pin prick of star light the chemical is rapidly recharged.

Rhodoslon detection frequency goes down to about 610 nm wavelength. Dark red is below this frequency and the rods are no longer seeing the light and your night vision is preserved most perfectly and a very bright light in that range will have no discernable effect (dark red). Note that WWII cockpit illumination was red though a bit higher around 650 nm. Red does have the ability to draw out near sighted issues in prone people and reflected color from maps etc. will be false which can be a navigation hazard. So it might be worth playing in those frequencies for a balance between natural night vision preservation and illumination capabilities.

Most red lasers I see seem rather bright so must be in the higher frequencies but I would be interested in the results.

Do note that the country fun police just kicked up the stink and now hand held laser pointers above 1mw are banned. So fingers crossed the scope mounted low temperature laser designator passes customs scrutiny.

Cheers,
PeterD