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[Music]
Lamping foxes is an art and everyone has their own way of doing it. There are the calls,
the transport, the shooting rest and of course your lamp, strength of beam, colour and the
way you throw it around the place. Well, tonight fox shooting fan, Roy Lupton, is trying a
new lamping system which is on the market. The Night Master 800 is designed to make life
that little bit easier, especially for the lone foxer, delivering a strong beam from
a tiny unit which can be hand held, or attached to your scope.
The good thing about these torches is that not only are they obviously very small, ergonomic
and easy to use, but they also come with different coloured LED's. So just for ease of use to
show you with the camera we have got a few different torches set up with the different
colours, so with this one this is set up to mount on top of the rifle and this is with
a white light. If we have got an area where we are going out and the foxes are reasonably
easy, not over lamp shy, we will go straight in with the white light and see what we can
do. This one is an amber light. Just to show you the difference we have also got a red
and a green. So we have got the red light there and then we have got the green light.
Obviously the one thing I cannot show in here is that these units can be used as an IR illuminator
for night vision. And again it gives you exactly the same beam. You we get out to about 800
yards with one of these TAC like torches.
So no filters just a change of LED gives you the colour of choice and the manufacturers
say the small rechargeable battery is suitable for a 4 to 5 hour lamping session. All looks
pretty promising. We are also going to play with a Night Master infra red unit this evening.
And we will have a very cute digital night vision prototype on Roy's rifle to show it
off to its best. Anyway in order to get a charlie's perspective, Roy is going to throw
the beams from the Night Master and a conventional lamp on to a very accommodating fox 120 yards
away across a field.
We will start off with the white light and we have got a fantastic result there, you
can see the eye shining through and if you were looking through your binoculars or a
scope then that would be illuminating the target really well. Then we have got the red
LED in this torch and again fantastic illumination, there is no mistaking you have got the eye
reflection there, eye shine. We have got the green LED in here. Not quite as strong, but
if you have got a tricky customer, tricky fox then that could work quite well. Really
good illumination from the amber. So the green not quite as strong on the illumination by
the looks
of it.
Right, time to throw some light onto some real foxes and our first customer is in the
second field Andy takes us to. The white light gives Roy plenty of scope for a shot.
We have opened the count for the night, young dog fox of the year. So for me that was superb
because we spotted the fox out in the field, he then bolted back into the wood and then
we had the white light on it, did a little bit of squeaking on the hand and then he crept
out and again he was fully illuminated and he actually sat down and had a look us and
I managed to squeeze a shot off. So yes I am thoroughly pleased with that so far.
A great start, but then we have a barren hour and half which means time for a refuel at
a little place Andy knows and we didn't even need to book ahead. With the blood sugar levels
restored, Roy keeps working the Night Master with the red LED, a slight change in technique
brings a young dog fox in close.
With the silver fox whistle that can be a little bit harsh I am finding for early cubs
and just after the harvest, but it works very well later on in the year. With the young
cubs it is worth toning it down a little bit and trying a few different squeaks. Andy did
a fantastic job there with the polystyrene and the glass. He came in at a beautiful pace,
really, really well.
Roy now swaps to the other unit he has on test. The Night Master 800 IR.
What we have got now is the infra red unit fitted to the rifle and we are going to just
put an IR illuminator obviously within the TAC light on top and that should give us the
perfect combination for getting fox number 3 for the evening, hopefully as long as we
can find another one. We are going to try and film through the actual scope unit and
see what results we can get with that. Right let's give that a go and see what we can do.
With this unit we have no idea if this fox we are calling is lamp shy or not because
it doesn't matter. A camera attached to the Night Vision unit picks it up and Roy takes
his 3rd fox of the night. We finally came across this lad working along the bottom of
the hedge row here. We had to move in to about 200 yards and luckily we made a count for
him and that was number 3 for the night. So very impressed with the lights. All of the
colour modes worked really well and the infra red illuminator is spot on as well. So fantastic
bit of kit and I think a must have for anybody who is heavily into their foxing.
Prices for the Night Master 800 start from £119.95 and if you want to find out a bit
more visit www.nightmaster.co.uk