Blood trailing and LED's

I've read about blue being the color to use for blood trailing. I've even tried it a time or two. But to me it just makes blood look black and on leaves and dirt that isn't a big help. On the other hand, I have discovered that red LED's make red objects appear brighter red. I haven't had the chance to try it on blood. Has anyone elese noticed the blue/black thing and maybe used red to illuminating blood? I am thinking that maybe a light with red and white LED's together like an Inova X5 with three red and two white LED's would be the perfect blood trailing light. Additionally, what about using UV with colored eyewear (amber maybe)? Would that make blood more visible? I'm a hunter and this topic interests me very much.

Gerber sells a light, I believe called the Carnivore, that is specifically designed for tracking blood trails. It uses blue LEDs to make the blood stand out, and red LEDs to wash out the background. Wal-Mart carries them; you might want to check out one in the store. As far as using UV LEDs, I don't think all wavelengths of UV would work. One of the members on here had posted a neat chart that shows what UV wavelengths are useful for different purposes, like money, body fluids, etc. You might do a thread search and see if it is still here.

For anyone who wants the chart,it can be found at. www.uvflashlights.com and go to application matrix.

RadarGreg said:

Gerber sells a light, I believe called the Carnivore, that is specifically designed for tracking blood trails. It uses blue LEDs to make the blood stand out, and red LEDs to wash out the background. Wal-Mart carries them; you might want to check out one in the store. As far as using UV LEDs, I don't think all wavelengths of UV would work. One of the members on here had posted a neat chart that shows what UV wavelengths are useful for different purposes, like money, body fluids, etc. You might do a thread search and see if it is still here.

Click to expand...

I put red and blue LEDs into a Anglehead flashlight, and also a white LED as a second option, for someone for tracking blood. I think it works somewhat, but not as good as expected.

The idea is red makes the blood bright red, the blue makes the red stand out, something like that. I tried it with ketchup, but not sure if that works the same as blood.

Wayne

The very best light for blood trailing is a Colman lantern. It beats the snot out of anything else.

A blue filter or "gel" on an incandescent lamp works for blood trailing because blue filters are designed to pass infrared light. Otherwise the filter would heat up and melt or degrade because most of the light coming off an incandescent lamp is in the infrared range. But the filters are not perfect and some red light sneaks through as well. So the blue light makes the background fairly monochromatic and the little bit of red light makes the blood drops glow against the background. To duplicate this effect with LEDs you would need both blue and red. A red LED is a single wavelength source though so it might take some experimentation to find the best wavelength to make the blood glow.