Cool Experience - Night Walk in Wildlife Refuge

My parents were in town looking for something cool to do over the weekend and I decided to take them to a local wildlife refuge. They have a night program, where you can come and hike a loop trail and check out the more nocturnal animals by flashlight. It was pretty cool to wander towards the edges of the path with my ATN NV scope to see animals who didn't really know they were being watched..

The coolest part, though, was seeing all of the folks around with decent lights! Sure, there were a few dollar store lights, but they were few and far between. About 25% of the lights were Maglites, and about 40% overall were LED lights! I saw streamlights, lots of MagLED AAs, and even some inovas!

O'course, nobody was topping the ol' Barbolight U15, but that's another story..

The perks and quirks of being a flashoholic.

this past spring break i went to St George Island in Fl. and one night around midnight me and another guy that was in the house were getting bored so we decided to go on a walk to the end of the island (about 5 miles away) so we left and decided early on that we didnt really need any lights as it was a full moon and the moonlight was shining off the white sand beaches quite well. but you know me being the light freak i brought my PT apex and HDS u60xrgt-s along for the walk. i gave the HDS to the other guy i was walking with and used the pt very rarely. we got back around 5 am, tired and sore as hell. it was fun and saw a couple other groups of drunk college kids complete with minimags going on beer runs along the way. oh yeah the majority of the walk was in a wildlife preserve. thats why i posted it here.

Isn't it supposed to be dangerous spooking these animals with flashlights?

Apparently not, Windscale - it's a prerequsite to going on this hike, and the staff would not let you out of the visitor's center without a light..