Rifle Scopes long distance laser for night hunting w/ AR57

[silverphoenix]

I'm going hog hunting in the next couple of months and was curious about putting a laser on my AR57 for night hunts.

I'm looking at the Lasermax Unimax red laser; but I can't find what distance it goes to at night and how big the dot size will be at 100 and 200 yards.

My questions are as follows:
How big will the dot be at 100 and 200 yards at night?
Does anyone here hunt with a laser at night and if so, what's the best to use?
Will a laser be accurate at 100-200 yards if I were to use one?

 

[Remoah]

Re: long distance laser for night hunting w/ AR57

there are some good brands out there. I have a friend with one on his .223 Rem 7615. He told me he sighted it in at 50 metres and its relatively accurate, he paid $200 AUD for it.

However its ONLY accurate at 50m, after that bullet drop comes into account as well as the height you positioned your laser from from (or below) the barrel, and a whole host of other factors.

 

[christian77]

Re: long distance laser for night hunting w/ AR57

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: silverphoenix</div><div class="ubbcode-body">My questions are as follows:
1. I'm looking at the Lasermax Unimax red laser
2. How big will the dot be at 100 and 200 yards at night?
3. Does anyone here hunt with a laser at night and if so, what's the best to use?
4. Will a laser be accurate at 100-200 yards if I were to use one?</div></div>1. The human eye sees the color green something like 20x brighter than it does the color red. This becomes important when you want to see the dot at distance for obvious reason.
2. It depends on the beam divergence/diameter...which gets into power output, etc.:

<span style="font-style: italic">Beam Diameter/Beam Divergence

Beam diameter and beam divergences are two of the most important technical specifications to consider when choosing a laser.

Obviously beam diameter is just the diameter of a laser beam, measured in millimeters. Beam divergence measures how much the laser beam expands per meter. For example, a laser with a beam divergence of 1.0mRad will have a beam that expands 1.0mm per meter.

How do these two specs relate to each other? and more importantly, why does it matter?

It all comes down to how small the end "spot"(the diameter size of your leaser beam) is at certain distances. This is important because you want to point far.

Common senses tell us that if a laser beam diameter is small, it can go further and burn with more power than if it is big. Ideally, we want to have small beam diameter at aperture AND small beam divergence.

There is a small catch though. As nature always plays with humans so that we don't get something for nothing, you can't have both a small beam diameter and a small beam divergence. According to the Laws of Photonics, these two specifications have an inverse relationship; if one increases, the other must decrease. </span>

3. Yes, this is what I use

Personally I wouldn't use a <span style="font-weight: bold">visible</span> laser at all, but if you did...I would look into this one:
http://www.trgear.com/osc/eshop/product_info.php/products_id/20

4. It depends on #2 & how it is zeroed. I see a lot of dudes zeroing their lasers so their POA intersects with their POI at a desired distance. Bear in mind that when you do this, the laser is in fact ONLY ZEROED TO THAT DISTANCE & it will be all over the place beyond that. <span style="font-weight: bold">Not a good method IMO</span>

If you zero your laser so it is in-line with your POI (not interesecting with it, but parallel to it), then you should be "good enough for gov. work". <span style="font-weight: bold">Preferred method</span>

 

[DP425]

Re: long distance laser for night hunting w/ AR57

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: doorkicker</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
If you zero your laser so it is in-line with your POI (not interesecting with it, but parallel to it), then you should be "good enough for gov. work". <span style="font-weight: bold">Preferred method</span> </div></div>

+1

It would be very difficult to routinely judge where your POI would be in relation to your POA much short of or much beyond the laser sight-in range.

And yes, Joe's do typically sight in their PEQ-15, PEQ-4 and PAQ-2's incorrectly. Or rather they do it as instructed, which is a method lacking thought.

 

[DP425]

Re: long distance laser for night hunting w/ AR57

Should be noted, if you use a laser unit similar to the military units, it is impossible for the beam to be anywhere but the "corner" of an imaginary box. In other words, it is impossible to like it up directly below or next to the barrel. So there for when sighting in, your impact will need to be, for example... 2" left and 1" high when mounted on the left side of the rifle.