Innocent Badger

In the first year of the cull we learnt that shooters use infrared (IR) lamps and torches, they use them in conjunction with night vision IR scopes so that they can spot and shoot badgers from greater distances. These infrared lamps quickly gave their locations away and they tended to use them less and less if they knew we were about.

Primarily we have always used night vision equipment to locate them, we have quite a few Gen 2+ and even Gen 3, a current fund raiser for some Gen 3 is here.

However there is quite a technologically primitive way of seeing IR light at night and that is to take off the UV filter from any digital camera, the range you get depends on the quality of the camera and how near the light source is and of course shooters are often in nearby fields, so hedges are an obstacle.

So with the price of drones dropping drastically, we thought it was time to invest in one, the DJI Phantom 3 (standard) was around £1,000 this time last year, now if you shop about you can get one for under £400

This is one of those particular drones with the UV filter taken off, remember it is nothing special, just an ordinary camera without a filter, without that filter it can spot shooters IR lamps, if they don’t have lamps on then this drone won’t be able to see them.

 

If you’d like to help us get up into the night sky and spot shooters, then please donate on this Ko-fi link. Thank you