I was skeptical too, but not anymore.

Many of you have probably seen the ads all over Cabela’s and the Bass Pro Shop for the Gerber Carnivore Blood Tracking Light. The light is supposed to “make blood just jump off the terrain” by utilizing Gerber’s patented TRAX blood tracking LED technology.

The light itself has a large Xenon bulb at the top, and a cluster of red and blue LED lights below it. You can only activate either the Xenon bulb or the LED cluster at once. The Xenon bulb is replaceable, but the LED’s are not. Based on my experience with Gerber LED’s, you will probably never have to replace those. The Xenon bulb is designed just to illuminate an area. It has nothing to do with blood tracking. Surprisingly, the Xenon bulb has just slightly less light output that a Sure Fire E2D, so you can flood a dark area with light pretty easily and without using one of those huge 5 lb search lights that takes a 9V battery or larger. The LED cluster consists of red and blue LED’s. When those are active, anything red OR blue (which is what the ads don’t tell you) will be illuminated far more than anything else. In all actuality, the blue lights are probably supposed to act as contrast for the reflected red surface you’re looking for.

So how well does it work? It works phenomenally for its price. If you shine it on anything red, not just blood, the red surface will light up sort of like the display of most alarm clock radios. This makes blood or any other red surfaces REALLY easy to spot. If you were using typical white light, say for instance the Xenon bulb, you would see all colors with nearly the same intensity. With the LED’s, blues (which are somewhat rare in nature by comparison) and reds really stand out. Again, the best way I can describe it is like a display on common alarm clock radios.

Now the light won’t show all bodily fluids and what not like the black lights you see all the time on CSI. It only brings out red and blues.

The light also comes with a lanyard, belt/harness clip, and a sheath. The sheath helps to protect the smaller button from debris. The smaller button on the front of the light toggles between the Xenon bulb and the LED’s. The larger button on top just turns the light on and off. Any time you turn the light off then back on again, regardless of what mode you were using, the light will default back to the Xenon bulb. In other words, whenever you turn the light on, the Xenon bulb comes on. You have to press the smaller button to toggle to the LED cluster. The sheath also has a number of loops on it for securing the light to a belt or whatever. Personally, I like to extend the belt/harness clip so it forms a right angle with the back of the flashlight, run the lanyard around a branch or something, through one of the loops, and snag the end of the lanyard with the tabs on the clip. It keeps the light aiming straight out, keeping your hands free if you don’t have a harness. The belt/harness clip works pretty well with the military style load bearing harnesses.

Now what about battery life? The unit comes with 4 AA batteries that load into a magazine which you load into the bottom of the flash light. I’ve never had a problem with the magazine falling out and it doesn’t rattle around. The Xenon bulb seems to eat batteries faster than the LED’s, but you can still get maybe around 2 hours of run time with the initial battery.

My only complaint about the Gerber Carnivore is the battery life indicator. Below the LED’s is another set of 3 really small LED; a green, yellow, and red. You can probably guess what these refer to when it comes to battery life. So what’s wrong with this? The battery life indicator is only active when the flashlight is on, and the display is on the same side as the light. So to read your battery life, you either have to cup your hand over the lights, or go temporarily blind. The battery life indicator would be better on the back side of the Xenon bulb, right in front of the on/off button. That way, when you’re actually using the light, you can see how your batteries are fairing.