Best lights / beam style for back roads (aka DEER)

I recently moved further out into the boonies and I’ve got some serious country roads that I need to drive everyday, and I know it’s only a matter of time until I catch a deer. I’d like to add some KC day lighters or similar to my crash bar (it’s got two mounting points).

Looking at all the options for halogen, hid, LED, plus spot, flood, driving, fog etc etc I could use some guidance on what would be the best fit for this application. I’m not concerned about “street legal” as I’d only be using them when no ones around.

 

I would suggest ditch lights since this is most likely where the buggers will come from.
I recently found diode dynamics they are also an actually vendor on here and TW member.
What I like most about the product is it made in house in the US and he’s not repackaging Chinese stuff and putting his name on it.

https://www.diodedynamics.com/ss3-led-ditch-light-kit-for-2016-2020-toyota-tacoma.html

They mount by the windshield and you do not have to drill your hood.

if I had to buy again I would buy from @memario1214 I just met him too late for my last purchase but he will go above and beyond.

 

From personal experience, I'd suggest that you need a combination of distance lighting as well as some side to side lighting. (Deer come from both places.) The easiest way to get this will most likely be a high quality LED bar with combination optics. There are a number of manufactures that offer 30" LED bars that - with the correct brackets - will bolt right into you lower grill.

On my personal truck, I run a Diode Dynamics 30" Stage LED bar with Driving optics for distance. I also run their SS3 Pro LED pods in a Fog pattern for side to side visibility. At higher speeds, you want to run the driving optics and at lower speeds the fog optics. There's also The Ultimate Headlight Upgrade hiding in plain sight. Here's what everything looks like:

 

I like lights, and seeing deer, and driving on backroads. Not a huge fan of LED lightbars or putting lights behind grilles.

Baja Designs Squadrons on ditch mounts and fog pockets. Yellow combo lenses for close and spot for distance.


I've had halogen Hellas on a light bar; current LED are 1/4 the size, 1/8 the draw, and 10x as bright..

 

The brightness numbers on those led pods are tremendous - as much as like the look of 6 inch halogens, the performance of LED is hard to argue with.
Do you have the spots on the fog mount and the combo on the hood, or vice versa?

 

Spot are on the ditch position, they are Pros as well. Fog pockets are Sport combo lenses.

Everything is triggered by the high beams so when they are all Switched on it is bright. I’ve put an additional foot switch into the Pros so I can get them down quick if I need to.

 

Does the lack of proper fogs cause you any trouble, or can you use the lower LEDs as fogs? And what kind of foot switch you use?

 

Haha -no, I never used fogs, I'm not a drive around all the time with fog lights on kind of guy. That plus not being able to run them independent of the headlights never made sense to me. I live in the dry desert region of the BC interior so we don't get a ton of fog.

My brother builds guitar pedals, so he sent me to https://lovemyswitches.com/

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/vicalis-2017-trd-sport-silver.543231/#post-19169357

 

I am in the market for ditch lights also for the same reason.
I love the Baja ones too just not in my budget.
Just got this in my in box so I may wait a little longer

 

I'm going to throw my vote behind a set of LED cibie super oscars. Crashnburn80 has a comparison of them (one lamp I sent to him, actually) and KC Gravity Pro 6 lamps, in the 3rd gen headlight upgrade thread.

There are two output versions of the Cibie, a 75k cd and a 130k cd, I have a set of the 75k cd, and they are still extremely good lamps. This image here is from Crash's review, it should show how nicely balanced the Cibie beam pattern is in comparison to the KC lamp. The beam is very wide. But still punchy.

I aim my lamps 0* down and very slightly "cross-eyed" so that I get an overlapping higher intensity hotspot down the road, but each lamp is slightly facing into the opposite corner during turns. Its an equally useful beam pattern on relatively windy backroads, and wide open divided highways.

 

I just picked up a set of used halogen kc daylighters (spot beam) which I’m gonna mount on my brush guard. Got a decent deal, plus they come with the “KC” rock guards which I like a lot more than the yellow smiley covers.

Still looking at the ditch lights because I’ll still want to augment the sideways lighting but I’ll go piece by piece