One common spot light hunting technique here in Australia is to have one person spotting and the other shooting from the back of a utility or pick-up truck. My 4wd station wagon is naturally not suitable for this arrangement – resulting in the driver also doing the spotting while the shooter stands on the rear bumper bar, rifle in one hand and grasping a roof rack with the other whilst being driven around in search of prey (eg. foxes, pigs, feral cats, rabbits and kangaroos). In short, a rather awkward and potentially dangerous practice.
Just curious, any body out there ever considered the notion of having a detachable revolving chair mounted on a platform attached to a set of sturdy roof racks ? I’ve successfully rigged up such a contraption, the only major concern being the innate thought of the vehicle rolling over when traversing a slope - similar to the feeling experienced by a person up a yachts mast when it’s wallowing in a heavy sea. Trust the driver to avoid crossing excessively steep slopes and the fruits of such a shooting platform are by far superior to that of being flung around in or on the rear of vehicle.
Features include : provision for left and right handed shooters via an extendable camera mono-pod (quickly secured / ‘holstered’ in plastic plumbing pipes mounted vertically at the front corners of a box like home made wooden chair) that has a modified swivelling head which not only has a padded rifle rest but also the low mounting of a large spot light - enabling the shooter to spot and shoot simultaneously in any direction;
side mounted secure rack for a second rifle, and an ammo storage container;
two boxed power supply sockets, wired directly to the vehicle’s battery by a detachable cable;
hinged folding padded table for support, with simple sliding bar locked to internal side of chair – securely prevents shooter’s forward motion;
top of side arms are also padded for comfort and support;
swivel based stand (sourced from a marine shop) is bolted to a 1.3m x 1.2m x 17 mm sheet of ply wood, which in turn is bolted to four strong roof racks.
For solo spot lighting I have also made up a protruding wooden attachment which is simply secured off the centre of a bull bar – enables a wide shooting arc from door mirror to mirror – includes the same plumbing pipe and mono-pod rifle rest /spotlight as mentioned with the swivel chair. Initial spotting whilst driving is by a lever operated light mounted to a roof rack above the driver’s window.
I’ve also knocked up an extremely sturdy/heavy/stable wooden ‘T shaped’ rifle bench rest, complete with a modified scissor car jack for adjustable support / elevation. Similarly, a rather compact fully portable lockable box like reloading bench.
A picture tells a thousand words – I can arrange photos if any one is really interested in any of the above – feel free to copy or modify them as I firmly believe that such forums are a fantastic way of sharing not only knowledge and ideas but also different ways of how we can use simple, relatively inexpensive, improvised ‘contraptions’ to make shooting related activities more practical and enjoyable.
