Hands Free in the Dark: An LHKNL Headlamp Story

The twenty minutes before daylight are the part nobody films. You are walking a fence line in the dark with a bag on one shoulder, and you need both hands free. One for the gate, one for whatever you are carrying, and neither one for a light.

For years I did what most people do. I carried my daddy's old flashlight in my teeth. It works, in the way a lot of old things work, and it leaves you with a taste of aluminum and a beam pointed wherever your jaw happens to point. When you are stepping over a downed limb, you would rather the light went where your eyes go.

My name is Nell Hardesty. I am sixty-one, I live outside Cadiz, Kentucky, on forty acres of family ground, and I ran a one-woman taxidermy shop out of a converted garage for twenty years until I closed it in 2023. That work teaches you to look at how a thing is put together before you trust it.

I bought the LHKNL headlamp two-pack in October 2024. Two lamps, and the second one goes in the truck. I have hunted and fished close to fifty years, since my father started taking me out at twelve, and I had never owned a headlamp. That is stubbornness, not virtue.

The first morning I wore it was the walk from the gate to my ladder stand on the big oak at the edge of the bean field, about fifteen minutes in the dark. The lamp weighs 1.87 ounces. I noticed it for the first two minutes and then I did not notice it again, which is the highest thing I can say about anything strapped to my head.

The lamp head pivots sixty degrees, so I can tip it down at my feet on the rough ground and tip it back up when I want to see the next twenty yards. The band adjusts with the strap. There is a mode button, and you hold it three seconds to shut the light off from whatever mode you are in. That matters more than it sounds like it should when you are standing still in the dark and do not want to cycle through the settings to get to off.

The lamp weighs 1.87 ounces. I noticed it for two minutes and then I did not notice it again, which is the highest thing I can say about anything strapped to my head.

The ramp is where it earned its place. I launch a fourteen-foot jon boat at the public ramp on Lake Barkley, about twenty minutes from the house, and in the fall that means backing down in the dark with a bow line to keep her straight. The lamp stays on my head and both hands stay on the boat. I have not once put it in my teeth.

The other job is knots after dark on the water. Tying a knot by feel works right up until your fingers are cold and the light is gone and you are guessing at the tag end. With the lamp tipped down, the line is where I can see it, and I can look up and check the bank without moving my hands off the rod.

It charges by USB-C on the kitchen counter, next to the coffee can. The LHKNL lamps each come with their own cable and their own band, so there is nothing to keep straight between the two of them. The battery is built in, 1500mAh, and it will run while it is charging, which I have used exactly once, in the truck on the way to the ramp. I top it off about every two weeks and I have not run one flat yet.

Two things against it. On the brightest setting it is more light than a body needs for walking in, and it throws your own shadow out ahead of you the whole way, so I keep it turned down until I am at the stand. And the LHKNL is water resistant, not waterproof. Mine has been rained on and has been fine, but I do not leave it in the bottom of the boat.

The second lamp has lived in the truck since October 2024 and I have not needed it. That is not the same as saying the two-pack was a waste. The whole reason I bought two is that a dead lamp at the ramp is a poor start to a morning, and I would rather own a spare I never touch than drive home for one.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

I would tell you a headlamp is not a piece of gear anybody gets excited about, and that is exactly why it should be a plain one that works. You are not buying light. You are buying your hands back. If you only walk to a stand twice a season and you park close, your daddy's flashlight is still fine and I will not talk you out of it.

If you back a trailer down a ramp before daylight, or you tie knots after dark, or you walk fifteen minutes through woods in November, then get the LHKNL pair and be done thinking about it. Charge it before the season, not the morning of. Check your own state's rules on lights and hunting hours, because those are not the same everywhere, and use the lamp for walking and for the work in front of you, not for finding animals.