jiokl:
I think I will have it in the barrel with a lens at the end to bend the light hopefully, what would you think work better? Like I said I'm new to using IR.
hmmm.... dunno whether there are easily available IR laser modules. Will look forward to learn from your experiment on this.... as i said, my experiments in IR have been in the remote control land where the problem is getting wider emission angle for greater ease of use 
That said, many IR LEDs have a emission angle of only 20-30 degrees, so if you pick one of those (look into the datasheets) and avoid the "wide" emission angle LEDs, may still work out well