Tired Taillights

I'm with you on "The Hunt"... I can't think of a more relaxing way to kill a day than to stomp through an old boneyard if I can find one. We're a dying breed.
That said, in the past I've had reasonable results with 0000 steel wool, wet sanding, and buffing/polishing compounds- how aggressive you get depends on how good the lenses are that you're starting with. With all the plastic headlight treatment/buffing kits that are out there now, it might make it a simpler process to deal with- especially since it's the same cloudy/discolored issues you're dealing with on the taillight lenses. Spider cracks may take more work though.