  We investigate scintillation linearity of a commercial high pressure $^4$He
gas detector using monoenergetic 2.8 MeV neutrons from a deuterium-deuterium
fusion neutron generator. The scintillation response of the detector was
measured for a range of recoil energies between 83 keV and 626 keV by tagging
neutrons scattering into fixed angles with a far-side organic scintillator
detector. Detailed Monte Carlo simulations were compared to experimental data
to determine the linearity of the detector response by comparing the scaling of
the energy deposits in the simulations to the detector output. In this
analysis, a linear scintillation response corresponds to a consistent value for
the scaling factor between simulated energy deposits and experimental data for
several different scattering angles. We demonstrate that the detector can be
used to detect fast neutron interactions down to 83 keV recoil energies and can
be used to characterize low-energy neutron sources, one of its potential
applications.
