Gated avalanche photo-detectors (GAPD) use gated detection and thresholding electronics to act as Geiger counters to indicate presence of photons. They show stationary Poissonian average noise statistics, though we see evidence of underlying non-stationary stochastic resonance. Both the Poissonian and stochastic resonance processes contribute to the experimentally observed dark count, and are described theoretically. To resolve photon numbers from coherent faint light pulses, we use GAPD with an optical recirculating loop. With the temporal separation of the input photons from the pulse, we not only achieve photon number resolution up to n = 0.024, but also bypass the stochastic resonance effects. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016.