Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game How can hunters wearing camo when rifle hunting be safer?

We used to wear red here in Vermont during the big game season. Deer and black bear are open now along with birds etc.

Now some hunters are wearing camo with no orange or orange/camo while rifle hunting. It not safe at all.

In some states we have to wear 200 sq inches of orange.

It was a rainy dark windy day today. These 'camo' hunters are a serious hazard.

From old dudes like you thinking they are deer?

I'm sure guys wearing camo freak out the guys who take snap shots at movement, in low light...

400sq. inches.

If I lived down south, every square inch of my body would be in orange and I'd have neon lights blinking "don't shoot, dumbass"...

I believe Colorado requires 500 square inches, some of which must be on the head. Blaze orange doesn't do much to protect you from idiots or the color blind...

Especially in OR, all them damn folks worried about tag soup.

On the plus side, if you were to get shot in Oregon odds are it would be a non-fatal wound.

I like my ass....

Not sure how wearing camo on a dark drizzly day make that hunter a hazard. Never saw a deer yet that looks like a guy wearing camo.

I have never confused a camo wearing hunter for game, but there have been instances in the forest where I see spots of Blaze orange through the trees and identify a hunter that I would have never seen if he had been all camo.

As for myself, I wear A blaze vest in the Gun and muzzleloader seasons.

Given the number of DSMFers that go out hunting every year with hot chambers, fingers on or near triggers, and who have no compunction about scoping anything likely to be a deer, I've got NO qualms about wearing a very bright orange hat (at a minimum).
Combine that with VT's VERY short season, the number of road hunters out there, and fellas that think binoculars are for bird hunters, orange is a damned given.

This is quite right in that I want a hunter to know my position relative to any deer he's shooting at. It's helpful on drives to ID everbody's position so nobody gets out of position or swung on. Lastly people inherently turn and point at noise or movement and pop safeties off as they come into battery as the look to determine shootability. You can say that's BS but think about it and you know what I'm talking about. I want Joe to see a big blob of orange with his naked eyes as he whirls rather than IDing me through a scope on a rifle with safety off and finger on trigger.

Can't follow that in the least, thankfully

Of course, you can go whine to the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife, and I'm sure they'll spend a LONG time on that, when they ought to actually be figuring out that managing a deer herd like a dairy herd, just don't work.

Of course, they probably already know that (from the hearings I've attended up there), it's the dumbass old farts in the legislature that control the purse strings (and likely whine about not seeing any deer, guys not wearing orange, etc.), that can't figure out wtf is actually going on.

Besides I've shot plenty of game with orange on. I notice nothing in terms of more game busting me out. Therefore from a cost benefit analysis it's a no-brainer.

Granted I am operating under lower hunter densities..but if ANYONE sees me while I'm hunting, regardless of what I'm wearing...then I'm doin' it wrong...

Ingwe

Having hunted in a number of places--some of which required orange to varying degrees, and other which allowed hunters go full-cammy--I am always struck by several things:

1) Many hunters in the no-orange places are sure that any trace of orange will scare game at vast distances.

2) Many hunters in the orange places are sure that different orange rules will scare game.

Have had guys in Wyoming (where most just wear orange hats) claim an orange vest (required in Montana) will scare game. This seems weird when all you are doing is looking over the top of a ridge, with no trace of vest showing but wearing a bright orange hat.

3) Hunters who wear full camo even when sitting inside shooting boxes, especially in Texas.

The weirdest theory I ever heard about orange was from a Montana buddy, who took his (required) orange vest off when he got over a mile away from a road. Even this was a really faded old vest which actually looked kinda pink, making him appear possibly gay, which may or may have had a deterrent effect. I pointed out that removing his vest only where few other hunters went might be a dumb idea, since any other hunter might assume that any non-orange object wasn't a hunter.

I have stalked very close to a lot of big game while wearing orange vests, and even orange vest AND hats, and if I was slow or still, everything was fine. Have seen a lot of hunters moving way too darn fast in camo, scaring everything in sight.

The studies that have been done on orange indicate it does keep some people from being shot, but not all.

I don't wear camo (at least not full camo) nor orange generally speaking though I will throw an orange hat on at times.


Really not worried, my McMillan stocks stick out enough.

Well, yeah!