Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Camoflage??

Tony, take a look at ASAT camo, it is the best we found for fooling elk.

They do some funny things in Saskatchewan.

And it is just plain noisy. I wear alot of Carhart stuff, but never while hunting.

Count me in on the camo is of nominal value. 2 years ago I helped a buddy of mine on an archery elk hunt. During an early afternoon nap I was awakened to my friend sounding off with a bugle........................shortly there after a nice 5X5 walked past me laid out on my pack wearing jeans and a red plaid shirt at about 5 yards. That bull never gave me a thought! Sure was fun to watch though!!

Huntr

I wear camo for waterfowl, i think it is necessary for that. For big game, i am wearing it now because its hard to find non-camo except for wool. And I like the light goretex stuff. Wool gets too heavy in the rain. Carrharts is cotton and looks too much like an elk IMO. I do wear green surplus wool pants and a red/black wool coat but no longer if its gonna rain. I would love to find some non-camo quiet goretex stuff for big game, but who sells it? All I see at the local shops and cabelas is camo stuff?

I think camo is mainly a marketing thing. I don't wear it, and don't feel the least bit handicapped, to include waterfowling. My only bow kill, was a moose, while wearing my favorite red/black plaid Woolrich shirt. Any dull earthtones and plaids has worked fine for me. I thought the original camo was developed by the military to hide things/people from humans, who have color vision? As a side note, I think parading around town all camo'd up, is a turn off to non-hunters, and probably does us little good. If you like it, wear it; I choose not to.

Jeff

Agree 100% on that, and with Mannlicher too.

I don't think camo makes all that much difference. Although, I do wear it. Everything is camo anyway and you really have to work to find hunting clothes that aren't camo. I have even had turkeys within five yards of me and never seem to pay any attention when I was wearing blaze orange. I think animals are like people. What might scare the heck out of one of them, has almost no effect on another.

One thing, however, that I am convinced makes a difference is covering your face. I have one spot where I hunt where about the only way to see is to sit on the ground. The first time I hunted it, I sat in a lawn chair more or less in the open but with my face was covered. After having about 5 deer walk withen 10 yards or less and never see me, I think covering the face was a good idea. Since then I always keep my face covered, even when wearing orange, and I really think it makes a difference.

+1 on the face deal.

But only needed in certain really close situatuations, I should have added.

Brad said my words. Predator. Large blocks of irregular shaped colors.

You're correct - that ASAT is impressive. I wish I could get it here.

John,

That test is interesting. If you look at the fall and winter woods, the most prevailant colors are not greens, but greys and browns. Dark greens and blacks make you stand out in the fall and winter woods.

If you use camo for its intended purpose...to break up your outline...and match the colors to the woods...no "old timer" can tell me its not any good. it is. However! Name one animal that is camoflaged? Whitetail deer can disappear before your very eyes and they are reddish brown to grayish brown with large white patches on their bodies!

I remember a couple of years ago, I went to a stand that overlooked a small dry lake bed. It was starting to grow up in briars ans such, but had a little open area around the old shore line that was open. It was a great deer bedding area that made the deer have to cross open area to leave it. As I climbed in my stand I noticed a nice 8pt buck. He was bedded about 200 yds away watching me. He thought he was hiddeden but for some reason hed chosen to lay just on the edge of the thicket and not completely in it...his ass end was in it, but his front was not. He was a nice deer but not a shooter on this property. I watched him all afternoon, and also made an effort to glass the thicket around him looking for other deer. I saw NOTHING, and I mean I spent 3 hours making sure there were no other deer with him! About 45 minute before dark he stood up. He milled about for a few seconds then lowered his head, walked in to the thicket, and acted like he was going to gore another deer. 5 does stood up and all had been bedded within 10 yards of him and all were plainly visible once they stood up, but had been invisible to me as they were bedded even at only 200 yds with good 8x42 Wind River Bino's.

Movement, the eye is attracted to it. THE BEST camouflage is not moving... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

As a turkey and varmit hunter ,as well as close range deer hunter, sure I wear camo. Even when from hunting a despised TX hunting blind. We hunt to or from the stands every day, occassionally stopping to rattle also.
Why not wear camo? I do not spend that much on clothes which last for years and besides, they show blood stains less than my jeans. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />
I also wash my clothes in the scent free, bleach free detergents. Why not? Compared to everything else, soap is cheap. I do think camo boots are silly. As well as camoing anything else that doesn't show.
And I will never be caught wearing my camo to town. Being scent free means only wearing my hunting clothes while hunting. I change and hang it up in the camp to air if I am going to town or put in the dirties if I am headed home.
My hunting clothes, camo or not, are worn while hunting only.


pepaw

Reelhook and other cotton haters--

I bought the anti-cotton line for a while when I was younger, but over time learned that nothing beats it under certain conditions. I have yet to find a synthetic, for instance, that holds up to crawling around after pronghorns like Carrharts do. And try wearing the synthetic cool-fabrics in African thornbush. You won't have any clothes left after a few days.

Was on a caribou hunt last year in August where we got rained on some. Most of the boys were wearing heat-to-toe synthetics because they were scared to death of dying in a rainstorm. When they did get rained on their fuzzy (silent) Gore-Tex soaked up 10-15 pounds of water, and they could hardly walk. If it wasn't raining they were too hot.

Mostly I wore thin poly long underwear with a light synthetic/wool shirt and Carrhart pants. When it rained I put on my super-light Columbia rain suit, and when it didn't I could hike without over-heating.

If by some chance I'd gotten the Carrharts wet I'd have taken them off, and pulled on another pair of heavier poly long handles that were in my daypack. But I never did get the cotton wet. Almost never do, especially when bird or big game hunting up to mid-October here in Montana. And Ic an buy the pants for $20 apiece and they'll last about forever, since I only wear them when hunting.

As for noise, there's a lot of open-country hunting where noise is irrelevant, but you may have to crawl around on the ground, where toughness comes in. When still-hunting I wear softer stuff. When it's cold I wear synthetics and wool.

I own just about every kind of hunting clothing available, from underwear to outerwear, from miracle fibers to wool to cotton. I use them all, but only where they make sense. The longer I hunt the less I believe in absolute rules about what to wear.

MD

In the sometimes warm and dry weather of the BG season here in MT I wear Carharts exclusively... I don't "get" how they're noisy once they've been washed a few times. Nothing beats them for comfort.

MD- IMHO you could have shortened that last sentence to read

MD
You can't get away with that. You must follow the dogma. Common sense is not allowed. If I hadn't seen a picture or two, I'd swear you never leave the house.

My whole point above wass most of the time you don't need camo if you hunt right but it probably doesn't hurt in the main either.

Cotton isgood in the right place and right conditions. If it's warm and you want the heat loss of radiation that damp cotton affords, that's fine. Another place is bird hunting in the upper midwest where even in severe cold I don't wear wool because of all the "lil sticky things that attach to it. I then wear merino wool or heavy poly longies under a heavy canvas - that is cotton - pant. I also wear cotton (yes, camo) in our spring turkey season which is usually fairly warm and humid though I have some wool camo if it's cold. Africa, as MD states, particularly places like Namibia which is warm and dry mostly, is another place to wear some weight of cotton. My no-no for cotton as underwear is the mountain west in the fall hunting seasons although you can get into trouble in the summer at high elev's too with a little rough weather and you get wet.

One comment about color; I shy away from any solid tan or beige myself when elk hunting because I'm personally aware of a shooting death out west in the early 60's ( was this pre-blaze orange?) where one buddy mistook another wearing a tan jacket for an elk and killed him cleanly (?) with a .308 and this was fairly short range where the victim was ostensibly bending over looking at something on the ground. Yes, it wasn't only the color; many shooting rules were broken here but it just seems prudent to not have on same color as the game you're hunting?