This all makes me think of one of the times I got busted by a coyote from way out there where I really had no reasonable expectation for having that happen. Nor a reasonable explanation.
I was set up in a fence row with camo head to toe, face mask, tree at my back, camo'd gloves, even. Even better yet, there was a treeline behind me that was about 60 yards away and was really a solid black back-drop. I thought.
I called and had a coyote on a string coming at me through abandoned pasture salted with a few multiflora roses and cedars. At one point I had let up on the call and then went to move the call the inch or two back to my mouth. AT that slight motion that coyote became electric and left the county. At the time I was perplexed as to why that happened. Everything was in my favor. Wind, camo, backdrop, you name it.
The coyote had spooked right beside a small cedar that I was able to mark and step-off the distance to. >400 yards and that coyote had spooked with the wind NOT in his favor. I looked back at the fencerow I had been in and saw nothing but black against a background of black provided by the woods that was 60 yards or so farther behind where I had been.
There was absolutely no explanation behind why I had failed, until I got down on my hands and knees beside that small cedar.
From that perspective the view before me was a perfect side-view of the 4 feet of the tree trunk I had been a part of, hopelessly silhouetted courtesy of a 10x10 (?) hole in the branches/leaves of that 60 yard black back-drop I thought I had.
Color or pattern did not matter, movement did. I can not think of any color or pattern based analogy similar to that that I've experienced.
I'll qualify that by stating that I'm just a simple hunter in this for my own benefit.
