Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Military vs. hunting camo

The new digital, is, IMHO, a step back for humans... I saw it first year out and it also turns into a blob further out. The old desert or asat type has been best to my eyes... it doesn't blob up at distance.. and still works up close.

As to animals, they smell you or see movement.... there are so many solid color blobs in the woods when you go to looking, its not even funny. I have a hard time getting away from camo because of years of bowhunting and being convinced by the mag articles I had to have it... but reality is showing that you sit still or don't move while they are looking, and keep the wind in your face, you'll be fine...that being said... if you move at the wrong time in camo you are still busted....

For whatever reason though, good hunting clothing comes in camo a lot of times... I still haev it and buy it but lately am caught more often in tan or green pants and a different solid color shirt, red, blue, etc..... to at least break top from bottom... Haven't been spotted yet while doing it right, when doing it wrong, the last bull that pegged my wife and I, well he stood there at about 80 yards for probably 2 minutes before walking up the hill, me cussing cause I had a cow tag...

Jeff

I haven't used it in the field yet as I just got it a couple of weeks ago. However, the set I got was Tru Spec by Atlantco. I think it is well made. I think it would work anywhere in NC. I'm in the mountains and I think the mix of browns, tans, greens on a faded olive background would work well in the fall with dry and dying vegetation. I could also see it working well out West in places where you'd use Ghost Prairie or something like that.

John

always amazes me how "invisible" i can be come in a green t-shirt, blue jeans and a blaze orange vest when sitting against a drab grey gumbo hillside so long as i sit still........have had mule deer sit and stare at my patch of hillside and not actually see me at under 100 yards.....

That sums up my feeling about Camo.
It's not us humans who decide what camo is best, it's the Deer (If that's what we're hunting).
The answer to the question is, the guy who remains motionless is the guy wearing the best camo.. International Orange...
My personal camo likes aren't up for grabs when it comes to Deer hunting; I must wear Orange, in Michigan.

Don

Yup, you are hunting animals not humans (at least I hope you are not hunting humans) forget the military camo it's not necessary.

You need to do two things well three things actually: 1. Wear something to block human scent. 2. DO NOT USE COMMERCIAL LAUNDRY SOAPS. These soaps have ultraviolet brighteners in it to make your whites white and your colors brighter. Instead use laundry soap that is made for hunting clothes that does not have brighteners in it. Animals see in ultraviolet light and you look to them as a bright blue neon sign. 3. Kill the motion and make sure you do not have bright and shinny things on you.

Do this and you will not need military camo that won't help you much anyways. Of course those of us who have to wear ultra bright blaze orange well there is not much help for us.

and i have never used anything but regular laundry soap and rarely have issues, atleast that i could say was the detergent and not some stupid move on my part.......course im using a rifle and dont HAVE to get within 30 yards or so.......i have camo clothes, because in my day to day life i dont wear long sleeve shirts and i occasionally like them for layering while out hunting (weather changes constantly out here, 20 or 30 degrees when yah start hunting and might be 65 by 2 in the afternoon) so the long sleeved shirts i have happened to pick up have been camo just cause i thought of picking one up when i saw the shirt.....think ive got a prairie ghost and a predator camo one.

That's all true, but I still like to wear the new desert digital camo when predator hunting. It is my second-best camo (after my ghillie suit), IMO. Even if the camo feature isn't needed or useful, milgarb is TOUGH stuff and seems to wear forever.

But if I didn't have it, I'd be about as well off in a set of Carhart or Dickies canvas wear, to be honest. Not to mention Filson. Those are also tough and long-lasting.

I hunted with a guy who worked construction, and he wore the same clothes to hunt coyotes that he worked in. His Carhart pants and jacket were stained with paint, tar, concrete and who knows what all - and he was all but invisible when snuggled up against a dry sage bush. To the coyotes, he probably reeked to high heaven, too. But if he watched the wind and stayed still, he shot a ton of them anyway.

I'm not totally sold on the UV thing, yet I try to wash my bowhunting clothes with said wash.....

I also take my orange vest and cap out and hang it in a tree for a few weeks/months when new to get that really strong look off it.... its still way orange enough for folks to see but doesn't have taht "shine". I also am somewhat anal about my orange cap, I try to have one with a logo or something on it to break it up just a bit, and often put some pin on leave clumps in 1-2 places on my vest, not that the orange is bad, its just it needs a bit of break up to it. The cap part is just anal since its the first thing over a ridge etc..... probably doesn't make a hill of beans difference....

Jeff

I like the military pants better than anything I have found. Not necessarily because of the camo pattern but because they just seem to be of better quality than any hunting pants I have tried.

I have always felt they should have taken the old woodland camo and offered the same thing with a lot more brown and less green. The new multi-cam seems a lot like what I have thought would be perfect for years.

I've always thought that the perfect hunting camo would be in Carhart tan, with just a few swipes of black and gray primer spray-painted on it. Not a lot, just a large "K" or "Y" shape in each color here and there to confuse your shape.

As to ability of pants... I'm more convinced on some hunts, that my UV resistant nylon fishing pants are great, they have been tough enough so far, dry quickly, allow me to unzip the fly and knee seams to vent heat or totally go to shorts, and back again...

Now granted I've not run through heavy brush much yet, but for BDU weights I can carry 2-3 nylon pants....

Rocky, yep I lean way towards tans over anything else, green is generally just too dark unless you are standign in a cedar.....

of course you've described ASAT to a t, and its other iterations that end up showing green camo may have worked in places, but in hunting here in the US it generally does not, save maybe spring turkey season.

Jeff

Washing in UV free detergent and working on eliminating smell are indeed keys. I wind up with camo--most of it mismatched--because I am much more interested in the other features of the garment. Our here in SW Oregon, some kind of waterproof/breatheable fabric is very nice. My last set of pants were camo, but I bought them becasue the were a very low knapp suede, waterproof/breathable, had side cargo pockets, and the other pockets zipped.

Used to be federal prisoners made mil. uniforms while wearing
the old ones.
May not be that way now.

Aaaargh.... say it ain't so!!!

Makes sense of course, but realtree sure looks cool, my favorite color in fact.

Good points here on camo for use against human eyes rather than animal. How many times have we seen animals from dogs to deer totally perplexed for a few minutes by an unfamiliar static object that was not moving, whereas our human eyes instantly resolve it into a trashbag or whatever.

Birds sorta split the difference, being visual like ourselves but intellectually on a par with the beasts. With them obscuring our outline is the key, especially our head, eyes and shoulders. My favorite woods gear is a way oversized realtree Wall's parka w/out liner. Soft so it doesn't scratch, big enough for an impromptu blanket/groundsheet/pillow, and also big enough to drape over head and shoulders, in a sitting position turning me into a rock or something else inanimate. In realtree but probably any drab color would work, and it would work even better in the aforementioned military patterns.

OTOH, do you know where realtree DOES work, in spades?......

Drop yer realtree wallet, cell phone or binocs in the woods sometime, and then try to back track and find 'em

Birdwatcher

NOW you've said it. What would possess someone to buy a valuable, small but vital item of equipment (a knife, compass or wallet for example) in CAMO? Lunacy!

Somewhere up in the High Uinta mountains is a brand new, fired once Remington Model 700 with Redfield scope, both in Realtree camo. The hunter told me he'd shot an elk and was packing the meat out. Not wanting to carry the rifle both ways up and down the trail, he leaned it against a tree about a hundred yards from the meat, as bear protection. After he'd packed out all the meat...well, you can guess.

Yep, Used to hunt with a guy in Washington State who had a hunter orange sling on his rifle. Bought it after he left a perfectly good m70 in .338 Win Mag leaning against a tree after cleaning an Elk and never found it.

Best 2 knives I recently purchased were from LEM.... bright flourescent handles on both! I was curious if the steel would hold and edge and lets just say I used the skinner to skin out a moose and never touched the edge so it was ok... much harder to loose too!

Jeff