Lets begin with understanding Camouflage. Camouflage is simply concealment by making yourself hard to see or to disguise yourself with something else. Hunting Camouflage is something that a hunter do or wear that does not make him look like a human.
But who says camo is a prerequisite for a successful hunt? Many animals were shot by the hunters who were wearing bright colored clothes.
The first thing to keep in mind is to know what different animals can see. Once you figure that out, it becomes easy to hide from their watchful eyes.
Scientific facts associated with camouflage:
The cells in the eyes are sensitive to light. As soon as the light hits our eye the cells receive and send these light messages to the brain. This helps us in the processing of what we’re seeing. Deer and ungulates have two-color vision. They have two different types of bone cells in their eyes. Blue and yellow are the colors they can see at a very high rate as compared to humans. Everything in between the blue and yellow hues seems to be in terms of luminosity to them. Also, anything that falls in the range of red and yellow wavelength is not visible to them. So for the hunters who have an interest in deer or ungulates it is important they wear something that lies in the wavelength of red and orange.
Another factor associated with deer is they can dilate the pupil from 3 mm to 12 mm. The science behind dilation of the pupil can simply be explained as, how quick the pupil dilates. The faster the dilation of the pupil, brighter the images gets as there is an increase of light entering the eye.
Every season brings in different techniques of camouflage. Let us talk about these seasons and their techniques:
- Early season: Deer see the shades that fall in the range of green. The issue comes when you see that everything around you is green, and you cannot find a bush or a tree that might cause the color changing effects. But your major goal is to blend into that green environment. Prefer sitting in a tree wearing dark patterns, deer will never have an idea to sense the danger, and you will have a side to side encounter with it.
- Fall: As the temperature falls the greenery fades day by day. Hunting a deer is not an issue in this season but the major problem is everything in this phase is too bright. There is a great risk of silhouetting yourself as the eye cells of the deer allows them to see to a larger distance. So it is important you don’t fall short from adapting yourself looking similar to the bark of the tree.
- Late: Deer have a very good visibility just after the snow so if you want to hunt for deer in this season, make sure you do not wear solid patterns as they might get very bright and fall within the visibility range of deer.
Camouflage game is just a combination of scientific issues and field advice. It is important to freeze yourself when you hunt from an elevated portion. Camouflage gets you to an edge, after a close encounter with an animal. But hunters, do not rely on this garment too much trust yourself, you are way too good to hunt even when you don’t camouflage.
