California Camouflage

[Fat White Boy]

I watched a hunting show today where they were hunting wild Boar on the Tejon Ranch about 25 miles north of Los Angeles. I have hunted there before with good success but it has gotten expensive. A group of 10 of us took 14 pigs a few years ago.

But back to the Camo issue. The guide and his hunter were wearing Jeans and Khaki shirts which is what my friends and I wear when Hunting. Sometimes just a t-shirt if it is hot.
No Liveoakmossyscentfreesportearbuckbrush camo, no face paint, no face masks. And they took a 275 pound boar with nice tusks from about 100 yds... Are Californians that much better hunters that they don't need all that Camo?

 

[1BadF350]

Are Californians that much better hunters that they don't need all that Camo?

dem's fightin' words!

 

[mete]

I thought Kalifornia camo was pink and tourquoise !!

 

[nkielborn]

those are some fighting words mete

 

[Art Eatman]

Camo is not necessary when hunting game other than birds or people. Deer, coyotes, hogs, etc., see in shades of gray. Any dull, sorta earth-tone clothing is just fine.

Think about angles of vision when wearing blue jeans and walking: Hogs' eyes are down around knee level; they can see people from the waist up but not the lower part of your body because of grass/weeds/brush. If blue seems to be a "wrong" shade of gray, it's not particularly visible.

About the only "no-no" colors of clothing are bright: White, yellow...

Art

 

[FirstFreedom]

Hogs don't see all that well - they rely on sound and smell mostly.

Here's California Camo:

http://www.organicfruitsandnuts.com/Merchant/IM003045web.jpg

Fruits, nuts, & flakes. Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[Wild Bill Bucks]

My wife won't let me hunt in my Levis, so I buy most of my hunting apperal from the Army Surplus store. Plain old Kahkis work about as good as anything, and they are pretty cheap considering what you pay for jeans.

Art, thank the guys over on the General Discussion section for moving my thread about trouble posting pictures for me. I didn't know what else to do, and I wasn't smart enough to look down the role far enough to find the tech section. All the guys at work, read the forum with me, almost every day, and they all want me to post their game camera pictures, so I have been wearing it out. I hope this isn't a problem?

Thanks again guys.

 

[Jack O'Conner]

You older guys will recall that Nazi Germany conquered most of Europe. Uniforms were grey and the issue rifle was bolt action with a 4 round magazine.

Americans entered the fight with olive drab uniforms and a semi-auto rifle with 8 round magazine. World War 2 was men fighting men to the death.

Hunting animals is nothing like hunting intelligant and educated armies of men. What's the point? Camo is a fad and there is nothing wrong with wearing these fad clothes to look like all the other modern hunters. But please do not assume that animals are easier to take. Movement, scent, and noise are much higher success factors than clothing.

Modern marketing is focused to convince you that becoming separated from your hard earned dollars is a good thing. Just keep buying more stuff and eventually you'll get to shoot a big buck like the "experts" on TV. Ya you betcha! Right.

Jack

 

[Scorch]

Camo has its place, even in California. I bowhunted hogs in California, and I wore the old Universal camo (tan with green and brown blotches on it). Main thing is to hold still or move slowly when you are within their seeing range (about 50 yards). Same with deer. Lots of deer killed by guys in jeans, just not so many killed with a bow by guys in jeans. So, in the right place, camo is good. But it's not needed for everything. Beyond 50 yards, it makes little difference. Besides, most camo is for fooling hunters, not game animals.

 

[Smokey Joe]

Deer color vision

I've heard (unsubstantiated) that deer can see some shades of blue as blue, not gray. My buds and I bowhunt in camo, or khaki, or dirty work pants, and due to the above, never in blue jeans. Some of my buds are much more "into" camo than others.

Can anyone else comment, or substantiate this deer partial color vision idea, or knowledgeably debunk it, or something?

 

[Wild Bill Bucks]

I watched a show on the animal planet about a year ago, that said that deer
and some other animals see in some kind of ultra-violet type of colors, very early in the morning and very late before dark, but that they loose the ability to see those colors after the sun comes out. They talked about cones, and all kinds of high tech stuff, that was about 3 ft. over my head, but it did start me using a sports wash on my clothes, to kill the UV spots.
According to the show, if you hold a Black light (ultraviolet light) up to your clothes, anything that shows up to you, is something the deer can see in low light conditions. Being a 70's sort of hippie in my younger days, I pulled out the old black light and tried it. I found that the dryer leaves all kinds a little white balls, that you can't see without the black light, on my camo. By washing them in sports wash, and drying them on the clothes line, the balls of white dissappear, so I have been using it ever since.
I don't know that it made a great deal of difference in my hunting, but I figured if deer do see in ultra violet, that my clothes must stick out like a sore thumb, so who knows.

Before I started using it, I did have a couple of deer that I thought had spotted me, with no reason for them to, but I have not had it happen since using the sports wash.

I'm like you guys, I would like to know for sure, because I take an awful lot of time and trouble on my clothes, and it could be all for nothing.

 

[kc-griz]

Here's a link to an interesting "informal" camoflage study. Illustrates what some animals see when they look at our camo attempts. http://www.whitetail.com/camo1.html

 

[22-rimfire]

Yep; camo is not necessary for anything other than people or birds which see colors. But, you still need to feel like you're a huntin'. I used to enjoy having huntes walk up to me if I was in camo and them not even see ya... they just sort of look right through ya. Then there is the issue of getting shot..... I usually cough as they approach.

Wouldn't you love to see Nancy Pelosi in full camo?

 

[Smokey Joe]

Thankyou!!

KCGriz--FASCINATING article! Thanx for posting the link. It will certainly influence my next choice of camo to buy--unless I just take a light gray coverall and splash some dark gray paint here & there on it!!

My own experience with interrupting the silhouette involves standing 20' from my son, him in a military snow-camo (white-and-shades-of-gray) jacket standing one row into standing corn and me out in the open. I was talking with him, and COULD NOT FIND HIM AT ALL until I asked him to wave his hand--even then the rest of him was not obvious!

 

[swampdog]

My buds and I bowhunt in camo, or khaki, or dirty work pants, and due to the above, never in blue jeans.

I wonder what color deer see the sky as. Camo that is meant to be used around the water is in shades of blue. I would think blue jeans would blend in pretty good with the sky, for treestand hunters.

I hunt in levi's fairly often. Sometimes they're blue, sometimes O.D, sometimes khaki. I've noticed no difference in spooking game. I shot a doe yesterday from a tree wearing blue levi's and a Carhartt camo coat. I got the coat because all my other Carhartts are light brown, and like another poster said in another thread, you couldn't pay me to wear a brown coat in the deer woods.

In the last 30 years I've been there and back as far as camo goes. I started hunting at 12 years old, in blue jeans, red vest and flannels. When I got out of the service in 1984, I hunted in woodland camo. I'll admit to buying some of the early treebark camo and by the time advantage and realtree came out, I had just as much camo as any idiot on the Outdoor Channel.

Some close encounters with deer while playing hooky from work, in dirty work clothes, finely opened my eyes to the whole camo thing. I still own some camo. I'm a redneck, after all, and everyone knows that if you want to sell something to a redneck, make it camo. My girlfriend gave me hell about the camo seat cover in my truck, until I pointed out the built-in rifle scabbard and the pockets in the back. Try to find that in grey.

22-rimfire brought up an interesting point. When I was younger, I probably didn't have as much respect for property boundaries as I should have. I was real happy to be wearing that old woodland camo, a couple of times.

 

[whiskey]

My favorite hog camo:

I buy cheap cargo pants at walmart. They come in greens and browns and have plenty of pockets. They are not 40 dollar mossy oak pants so I don't cry when they get blood all over them.

 

[whiskey]

My favorite deer/turkey camo:

ASAT 3-d makes you invisable in the woods.

I KNOW THE PICTURE IS GOOFY!!!!! Almost Clay Aiken-esque!!!!

 

[willsjeep]

Another post of the dirty work clothes line.
Wednesday morning I got off work at 6:45 am, drove home, walked out behind the house about 150 yards, sat down against a pine. about 15 minutes later a spike walked out about 20 yards away and started feeding on acorns. About 5 minutes later he was on the ground courtesy of my 44 mag Super Redhawk.
Notice I did not say changed clothes, I work in maintenance and had grease and oil on me from a gearbox rebuild. The camo deal did not surprise me, but the odor kind of did, I was sure I would be smelled by the deer.
I guess it was still enough my scent did not spread.
Will

 

[kwkoch]

then again it was an immature buck, how many big boys do you think you would see like that?

 

[willsjeep]

As many as I want to shoot, I have never been able to cook antlers enough to make them taste good! The spike was not an immature buck, from the looks of him he was an older buck that did not develop well. He was greyed up around the muzzle and weighed around 145-150 pounds. That is a good sizes deer in my area.
The 18" inch spread 8 point I did mount, was shot from the ground at around 40 yards in pretty much the same situation. (blue jeans/ tshirt/ orange vest/ no camo)
Camo is not a necessity for deer hunting.
Will