For now, thanks to decades of research into ungulate vision combined with the latest in military concealment technology, hunters can don a computer-generated camouflage with fractal designs that look nothing like a shrub or a tree, at least not to the human eye. Named Optifade, it’s being introduced this fall by W.L. Gore (the makers of the breathable Gore-Tex rain gear) and promoted as the first camouflage scientifically designed to make hunters invisible to deer.Maybe so.
I'm not much of a fanatic on camo, but I spent twenty years in the Reserves or Guard, and I've worn a lot of camouflage. Give me a warm pair of Olive drab pants, a good coat of Hunter Green, and a basic brown cap and I'm good. To comply with the law and safety, I've got to top it with 400 square inches of hunter orange. Thankfully there is some good research that says deer can't see hunter orange. The Gore-Tex research showed that:
The research revealed that deer vision is a little blurrier than human vision — about 20/40 — and that deer see the world roughly like a human with red-green colorblindness. Their eyes have only two color receptors (unlike the three in the human eye). Fortunately for hunters, they have a hard time seeing blaze orange. But they’re more sensitive than humans to light at the blue end of the spectrum. And thanks to the eyes on either side of the head, they can see a field of vision covering 270 degrees.
I'm not much of a fan of digital camo, but I'm not much of a fan of camouflage either. I think that a lot of the camo sold today has more of a CDI factor. (Chicks dig it!) Feel free to disagree with me in comments.
3 comments:
Not moving when the deer are watching is the best "camo".
Camo and fishing lures have an eerie similarity. 95% of both are designed and intended to separate gullible outdoorsmen from their money. Period. And they do it very, very well.
Gerry N.
For years Gore-Tex fabric has been touted as being waterproof AND breathable. In the Englsih language "Breathable" means to pass air. Gore-Tex cannot pass air, you can make a ballon out of it. Under the right rare circumstances, it can transpire a small amount of water vapor--if you can keep your sweat in vapor form--not easy in the cold. (See www.velocitypress.com\goretex.shtml)
Now this same company comes along with another miracle claim--they alone have figured out how to fool the eye of a deer.
The fact of the matter is that no pattern printed on cloth is much better than any other in disguising a human from animals. Visually, the two major aspects of concealment are breaking up the obvious human outline, and lack of obvious movement. Camouflage that does an excellent job of fooling deer is the leafy-outfits you can buy now. Not only do they perfectly disguise the modeling effect of a human's shape, and the straight lines of his arms and legs, but the leaves flutter realistically in the breeze.
These mere facts are not going to stop Gore from conducting their usual multi-million dollar campaign to convince you that their new camo is the answer to a duffer's prayer--invisibility for a mere few hundred bucks.
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