African professional hunters often see multiple animal kills every day and are involved in many more sightings and stalks of animals. They are in the field most of the year and are often hunting huge concessions where the game animals do not have much contact with humans. For rifle hunters in Africa camouflage is not much of an issue due to the distances from which game can be shot. The clients shooting rifles are told by the PHs to wear medium to darker greens and browns and they will do fine. That advice changes completely when the clients will be hunting with bows and arrows. The bowhunter clients are told to bring good full coverage camo because they will need it to get within shooting range of the game unless they are shooting from enclosed blinds. Those PHs know a thing or two about hunting, and they definitely do not encourage the use of camo where it is not needed. Plaids help a lot in breaking up your outline and I have good experiences wearing it. Among commercial camo, ASAT and Predator are two of the best overall patterns, with Mothwing, Optifade, Skyline, Cabela's Outfitter, Max 1, and some others being excellent patterns too, especially in the right surroundings.
There are way too many game animals killed by hunters (including bowhunters) who are not wearing camo to think that using particular clothing is the single answer to successful hunting. If you don't understand animals and their habits; if you can't find where the animals are located and traveling; if you don't stay downwind and engage in scent control; if your movements are not made infrequently, slowly and carefully; if you make a lot of noise or make noises that are not routinely heard in nature; and if you make other mistakes that alert the animals to your presence, then no camouflage is going to help. Good hunters can make kills without camo, and hunters who aren't good won't kill game when using the best camo. Camo is not the most important aspect of successful hunting, but it is a very useful tool that will increase our successes. The most successful hunters I know use camo, but so do the least successful. This is the same kind of discussion that takes place among flyfishermen when talking about "matching the hatch". Just putting the most natural looking fly in front of the fish won't ensure a catch, but it will increase your chances.
One other point. There are many ways that animals adapt to survive. Some do use camouflage as their primary means of protection. Deer don't. Deer are very high strung with good eyesight, great hearing and a fantastic sense of smell. They are very quick to react, can run like the wind and can leap over obstacles with ease. Except when they are born and have spots, deer do not use camouflage as one of their primary defenses to predation, and that is why we as hunters can see them fairly easily. It is not a very good idea to use deer as an example of a species that is camouflaged, because they aren't. We don't have all those other gifts that deer have, so we ought to use camo to help defeat the natural defenses of the animals we hunt, like deer.
Allan
Topic: how about NO camo? (Read 856 times)
