There have been many questions on ghillie suits lately...
I AM NO EXPERT!!! However, I have been using a ghillie for about 5 years and have been abused by them in the military for another 10 years.... I just took what i learned and adapted to my passion, hunting whitetails!!!
They are hard for us to comprehend as we see the world very differently than most game animals... But ghillies work very well against the human eye as well... But can be DEADLY on game!!!
First of all ghillie suits work by using depth... Many military snipers shun black as black is the absence of light (a shadow if you will... Ghilles do not reflect and absorb most light...
These pics were posted a few weeks ago when one was asking about making a ghillie suit...
Ghillies can vary as much as bows, so I am not trying to be pinned down to hard fast rules but help understand what they can and CAN NOT do...
These pics were taken mid-day in mid-July in a suburban back yard at a range of 3-5 yards... By me and my 7 y.o. daughter....
Notice the biggest things noticed are the skin tones... face and hands.. IN the first pic the hands scream while the shaded ugly mugs is noticable but almost irrelevant... since the face and hands move the most while hunting... use gloves and a facemask of some sort(usually I use a turkey face mask_ a handkerchief with an elastic band basically..)
The basic principal that ghillies utilize is lack of depth... 3 dimensional camoflauge if you will. But they are not cure alls or silver bullets! They help you blend in if you use them as they are intended... They break up the silhouette. They make it harder for anyone or anything to focus on you as you now have greater depth... The other thing they do is absorb light in a a much higher capacity than printed camo does... Thus making you appear much deeper in the field of view that you trully are... We are predators and have much greater depth of field since we use binoccular vision while game animals utilize monoccular vision over 90% of the time...
Furthermore Deer are colorblind so to speak... Their balance of rods and comes and the make-up of their eyes and retinas as such make them see very well in low-light in comparison to us lowly homo sapiens... But it makes them see some colors better than others.. So much so, they lack the color spectrum we perceive and are stuck more in either grays or tans(depending on whose trying to sell you something...). If we look back to kindergarden we were introduced to basic colors, red, yellow, blue.. Well, the best way I can relate seeing color as we are unsure just what the other sees when we look at the same object, is that actually when light hits an object we are inundated with reflected light waves in all colors of the spectrum, but in different proportions! However, the waves come in proportion to what is absorbed or reflected by the color of the object... If it is in direct light more waves are reflected towards our eyes if it is in shade or ambient/reflected light less waves are reflected towards our eyes... STICK WITH ME; I know it is getting a little deep, but it''ll make more sense in a minute... with Supposedly blaze orange is non appearing, but a deep blue screams at them.... Anything in the red is hard for them to see, but colors in the violet spectrum are more prevalent...
So if we begin to think of camo as a depth(or deep texture so to speak), tonal, and reflecting (or absorbing) light... we begin to understand how a ghillie really works and make the most of any situation that we use camo or stand set-up. We need to limit our use of colors in the violet spectrum and blend more of the colrs in the blended or yellow red spectrums.. (
WHITE AND BLACK are different as one is maximum reflected light and the other is absense of light, theoretically- a well respected Marine/swat sniper I asked when making my ghillie, told me, "forget the stynthetics and use green, gray, tans, and browns... The reflection of light and absorption of light will give you the lights and darks of your camo." Figured he knew much more than I would ever learn hunting, so ... I pass it along as gospel) So the reason the tans browns and green used in most ghillies works so well is depth, absorption of light, and the long strands break up the silhouette... If we take these principals and use a stand set up with gloves and face mask in the shadows amongst foreground and background... we are 60% ahead of the game!!!
Lets look at the same phots, in sepia and B&W...
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We notice that even at close range... in the Bright open of a suburban backyard... if one used gloves, a facemask, foreground, and background as cover- it is understandable how proper use of ghillie is almost cheating , when on the ground..
BUT GHILLIES TEND TO SMELL!!! AND THEY ARE HOT SO YOU SMELL EVEN MORE!!! AND WE ALL KNOW,
YOU CAN"T BEAT THE NOSE!!! (you can wash and store it in a better methods and increase your chances...)
You can get away with some movement (MOSTLY SLOW MOVEMENT, drawing your bow should take 20-30 seconds, not 2-5 seconds)
Use light, wind direction, foreground and background(backcover) to your advantage!!!
I am sorry, but with all these posts, I figured a lil better understanding will help understand how to use a ghillie, if you want you make the sacrifices to use a ghillie....
It is easy, but a lil understanding helps make it so much more effective...
Feel free to chime in as I am no expert,,,, But I am always looking to learn something, and this is a discussion post... I know just enough to get myself in trouble!!!
Topic: A Ghillie suit primer... (Read 397 times)
