So you have decided to take your hunting to the next level and go out after dark. You have checked the applicable laws and regulations and found a place to hunt. Now it’s time to get your gear together. You ask yourself a few obvious questions: what weapon will I use? Will I use lights or night vision/thermal devices? But you finally ask a less obvious question – is camouflage necessary at night?
So, do you need camouflage when hunting at night? The simple answer is yes, but the specific type may not be as important as it is for day hunting. Actual camouflage clothing might not always be necessary, either – other non-solid patterns may suffice in many situations.
Intuitively, you might think you wouldn’t have to worry about camo at night. You may think since it’s dark, nothing will see you. If you use lights, you probably think you definitely don’t need any camouflage – the light will blind whatever you’re hunting, and if it doesn’t, it will surely give your position away rendering camouflage moot. But then you remember that most animals you’ll likely be hunting can see fairly well in the dark and you start second-guessing yourself.
This article provides an overview of how camouflage works and why it is still important even in very low light situations.
How Camouflage Works in Simple Terms
If you have ever looked through a hunting catalog or watched the Outdoor Channel, you know that there is no shortage of camouflage manufacturers trying to convince you that their camouflage will keep you hidden far better than their competitors. Most of these ads focus largely on the realism of the images that make up their clothing’s patterns.
Most of the leading brands of hunting camouflage produce camouflage using images modeled from a forest environment. Most of the patterns are literally images of tree leaves and branches. Intuitively, this would make sense because the whole point of camouflage is to blend in with your surroundings.
If you have actual images of the environment ironed onto your jacket, it should make you look like your surroundings. At least, that’s the line of thinking the big companies count on you having.
However, it’s not quite that simple. Many animals and people have the ability to distinguish the form of an object or creature from its surroundings even when it is not a solid color.
Obviously, if an animal scans an area and there is a distinguishable solid blob, the animal is going to at least take a more focused look. But even if a person is wearing camouflage, a scan of the area may still trigger an animal’s senses to look twice if the pattern isn’t perfect relative to your surroundings.
This is because an object, in the whole, doesn’t have to be completely distinguishable from its surroundings for humans and many animals to perceive its form.
We think of the perfect camouflage in terms of the perfect pattern. But in simple terms, the purpose of camouflage is not to make the thing look like a pattern at all. It is actually meant to eliminate the animal from perceiving a pattern when it scans the area – the goal is to look like the environment randomly scattered about.
We won’t go into the boring technicalities of how the brain picks up on patterns and associates them with past images to ultimately signal that the object is what it is. In simple terms, upon scanning an area, if the animal picks up on a pattern resembling its memory of an object, such as a human, the animal’s brain signals that there is something there that is out of place. The animal can then take a closer look to pick out the outline of the human’s form.
Thus, the perfect camouflage would be that which eliminates any perception of a pattern at all – it would cause the object to blend in enough so that the animal’s brain would mark it as just another piece of the environment rather than a whole, individual body.
Unfortunately, this is much harder said than done. There is no one universally perfect camouflage. It largely depends on the environment itself. However, it may be good news to the hunter who doesn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on expensive camouflage clothing.
Non-camouflage clothing such as red checkered shirts has proven to be effective camouflage for hunting. The broken up pattern of the large checks helps throw off an observer.
The bottom line is that regardless of the pattern you’re wearing, you will not blend in all environments. There are obviously some patterns that are more universal than others, as the military has discovered, but the main thing is to refrain from wearing solid colored clothing rather than finding the perfect pattern.
Does Color Matter?
Now that we have a basic understanding of how camouflage works, you may wonder if it makes any difference in the colors you wear. In the daytime, it might make a difference when hunting some animals such as bears because they may actually be able to distinguish various hues. But scientists largely agree that many animals can only perceive a few colors, such as some shades of blue.
However, even those colors that are perceivable during the day, likely are not at night. Thus, the night hunter probably shouldn’t worry much about clothing color as we’ll see in the next sections.
Animals’ Ability to Perceive Color During the Day
Some animals in the wild have distinctive colors for the purpose of blending in with the colors around them. For example, some sharks have a blue tent so that they blend in with the blue water they live in. This helps them sneak up on their prey.
But if the predator is hunting prey that is partially or completely colorblind – or the prey is trying to avoid colorblind predators – color isn’t very important.
Experts do not fully agree on the status of many animals’ ability to perceive color. Biologically speaking, many animals have the physical “parts” needed to perceive some color. These parts are called cones. However, determining exactly which colors animals can see is more difficult. Most agree that cats and dogs, for example, have limited color perception ability.
Most agree that dogs cannot distinguish the color red, yellow, green, and orange, but they seem to be able to perceive some shades of color such as blue more vibrantly than cats.
The consensus is less consistent among experts regarding cats. Some believe cats see color similar to dogs, while others believe cats’ color perception only extends to less vibrant shades of blue and gray.
Color isn’t as important in these situations, but the shade of color may be. Even if the animal is unable to perceive the color itself, there are alternative methods for distinguishing objects in these colors, such as shade.
Even though they may not see the color, these animals may still see different shades of gray depending on the object’s color. For example, red tends to show up darker than green. This even applies to colorblind humans. So, while they may not see 50 shades of gray, they likely see some variations.
Thus, even if the thing the animal was looking at was not a perceivable color, it might still stand out from its environment because it might appear darker or lighter than its surroundings.
Animals’ Ability to Perceive Color at Night
The general consensus among animal scientists is that the most commonly night hunted animals’ perception of color, such as coyotes and bobcats, is very limited. Most experts agree that many animals perceive red and green based color as varying shades of gray, much like a colorblind human. But many can likely perceive shades of blue to an extent.
So, it’s clear that we should probably wear something other than blue jeans to the woods during the day. But what does all this mean for night hunters? These animals may be able to distinguish some color under sunlight, but can they see any color at night?
The amount of literature on this question is low in number. However, the going consensus seems to be that most creatures cannot perceive color in extremely low light environments. So even if a coyote or bobcat, for example, could distinguish your blue jeans from the tree you were leaning against during the day, it probably couldn’t at night unless perhaps under a very bright full moon.
Therefore, a safe answer to the question of whether color matters when deciding what to wear while night hunting is no, it probably doesn’t really matter.
Conclusion
The purpose of camouflage when hunting is to blend in with the environment so that an animal’s brain doesn’t signal something out of the ordinary upon scanning the area. Big camouflage manufacturers try to convince you that they have the perfect pattern. But unfortunately, that doesn’t exist.
The central element of blending in is to appear not as a solid blob but as different pieces of the environment randomly scattered about. Sophisticated camouflage clothing isn’t always necessary to accomplish this; simply wearing a checkered shirt will suffice in certain environments.
Science shows that many animals’ ability to perceive color is very limited even in adequate lighting. Many of the animals most commonly hunted at night can see some shades of blue, but not red or green hues during the day. Others, such as bears, may be able to perceive color more similar to humans.
Regardless of how much color these animals can see during the day, they likely won’t be able to distinguish them at night despite their keen night vision abilities. Therefore, color choice likely makes very little, if any, difference for night hunters.
Even if color doesn’t matter, you still need to wear something with a broken pattern. Expensive camouflage clothing may not be necessary, but solids will enable the animal to spot your human form much easier than if you are wearing something that makes you look less “whole.”