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I’ve been on a few hunts where I was practically shamed by seasoned hunters for wearing camo in a blind. At first, I thought it was because I was a girl and certain men wanted to remind me of how utterly lost I would be without their help (yeah right). Then, after asking many outdoor industry professionals, I began to see a 50/50 split on whether or not to wear camo in a blind.

I tend to side with the half in favor of wearing the full hunting garb. In theory, if you’re sitting in a blind the deer can’t see your body. So why bother? Because many blinds have open windows or slits. Deer can see the slightest movement through those slits — especially when the sun is rising and shadows are moving.

Another reason to wear camo: unless you’re a Star Trek crew member, you have walk into your blind. If you’re not wearing camo, if there’s a deer in the immediate area, you’ll definitely be made. Why risk losing a nearby kill? (Helpful hint: STFU.)

Finally wearing camo is fun and awesome. Need I say more? Just this: whether or not you go the Realtree route, I recommend putting mesh camo covers over open areas in your blind. If you can’t modify your blind, at least cover your head with camo.  Be aware of your background! Deer are looking for movement. It would make sense that if the inside of your blind is black and you’re wearing green the deer can see you.

And finally, if you don’t like wearing full camo when you sit in a blind then don’t! At the end of the day the proof is in the pudding. Or in this case, the freezer.

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70 COMMENTS

  1. I’ve always found it sad that other people spend so much time criticizing others, period. Why does it matter to people what someone else is wearing in their blind? It just reveals their massive insecurities in themselves.

      • I was under the impression that the author was receiving criticism among her hunting companions. It is a very different and much sadder thing to criticize someone you associate with then to be an asshole to a stranger on the internet because with your associate it is personal.

    • Hi Liberte!
      I was looking to connect with you on LinkedIn.com today, but their appear to be two possible accounts for you – which is the correct one?
      Thanks and sincerest regards!

  2. In my experience, take it for what it’s worth, the face and hands are critical for camo. The rest, meh. I have a full camo rig and my son has a full on ghillie suit. But sometimes we just wear our regular old work clothes, suitably subdued in color and it doesn’t seem to matter.

    Cover your face and hands. Go slow and quiet. If you feel better about camo, go for it. We’ve hunted crows and they have a reputation for keen eyesight and smarts. I had a bug net on my head, work gloves on my hands and wrangler carpenters jeans and dickeys work shirt. And an all black mossberg 500 shotgun.

    None of the birds made me til I fired. Stay still and find brush to break your outline.

    • This is pretty much what I have adopted for hunting as well. I do camo upper half unless I plan on doing a lot of walking around. You have to really spook deer for them (or another one) not to come back within 30mins-1hr so as long as you are quiet getting into and out of blinds I wouldn’t worry too much. I mostly camo up because it is fun and gets me into the spirit of hunting.

    • Levi’s, hiking boots and a tan Redhead jacket or black hoodie are what I usually hunt wearing.

      I used to get all camo’ed up, but have since realized it doesn’t change the playing field. What I wear has never been relevant to my success or failure. If didn’t bag something it was alway because the animals didn’t show, I missed the shot, or I did something dumb and they heard me coming and ran off.

  3. If I have to walk into a hunting blind during hunting season, I’m wearing blaze orange. Too many idiots shoot at anything that moves.

    And I’ll never understand camo to hunt turkeys. Those animals are dumb.

    • I’ve never worn a square inch of camo. I wear whatever will keep me warm, and the half dozen deer and couple turkeys in the freezer over the last couple years didn’t seem to mind. The mesh over the blind helps quite a bit (for deer only; for turkeys I just walk out the back door and shoot whenever I see the herd walking out in the pasture).

      • People, (especially gullible idiots) believe camo actually matters more than a tiny bit.

        I’ve taken everything from waterfowl to turkey to deer wearing various shades of brown-gray-plaid.

        I do pity these brainwashed kids….

        • Sshhhh…don’t tell anyone. Cabelas needs to sell a million mossy oak beanies every year to stay afloat. Oh wait, Bass Pro is buying them up…

        • Yep. I’ve taken dozens of deer wearing blaze orange that was visible from space. I’ll give you that camo is an advantage, but a good hunt can certainly be accomplished without it. You don’t need to dress up like a sniper, but if that makes you happy I say go for it.

          I wish I had more time to prep for the WI gun-deer season, but the protestors in LA have caused my days off to be cancelled.

        • Oh yeah, I did forget to add the standard disclaimer – “if you believe it works for you, or makes you feel better, knock yourself out. Get a ghillie suit for squirrel, if it makes you think you hunt better.”

  4. HaHaHa I just wear subdued colors. But then again I don’t hang out in a blind or up in a stand. Deer hunting in middle Tennessee is not exactly difficult.

  7. Hunting feral goats this Wednesday and Thursday in state forest. Walk and stalk not blind. Set several personal records.

    Blaze orange hat as compulsory to wear hat or shirt with it. Camo shirt, face veil and be very, very quite.

    I always use camo for deer but rarely for feral pigs as they have bad sight but great sense of smell. Goats closer to deer but eyes not as good.

    Never ceases to amaze me the “hunters” who drive up to blind or hunting zone with music and lights on. Then complain about nothing being there.

  8. Hunting Myth #3: Purpose-built camouflage clothing is necessary. Up until recently, plaid in subdued colors was considered perfectly adequate. Do we have a term for the hunting equivalent to mall ninjas?

    • I don’t believe there is such a term yet. The most fitting phrase I can think of is “mud ninjas”. It fits the theme, and the fact that they are mostly wannabee “country folk” who are country only in the sense of wearing camo 24/7 and driving jacked up trucks.

      • A 1ac house lot gives “mud ninjas” a sense of entitlement too. Like ride goddamned 4 wheelers or horses all thru and on private property that doesn’t happen to have a fence or a house.

    • My brother and I always called them Christmas tree hunters, because of all the crap they hang of themselves.

  9. I wear camo into the blind because: ALL my hunting clothes are camo (or blaze orange).

    Buying another set of hunting gear – no camo – is stupid.

  11. Well, I don’t hunt, and have absolutely no problem with those who do, but if anyone (except my mother, and she’s dead) wants to criticize my choice of clothing I would put on my best glare (I’m told it’s pretty serious looking) and ask in a low growl: “Why are you so interested in what I wear?”

    Now, having said that, imagining myself hunting with another person (in a blind or not) I might wonder out loud about whether the animals we are hunting have similar vision to humans, and will those animals appreciate someone who wears their “gay pride parade” outfit while in the woods.

    All in good fun.

    (No offense to gays or anyone else. I don’t care who you sleep with as long as I don’t see it, and love it hard enough to find, whether the plumbing matches or not.)

  12. Having hunted in New England as well as all over Alaska, I don’t wear any camo at all. It’s unnecessary.

    This should be “Hunting Myth #2: You Need To Wear Camo While Hunting”.

  13. I stalk deer with nothing more than carharts and a brown cloths. I’ve taken my fair share this way walking within 20 yards during bow season. No amount of camp will mater if you dont know how to move. Also deer don’t see the same color spectrum as us. Stay away from blue jeans and move slow and you don’t need camo. Personal I think it’s more to hide from the game warden.

  14. You’re a woman.
    You hunt.
    Your name is Liberte.
    You must be married, or else these artards would be wooing you instead of laughing at you.

    Also, how often do we get a chance to wear camo? You bought the perfect hunting apparel, might as well use it when you’re hunting, regardless of the method.

  15. I’ve been on a few hunts where I was practically shamed by seasoned hunters for wearing camo in a blind.

    Note to self: If I ever learn to hunt, don’t hunt with arseholes.

    • Blaze pink camo is an excellent choice for deer hunting because deer cannot see red. Thus, pink looks like gray to deer. However, deer see orange as a pale yellow.

      Pro-tip: there is nothing pale yellow in the woods after leaves fall off the trees. Almost everything in the woods is a shade of gray after leaves fall off the trees.

      Any guesses which color — pink or orange — is better for deer hunting?

  18. There is no way I’m waking around in gun season wearing camo, no matter how much my wife may tell me to…..

    Now our box blinds that we build we paint the inside black or a dark green and try to match that in our clothes when inside them.

    I have one pop up, and I drape a orange vest on top,of that when inside , which is seldom as I’m in one of a dozen or so hang ons and ladders I have up .

    As far as walking to them wind will alert the deer far before they’ll ever see me, so I’m always checking direction , currents and thermals. Love me some dried milkweed !

    Happy hunting !

  19. I have loved camouflage since I was a kid. Grew up in a little red neck town in PA where my everyday school attire was huntin’ boots, camouflage pants, and a t-shirt. If you dig camouflage, wear it proud. Any body wearing skinny jeans, poser facial hair, man bun, and sweatshirt a size to small gives you any grief, tell them fuck off.

    • “Man bun”, also known around RVA as a “douche knot”.

      Scary how accurate the term seems to be.

  20. You don’t need camo to hunt deer, when I was younger and poor I couldn’t afford special camo hunting clothes, I always had deer within spitting distance anyway.

  21. I’ve always felt that scent was more important to control and earth toned clothing was adequate. That said I wore full camo all last week including a face mask (to keep the gnats off) and my freezer is now full.

  23. I gots me my “woodland” wallet, “desert” drawers, “digital” socks, “mossy oak” moustache wax, and I cain’t figure out why I ain’t successful. I’s almost ready to try huntin’ outside of Brooklyn next month (soon as I wins “LOTTO.”)

  24. I never wear camo and haven’t had a problem shooting deer. Hunted from the front porch opening weekend and shot a 9 point, called in several deer to withing 30 yards of the house and wasn’t very quiet and was smoking. We give white tail too much credit.

  25. My uncle up in Wisconsin wears old blue jeans and a dark plaid flannel shirt. Gets his turkey and deer limit every year.

  26. As I understand it, and someone correct me if I’m wrong, deer are completely color blind. Hence the blaze orange camo.

  27. Perhaps we are missing the point of camo. Isn’t it for scaring the crap out of Progressive city folk who come out in the woods for their nature hikes? 🙂

  28. Like fishing lures are made to catch fishermen, camo is made to look good to hunters . I do enjoy wearing a bit around town though , much like folks wear sports jerseys and such. Team Hunter / Redneck !

  29. There a lot of comments here that all deer are one way or another. That’s just not the case. The behavior of whitetail deer radically changes depending on location, on heard, and even on season. I’ve killed tons of deer in nothing but the clothes that I wear to work everyday. I’ve killed deer in a three piece suit. But I’ve also hunted herds that required every bit of camouflage and stealth that I could muster. These were wary deer where the mature bucks would bolt at anything that didn’t look like a doe or food.
    There is also the challenge and difference between hunting a deer, and hunting a specific deer. Anytime that you aren’t just after whatever mature deer walks up, but after one specific deer in the herd that you have scouted previously, the game gets a lot harder and you need every advantage you can get.
    Those of you that are hunting turkey without camouflage, that just blows me away. The turkey in my area, where I hunt, bolt at the slightest provocation. Then again, they only see people when they are being hunted.

  30. I am with the camp that says camo is for the hunter, not the hunted. But I wear it as often as I can anyway. 😉

  31. In the states that I hunt you HAVE to wear blaze orange when in the woods, hunting or not. So I wear Blaze Orange in my blind. No reason to donate my rifle to the state and pay a fine.

  32. Here in Wisconsin, deer hunters have to dress in blaze orange. Somehow, they still manage to kill a whole lotta deer every year.

  33. I’ve got a photo of my great-great grandfather hunting rabbit in what’s basically a suit… looks a lot like what those upper class Englishmen wear when they go fox hunting, showing off dinner. My grandfather swore by plaid flannel as decent camo. The first two deer I ever put in my freezer, I landed wearing a tee shirt and jeans.

    All that said, I typically hunt in blinds and stands and I’m usually wearing camo, or earth-toned or dark clothing for my shirts or jackets. I’m almost always in jeans or Carhartt overalls for the lower half. My experience has been, if I’m getting to the blind before sunrise for hunting in the morning, what I’m wearing isn’t going to spook them so much as the noise I make. If I’m hunting in the afternoon or evening, I try to get into the blind or stand an hour to two hours before the feeder goes off so they’ve forgotten I’m in there.

    I wear camo when I hunt more for the ritual, rather than whether or not it actually helps me. Kind of like how I don’t shave during deer season. It doesn’t help or hurt anything, I’m not superstitious enough that I think it matters. But the ritual of it gets me into the right mindset for hunting.

  34. Just downed a buck sitting in the plain open waring blaze orange. To be honest, Im in the boat that belives dear, if that what we are talking about, are color blind. Im also in the boat of, fratricide sucks! I want other hunters to see me.

  35. This: wearing camo is fun and awesome. Need I say more?

    However, as a kid one of our weekly chores was to hook a trailer to the pickup and venture into the woods for a cord of firewood. Invariably, after an hour or so of trail blazing, running noisy stinky chainsaws, and throwing firewood into the truck; stupid deer would walk up to see what was going on. If the freezer was less than half full, the tastiest looking deer stayed behind courtesy of an old 30-30 Winchester.

    Camo won’t hide you from the deer, and even if it did, they generally don’t really care how you’re dressed.

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