Is it preferable to wear clothing that hides you from your prey, or should one wear something that allows you to be seen by other hunters?
I’ve never hunted, nor do I expect to go hunting at any point.
However, I would say it’s more important to be seen by things that could accidentally kill you, rather than by your prey.
Mr.Wrekker is convinced deer and other game can’t see hunter orange. Movement and noise is what spooks them. And it’s the law to wear it. He always bags his limits. So I believe that to be true.
It depends on what you’re hunting but most animals can’t see color so its generally advisable to make sure the other people wandering around with guns know you’re not what they’re looking for. This is also why I prefer to hunt in the back country and least a day’s hike in so that there are less people around. Hunting just off of roads terrifies me.
What do you wear when you hunt in the back country?
Stores only sell camouflage that has some bright noticeable colors on it. Otherwise you could put on
the camo in the store and just walk right out without paying for it because no one could see you.
You wear cammo for bird hunting–ducks and such see colors better than we do and they also know quite a bit about hunters and the approximate range of the weaponry. If they see you they’ll go high enough to avoid your shots. And if they can, they will approach you from behind and quack loudly right over your head–you won’t have time to get a decent shot off and they know it. Birds are smart fuckers. Done right, you look just like autumn/winter landscape. Which is not a problem because nobody is going to be shooting at the landscape. Birds are either in the air or resting on the water, so the shooting is generally oriented upwards (where you are not), and every hunter knows better than to shoot a duck sitting on the water–which means it doesn’t matter if they can see you or not, anyone stupid enough to shoot at water isn’t going to be thinking to look downrange. Fortunately, the weaponry in these scenarios is the shotgun, which has a very limited range for a lethal hit.
You wear orange for deers and such. They can’t see the color, although they can certainly see movement and you need to be careful to mask the outline of your body. A brown human-shaped blob with no texture will still stand out amongst a brown textured background. In these sorts of encounters, the shots will be at people level (as opposed to upwards) so you really do want to be visible to other hunters–so they know you are in the background, and so they also know you are not prey.
That makes sense.
Forgot one more thing about birds. Their eyes are so good they will see the whites of yours if you look at them. You can be doing an award-winning impersonation of a bush, but those little slivers of white will give you away. So dark sunglasses are in order.
500 square inches of solid daylight fluorescent orange above the waist, including a head covering but I don’t feel like that’s enough since I’ve had friends fired at so I also go away from people.
Holy crap, is this true?
Archery hunters usually don’t have to wear hunter orange, but most of the time they are hunting from a stand or a hide and their lethal range is a lot shorter than a rifle.
That’s not the story I get when they tell tales around the campfire. 
Some hunters wear camouflage blaze orange, made up of slightly different shades of orange separated by darker colors. The idea is that people can still see the orange even if camouflaged. Deer with their poor color vision can’t distinguish orange from other colors, but they can distinguish between a large field of exactly the same shade (which they interpret as unnatural and dangerous) and a field that’s broken up into different shades (which seems more natural to them). As this video demonstrates, camouflage orange is more visible to people than non-orange colors, but nowhere near as visible as a solid field of blaze orange. The most relevant part of the video starts at about 2:40, but the whole video is worth watching.
I hunt deer and elk with camo on, and not that orange stuff. Matched as closely to the natural hunting background as possible. You don’t wear brown camo in the forest or green in the desert high country. Even if the deer can’t see you in orange the other denizens of the forest can. There are natural alarms in the forest that deer do pay attention to, you can see them react when one goes off. A fox squirrel starts up with it’s high pitched alarm and the other animals stop, listen, and look around. A raven’s call is different when they notice an intruder. If you spend a lot of time in the forest you can notice these things. The forest sounds are different when the animals know there is a human about.
I live in a hunting and fishing type community and these seasons can go on almost all year. You can bow hunt elk in Aug/Sept, rifle hunt deer in Oct, rifle hunt elk after that, and there is water fowl season in the fall too. I have never ran into anyone walking out in the woods with orange on. You do see the occasional orange hat or vest on the old guys who hunt the roads, why I don’t know because they seldom get very far away from their truck.
I am pretty sure that I would get laughed out of the woods and lose my ‘local’ card if I was seen in orange camo. Maybe deer, dogs and other animals can’t see the actual color of orange, but the can see that something over there looks a little different from the surroundings. I just do not believe that a deer or elk cannot tell the difference between a hunter in real color camo and one in orange camo standing beside each other. They might not know what they are looking at but the natural colors of the forest background are bound to reflect light differently than the orange does. Their survival depends upon their vision, that and flight are there main defenses.
Fortunately Oregon has not yet got around to nanny-stating orange camo into a requirement.
Do they bury your ‘local’ card with you if you get shot by another hunter accidentally?
Do you hunt? Why are you so concerned? Is there some mass slaughter of camo hunters going on in Oregon that I am not aware of?
I mean, it’s not one of my yarns. I’m not much of a hunter myself, but I do like strolling about the wilderness with a firearm and a few buddies working up an appetite for the festivities of the coming evening. The duck guys I’ve watched are of two varieties: those with eyewear, and those who face away from the approaching beasts and side-eye them until it’s time to open fire. We do know birds can see the hell out of UV light, and if eye whites reflect UV (I have no idea if they do) then they would absolutely glow from the bird’s perspective.
I do believe accidental hunting deaths are lower where blaze is required.
If you would be so kind as to submit a list of questions I should be allowed to ask, that would be ever so helpful in the future.
When I grew up in Northern Idaho, I never saw any disdain for those who wore safety vests so that they wouldn’t be mistaken for prey when out hunting.
I hunt a lot and teach safety for the state; I’m wearing solid blaze orange. Even with turkey which are sensitive to movement and color equally I am wearing orange at all times except when my back is to the rock/tree I am sitting behind. And even then I have orange on the flip side and out at points to each flank. I’ve known too many hunters who have been shot at one point or another “mistaken for game” and I grew up seeing the scar on my Dad from a little .22 ---------- ain’t no game with that kind of trauma to me.