COMMENTARY
In a short two months, the deer bow season will open in West Virginia. Time to evaluate your equipment, camo clothes, etc. The question is, what kind of camo will you need? Way back when, maybe 50 years ago or so, no hunters wore camouflage clothes. It was military only.
I remember my dad hunting with that traditional red and black checkered wool shirt and a solid brown jacket. In hind sight, wearing brown during the rifle deer season didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but at that time, no one seemed to notice. It was what hunters wore, at least until states started making fluorescent orange clothing mandatory during gun seasons. Of course, hunters worried the bright orange color would make them more visible to deer, but subsequent research showed that deer did not see orange as we do. In the late 1970s, a young bowhunter from Virginia named Jim Crumley came out with Trebark camo. No more solid brown hunting coats. Trebark opened a flood gate that made our old hunting clothing obsolete.
Trebark was soon followed by Bill Jordan’s Realtree, and that was joined by Mossy Oak. Today, there are camo patterns to fit all habitats from wetlands to desert. Hunters probably spend more money to outwit a deer’s eyesight than they do to outwit the other senses. Yes, we spend a ton of money on camouflage. Not just clothes, but arrows, backpacks, flashlights, trucks. You name it and we camouflage it. Camo is on ATVs, sleeping bags (right, we really need to be hidden while sleeping in a bag), and camo underwear (now there’s something every hunter needs).
In theory, camo sounds like something that helps hide the hunter from game, but do we really need it? To answer that, we need take an in-depth look at deer vision. First, understand deer can see extremely well in low light. They move around at night with no problems, because they have several advantages we do not have. Deer have lots of rods in their retina so they have great night vision. As if they need another advantage, the pupil in their eye is huge compared to ours, and this further enhances their vision. They also have a tapetum lucidum behind the retina. That reflects light back through the retina, again giving them better night vision. The tapetum lucidum is the structure that gives deer that glowing eye that you see when the deer stops in your headlights. Their eyes are far apart and this gives them better binocular vision and allows them to cover a lot of ground with their eyes.
While on this topic of night vision, let me talk about deer movements and the full moon. I know of hunters who believe deer feed more at night when there is a full moon, supposedly because they can see better at night with a full moon. I’m not sure they do feed more at night when there is a full moon, but if they do, it has nothing to do with vision. Deer can see extremely well with no moon, so a full moon really doesn’t allow them to feed. They can do it anytime, regardless of available light. Hunters should know this. When you walk to your tree stand before daylight, you bump deer and they run off. They don’t stumble around, banging into trees, and the reason is simple. They see well at night. Maybe the moon affects deer movements, but that movement isn’t related to a deer’s vision at night.
OK, now let’s get back to whether camo helps hide the hunter. Research done at the University of Georgia shows that the acuity of deer is 80% less than ours. Wait a minute. Do you mean that we can see better than deer? Not really, but we do have better acuity than deer.
What is acuity? Acuity is what your optometrist measures when you read an eye chart. You focus on one letter or number, and read it. 20/20 vision means you have good acuity. Deer have poor acuity. Look at it this way: When we focus on one spot (as you are now, reading these words), things in the periphery are blurred. Stop reading and focus on this word. Note, the further from the focused word, the blurrier the image. Being able to see that word very clearly is called visual acuity. In fact, when you go to the eye doctor and look at those charts, they are really testing your visual acuity. Deer would flunk an eye test.
There is a reason our acuity is good. We have something called an optic fovea that is located in the center of the retina and it is packed with many, many cones. Deer do not have an optic fovea, rather they have a band of photo receptors across the retina, rather than one central spot.
Though this means they have poor acuity, having a band of photo receptors gives them an advantage because they can scan a wide field of view all at once, without moving their eyes. Thus, when you have a deer standing out there at 100 yards, facing in your direction, but not looking at you, they will have difficulty seeing you if you do not move. Poor acuity.
The key, though, is movement. If you move, they’ve got you. Even if they aren’t looking directly at you, they’ll see you. Though they can’t focus on that one word (i.e. you), having that wide band of photo receptors on the retina allows deer to scan a wide area, and if you move, then they will see you. That’s where camo clothes come in. Camo allows you to move without being seen. Well, not totally. You just can’t go jumping around out there and not be seen by deer. But, if your movements are slow, wearing camo helps you remain hidden from deer.
Camo also reduces what I call the Ablob phenomenon. That 200 square inches of fluorescent orange that you are required to wear in gun season is a gray Ablob to deer. Large blobs of gray are not common to the woods, and when that Ablob moves, they pick it up. So, camo helps to eliminate that because of the way it is designed. No big blobs of color.
When on stand, what parts of your body move the most? That’s easy; your hands. How do we eliminate that problem? That’s easy too; we wear camo gloves on our hands. I believe that your hands will give you away as much as any part of your body, if you don’t wear camo. You move your hands around all the time, so deer will pick up that movement. We also move our head a lot, so we wear camo face masks or camo face paint.
Bottom line, movement is what gives you away to deer, relative to vision. It is movement that does the hunter in, and it is camo that allows you to move and get away with it.
So, there you have it. Camo helps keep you hidden from deer, especially when you move. Consider this question. Do you think a deer has a better chance of seeing you move your hands if you are wearing camo gloves or if you are not wearing gloves? The defense rests its case.
Move slowly and wear camo, because when it comes to deer vision, the eyes have it.
Dr. Samuel is a retired wildlife professor from West Virginia University. His outdoor columns have appeared, and continue to appear, in Bowhunter magazine and the Whitetail Journal. If you have questions or comments on wildlife and conservation issues, email him at drdave4@comcast.net.
