Rangeball

Strut&Rut and Jeff, those are EXACTLY my thoughts. I base my camo purchases on what is the most difficult to see by the prey I intend to hunt. Deer see TOTALLY different than we do. I' m interested in fooling their eyes, not mine, despite all the marketing efforts of RealTree, Mossy Oak et al...

Strut&Rut posted very good info on how deer see. Here' s some more from the Sticks and Limbs site- http://www.bowhunting.net/sticks/how.html#tophow

If hunting humans ever becomes popular, I now know what patterns to consider buying

Thought I should add. I have an ASAT 3D suit that I wear over whatever the weather dictates for hunting deer. I also have Seclusion for turkey hunting, although ASAT works very well for them also.

wimp

Matt,
Thanks for the effort to bring this to us.
I think many guys bring up good points about the various patterns. For me I felt asat, skyline and MO, were the 3 toughest. Personally I don' t have 2 pieces of camo anything that match. That' s the way I like it. I bought a seclusion jacket this year, becuase it seemed to have a better light/dark contrast than some of the other designer camos out there.

atlasman

I think a lot of people are forgetting a couple very important things here.

#1 You know there is camo there and you are trying to spot it. Unless tipped off by movement or noise a deer will be scanning the woods in his normal manner and none of these camos stick out bad enough to get busted immediately. Now if you are fidgeting around or hit your stand with your cam or something to draw attention your way.......then YOU got yourself busted, not your camo pattern.

#2 The pics were taken at 17 yards right?? All the patterns were good enough to have to look closely to have to pick them out for sure (remember you KNOW something is there) and at 17 yards you don' t get a second look. He will be MUCH more concerned with the freshly punched hole in his chest then what the tag on my camo says


People worry so much about there outline and then they go out and put to big metal squares on a tree and climb up and sit down. Your stand' s outline isn' t broken up.....and mine is Mossy Oak so different camo on me will look odd right?

IMO if you stay still and make smart movements only when necessary and stay silent as possible you will be fine 99% of the time. I haven' t had a deer spot me at 25 feet yet.........when I do I am sure it will be my fault......and so what?? That' s why it' s called hunting. Nothing is perfect.

Buck Magnet

atlasman does have a great point there! It is hard to see all of the patterns and it takes a good amount of focus to see outlines. If they are still, a deer probablly won' t see any of them.

The thing is, I am not being still when I am drawing back on a deer! Actually, that is a pretty good amount of movement. So, that movement might be enough to get a deers attention. If he looked my way, I would want to be in ASAT, no matter what. It does break up the outline. Like Jeff said, it is made to " mess with" a deers vision. The high contrast in shapes leads deer to focus on one particallural shade in the pattern. Lets say that they focus on a black. They will see what looks like limbs. The rest of the colors will just " fade away" , and they will just look at the black (which looks like limbs). Then, they will just stop caring and go about there business.

I did a similar thing as Matt did, I just used pictures of Predator Camo compared to pictures of Realtree camo. I used the companies pictures, which Realtree' s are set-up strictly to try and have the background identical to the camo. Well, if you think about it, you would think that Realtrees would be best. If the camo matches the background, how can it be bad? Well, the outline. Take a look at these. It will show you that the ASAT style camo does break up outlines better.

Realtree:





Predator:

Cougar Mag

Whatever works in some terrains and even in different areas of the U.S. will NOT work as well in others. Also, under certain conditions, some camos do better according to the amount of sun and cloud cover. Remember this also........as well as deer may see.......they do not see all that well.

Strut&Rut

Before anyone else starts comparing B&W photos to what deer ACTUALLY see, check out the " Deer vision" thread over at TR' s tips forum.

Highly correlated with this subject.

Might as well take those B&W photos and throw ' em in the trash as they' re really quite useless, no offense to anyone. They' re just not good representatives of what a deer actually envisions in the world.

Atlasman: very nice summation. However, deer do look up in trees nowadays, and I would hate to look like a gigantic black blob of tree fungus 15 feet off the ground , if ya' know what I mean...and being that treestands are now painted either olive, grey or camo, they most likely resemble very ugly-shaped tree branches to a deer.

Rob/PA Bowyer

Sorry I was/am out of town and this is the first chance I' ve had to log on....Matt, fantastic job.

Bobcat 10, I' ve had deer jump out of the way at the last minute before running me down in open terrain wearing ASAT....and I' ve had turkeys even closer and yes, in the green of spring.

To me:

MO looks like a person.

Natgear...looks like a person

Skyline....is hard to see, not bad at all

RT HD....looks like a person

ASAT...looks like twigs with openness behind it....definately breaks up the best without a doubt...even if you think you see it the best, it breaks up the outline and does not appear as a person...that' s why turkeys and deer look through it and why do you think the snipers in the military choose ASAT to save their own lives.

Navy, you couldn' t be more wrong, I get away with more movement wearing ASAT than any other camo I' ve ever tried including MO, RT, Military and Predator....that includes movement on PA Eastern Gobblers which you never move on.

You can tell who owns what pattern and who has all the patterns....I own all the patterns in those pics except the Skyline.... which gets high marks from me from those pics and I know one thing wearing them all.....I know when I see deer and when deer see me...and it ain' t the later while wearing ASAT.

Kanga

Coug.
Your wrong on that statement.

I have hunted not only here in the US but also back home in Australia from the mountains to the scorched plains to the northern rain forests.
I have hunted in New Zealand in the snow capped mountains chasing BIG Red Stags and mountain goats.

ASAT was my camo of choice for all these ares because it works as stated by JeffB it fools the eyes.

I am not out there to win the best dressed contest I am out there to hunt and stay invisible to the game I am after.

mlaubner

This is GREAT!
I just did a similar test in my woods, only I was comparing Natgear to ASAT.
I was thinking about buying more,new camo or dusting off the old ASAT and getting some new pieces to match.

The whole sticks and leaves thing just dosen' t do it for me.

I came up with similar results. To me, the ASAT was the clear winner.
And now I own several more $' s worth of ASAT

Jimimac

To me the Skyline looks the best hands down. This is a really cool test you performed. Do have a wife and kids? You couldn' t possibly and still find the time to do all this stuff!!!