How not to be seen.

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Another thing I suddenly realized after living here for a year was, people hunt here! In California it was politically incorrect to kill Bambi. You could be ostracized for less! (Don't worry, I didn't kill Bambi, I'm not that good a hunter.) Now naturally, I didn't take the advise of all the experienced hunters here. They sit up in a tree and wait for the deer to come around. Deer in North America have no natural predators that drop out of the trees, like jaguars or leopards, so they pay little attention to anything above the ground. Well, it just seemed almost unfair to me, so I decided I'd hunt from the ground. (With a bow and arrow, by the way.) Heh! What I found out is that deer have evolved as a prey species. They've been hunted for eons, both by predators and by humans. They are not easy to approach. They have extremely sharp vision and they notice the slightest movement. They take note of anything they can't identify. And they leave immediately if they suspect the slightest thing wrong. But, I'm stubborn. So, I set about making the best camouflage I could. This is a thing called a Ghillie Suit. Military snipers wear these, and they're all custom made to fit the terrain. A Ghillie Suit is basically a suit covered entirely by three dimensional camouflage. Some use fiber in tufts, some use burlap leaves or even high tech artificial leaves. Mine uses burlap leaves. There are two pictures of it below. Keep in mind that in these pictures I'm just standing out in the open, not hiding crouched down in the middle of some brush.

Now to the human eye these pictures are a little easier to identify because of the color difference between the suit and the bright green leaves. But, this was in the middle of summer and deer season is in the late fall to early winter when the leaves have begun to go brown. However, deer don't see color, they see shades of gray. That's why hunters can wear blaze orange safety vests and not scare the deer away. So to a deer this is what the pictures above would look like.

So, did it work? Well, yes and no. It worked in that if I didn't move, deer came within ten feet of me before becoming suspicious. But, the instant I tried to draw my bow, of course they fled in their swift way, raising their tails to give the white flag of warning to every other deer in sight. Even if I waited until the deer was looking the other way, they heard me move. Also, there was normally more than one deer, and it was unusual for them all to be looking the other way at the same time.

But, it fooled the golfers! What golfers? I was hunting around the edge of a golf course. No. I wasn't promiscuously launching arrows out among the golfers. I would get in position in the very edge of the woods by the golf course somewhat before sundown while the golfers were still playing. The deer wouldn't come out of the woods until all the golfers left. But, while I was waiting, golfers often came quite close to me. The best incident of this kind was a guy who drove up on his golf cart and got out about fifteen feet in front of me. He walked all around looking for his golf ball and finally ended up about three feet in front of me. Then he noticed the orange and blue feathers on my arrow and looked up to meet my eyes. The poor guy nearly had a heart attack. (My bow and everything else except the arrow was likewise camouflaged in burlap sleeves with burlap leaves sewn on.)


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