Does pack color really matter?

Bigjay73 said:

I say it all the time, camo fools hunters more than it does the quarry.

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Tex518 said:

I am wandering what everybody thinks about the color or camo patterns on a back pack. I see guys try to sell their first child to get a pack in the newest camo pattern. Is coyote better than ranger green? Is multicam better than fusion? Just wandering who has paid more to get a preferred pattern and why. Let’s hear your thoughts.

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What this means to a hunter is that you should avoid wearing anything blue. You should also avoid wearing camouflage with a lot of white, because white reflects all colors, including blue. And because deer can't perceive color shades very well, a hunter wearing camouflage containing many subtle shades of green and/or brown looks just like one big blob to deer. Instead, wear camouflage that breaks up your outline and move as little as possible to avoid being busted.

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However, other light wavelengths exist. Just as human ears can't hear some sounds, human eyes can't see some light. These invisible wavelengths include ultraviolet (beyond violet) and infrared (below red). Deer sense colors toward the violet end of the spectrum, so they can see blues and probably even ultraviolet (UV) light. Deer show a slight sensitivity to yellow, but tests indicate that green, orange, and red appear to them as shades of gray.

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By contrast, deer and many other game animals have dichromamtic (di=two) vision, meaning they only have two types of color cells compared to our three. Deer, antelope, elk, sheep, goats and pigs only have the bluish light cells and the green-yellow light cells. They can only see in these colors. Purple, red, pink, and orange don’t make an appearance. This is why orange has become the safety color for hunters in the field. While a dude decked out in blaze orange may look like a ridiculous human highlighter to us, he’ll look like a dull, unremarkable yellowish-gray to our ungulate friends.

Deer also can’t distinguish between subtle shades of the colors they can see. Medium blue and light blue won’t look terribly different to them. But deer may not be inferior in all aspects of color vision. For instance, deer are more sensitive to UV light compared to humans. While the human eye blocks ultraviolet rays from reaching the light-sensitive color cells, deer eyes have no such filter. Deer don’t have color cells that are especially sensitive to UV ‘colors’, but research suggests that they can perceive some UV light.

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