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TIL you shouldn't bring camouflage on a cruise. (www.mentalfloss.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/til@lemmy.world
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Many of the cruise-friendly Caribbean countries have camouflage as their military uniform and so it's illegal to wear it in these countries.

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[+] -13 points 1 year ago* (12 children)

Yeah...

There is a LOT of FUD online that wearing bright orange makes you invisible to deer. If that were true... just wear a fricking bright orange bunny suit and wait for the deers to start shaving with bowie knives. Although, if one of them reeks of weed and starts talking about Star Wars, RUN AWAY BECAUSE HE IS THE MOST DANGEROUS PERSON IN THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE!!!!

I can't find a good article to confirm if deer even have trouble seeing bright orange. Let's say it comes across as "grey" for argument's sake. But they CAN apparently distinguish all the shades of green and brown and that is why you are dressed like John Duty. Which means... they have a giant blob of "grey" moving around? Pretty sure that would stick out...

And for all the stories about how "the deer walked right up to me I was so hidden!": Homie. Go spend even twenty minutes walking around a park in a mountain town. Deer don't give a fuck. What startles them on your hunting trips is you talking loudly, reeking of beer and cigarettes, and constantly clanging all your metal knives against your metal pistol and your metal rifle.

Nah. Orange is good. Orange stands out. The rest is just masturbatory cosplay. Up until a couple decades ago (I would guesstimate around the time of the second US-Iraq war), hunters... just wore jeans and work shirts and, if they were "gay", orange vests. Let alone the centuries of actually hunting for survival prior to that. It is just the Call of Duty generation that insists they need to go on a shopping spree at the 5.11 store before they can go put a gooner hole in Bambi's mom.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago* (8 children)

    Orange camo still has the shape of the pattern, where the shape is the most important part and the orange isn't eye catching to deer like it is to humans. Deer do not avoid orange camo, which is why people know it works.

    example of camo with orange, yellow, black and brown colors in the same pattern as the usual greens and browns

    Sometimes hunters do wear reflective orange vests over camo, with the idea that the vest is small enough to not be as noticeable as a full body suit and worth not getting shot.

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  • [+] -11 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    Deer do not avoid orange camo, which is why people know it works.

    Deer do not avoid cars. Or people drinking in their backyards while kids scream and play with each other.

    Again, if orange were some magic anti-deer color, you would just wear a solid orange bunny suit like you were about to go out into the desert and have some fun with Malcolm's Dad.

    Also: Again, if any of this bullshit were necessary to "sneak up on the deer" then this continent would have been a giant graveyard as everyone starved because they just didn't have enough camo and dye. Or, I guess, giant metal boxes with bright lights and loud noise makers?

    The reality is that deer are SUPER easy to kill (especially with a high powered rifle...). All of this "We have analyzed the eyes and psychology of deer and figured out a great excuse to stop shooting each other, err, I mean, to sneak up on the deer like, get your lotion ready, Carlos Hathcock!!! No, we don't care about Pegahmagabow."

    Maybe I am just an old but I remember all the sitcoms where they would have a "hunting episode" and the goober of the group would be wearing all camo and get made fun of. Hell, I want to say there was an episode of Frasier where they go to the cabin and Niles shows up after getting fleeced by a local shop and... he looked a lot like the modern day cosplayer-err, hunter. Not to mention having grown up in the kind of town where Real Men drive a few hours away during deer season to prove they are Men by killing a few deer and talking about how difficult it was.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Deer do not avoid cars.

    They often freeze when blinded by headlights, but they sure as shit avoid cars the vast majority of the time.

    Or people drinking in their backyards while kids scream and play with each other.

    Yes, they do avoid noisy people.

    You sound like someone who has never interacted with deer in the wild, which is actually pretty difficult since they actively avoid people. You also have to hit a fairly small area on the deer to kill it, and hitting that is actually not easy at longer ranges.

    I know both from interacting with deer and target shooting with deer hunters, although I chose not to actually participate in hunting.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    It really depends a bit on where you are

    I live in a suburban area with a ton of deer. Around here they're pretty damn used to people, cars, etc. not that they won't get spooked if you start walking towards them, but if you're being chill they'll hang around pretty damn close to you.

    One time I was hunting, walking around through the woods near me with my bow, turned a corner around some tall brush and there were 3 does standing maybe about 15ft from me. I didn't have a doe tag so I just stood there and watched. They saw me, sized me up for a minute, then went back to doing deer stuff right in front of me. It was getting late and I was about ready to pack it in so I even talked to them a little, joking that they should go get their boyfriends for me, they didn't give a fuck.

    I work nights, damn near every night on my lunch break, there's a handful of deer hanging around outside our lunch room, I eat outside when it's nice, the deer don't mind me being out there, chatting with my coworkers. Few weeks back I was out there while there were some fireworks going off nearby, the deer didn't mind that one bit either (though the dogs in the nearby neighborhood were not a fan, the deer were more concerned, though still not too bothered, about the barking than the explosions going off overhead)

    My commute is along some fairly major roads. There's almost no traffic when I'm commuting, but there's always going to be at least a car or two driving by every few minutes. Those roads are practically lined with deer.

    If I don't see at least a dozen deer on any given day while just going about my business it's kind of weird.

    But when I go camping and hiking in more rural/wooded areas, the deer are a lot more skittish, and I rarely see them even though I know the woods have to be teeming with them, there's no shortage of droppings, rubs, shed antlers, etc. but the deer aren't hanging around if they catch a whiff of you.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Dude... just once, try actually going into The Forest without being strapped like you are storming Fallujah. Deer will gladly walk along trails and it is not at all uncommon to have to yell at your belayer to pay attention because they got distracted by Bambi walking around. Or spend some time in a town that borders a wooded area and you'll see plenty of deer just wandering around backyards or slowly walking through the streets.

    Similarly, as a youth I was dragged along on a few hunting trips back in the day where you just dressed for the weather rather than figuring out what military you want to cosplay as. And it was NEVER hard to find a deer. That is WHY so many counties/regions have license requirements and point systems. Hell, a memory that is forever burned into my skull because of how fucked and hysterical it was is my ex's father gutting the deer he just shot while two others walk up to us and just chill.

    Understand that the vast majority of modern day hunters are those two guys from (ugh) South Park and are constantly making up excuses and self aggrandizing themselves. They think they are going to war and are all super hardcore snipers and would wear ghillie suits if (pretend I know another tacticool brand than 5.11) sold them at the mall. And understand that much of the world has a long time dependency on hunting for survival. And I am pretty sure the cowboys who made bison all but extinct weren't all dying their clothes multiple shades of brown and painting their faces every time they were hungry.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Dude… just once, try actually going into The Forest without being strapped like you are storming Fallujah.

    Great job reading the comment you replied to instead of just continuing your uninformed rant.

    Five stars!

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Have you ever been around a(n actual live) deer before?

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago

    I have, and yes, they do come right up to you if they think you're going to feed 'em. I've encountered deer at the hardware store, which involves people driving monster trucks with trailers, forklifts loading and unloading wood, and so on, and the deer don't even care.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    Bro what is the purpose of this confidently incorrect diatribe you've been on? It just seems like you have some sort of superiority complex and it is readily apparent that you are coming into this from a place of bare ignorance. No, deer cannot see blaze orange. Yes, it comes in multiple patterns of camo in addition to solid. People wear either, both, or none depending on what they're hunting and what the laws are locally. You're not going to call a turkey into shotgun range wearing that shit. I mean, anything is possible but it would be far more difficult.

    Is it strictly necessary to wear camouflage to harvest an animal? No. But it will improve your chances profoundly. And the assertion that hunters didn't wear camouflage in the US until after GWOT is just so...bizarre. Mossy Oak has been around since the 80s; maybe you should blame all of this on the invasion of Grenada. Makes about as much sense. No one's dressing up like an operator and cosplaying convoy security in Kandahar to go hunt, man. They're putting their clothes on, going into the woods with equipment that does the job, and going home to make some fried backstrap and gravy or roast a turkey. Most of us do this shit to eat.

    I get it, a lot of southerners are pieces of shit and their bloodlines should have been cut short long ago, and hunting is a culturally significant activity for that demographic, so it must be beneath you. But please don't just make shit up just for the hell of it. Or if you do, make it more fun to read. I'm not even sure what point you've been trying to make this whole time.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I'm not a hunter, I've never shot a dear and I don't think I ever will. I do go hiking though.

    Let’s say it comes across as “grey” for argument’s sake. But they CAN apparently distinguish all the shades of green and brown and that is why you are dressed like John Duty. Which means… they have a giant blob of “grey” moving around? Pretty sure that would stick out…

    When you hear the term "red-green color blindness", do you think that red and green appear grey to those people while they can still see orange, yellow, and blue the same as everyone else? And that they go through their lives with these super high contrast grey objects everywhere?

    That's not how eyes work. Color blindness means an inability to distinguish between shades of colors, not that they have some sort of selective filters that block those colors out, turn objects of that color invisible, or convert them to grey.

    Homie. Go spend even twenty minutes walking around a park in a mountain town. Deer don’t give a fuck.

    You think this because you live in a suburb where people feed them, "in a park", or "bordering a forested area". No unconditioned wild animal in the world, except maybe things that live on tiny islands with no predators, is chill with an unknown human sized animal standing next to it.

    When I hike I sometimes see deer as close as a hundred feet or so away, but if one started walking towards me I would consider that behavior so far out of the ken that I might think it has rabies or wasting disease.

    Understand that I'm not even arguing that shooting a deer is some sort of crazy achievement.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    That’s not how eyes work. Color blindness means an inability to distinguish between shades of colors, not that they have some sort of selective filters that block those colors out, turn objects of that color invisible, or convert them to grey.

    Yes. Explaining how color blindness works to people who think an orange vest combined with green and brown camo is going to be an invisibility cloak is... an even bigger undertaking than explaining how camouflage works in the first place. Hence "grey"

    Explaining what a Red/Green person sees is... literally like explaining sight to the blind. Err, blindness to the sighted? Whatever, it is that.

    Hence, making the simple assumption rather than doing a deep dive on what we believe deer can actually see (got bored and did some wikipedia trawling and chatgpt corroborating. Allegedly they can distinguish blue, but most greens and browns and oranges all look like "green"). So the original statement of "Camouflage still matters while you have a giant orange safety vest on" is patently moronic no matter how you spin it and can ONLY make sense if orange is "invisible" (which it obviously isn't) and it is, at best, no different than wearing a solid color shirt... at which point why do you need camo pattern pants?

    From there, the ante was upped to insist people need to go buy clothes that look like Gritty nutted all over them that incorporate the orange into the camo pattern itself. If you get the colors right? Yeah, that is theoretically comparable to green/brown camo. Which would actually work IF camouflage actually served a purpose against deer to begin with (outside of MAYBE covering a blind with a tarp, as I mentioned in a different branch). Which gets back to the undertaking of explaining how camouflage even works and that it isn't like Metal Gear Solid 3. The blob of broken up colors moving across a solid-ish tree is still going to be very noticeable. Let alone the one standing up straight and walking around on hunting trails.

    You think this because you live in a suburb where people feed them, “in a park”, or “bordering a forested area”. No unconditioned wild animal in the world, except maybe things that live on tiny islands with no predators, is chill with an unknown human sized animal standing next to it.

    When I hike I sometimes see deer as close as a hundred feet or so away, but if one started walking towards me I would consider that behavior so far out of the ken that I might think it has rabies or wasting disease.

    Yes, I live in a town with a big animal problem. I also spend probably cumulatively weeks out of the year on both hiking trails and camping well off the trails.

    Deer walking up to you when you are stopping for lunch is not common but it also isn't super uncommon if you are off the major trails. It is almost a horse shoe effect where you have the deer who are totally used to humans and the deer who have so little concept of them that they get curious and... deer are REAL stupid. Ironically, the average area zoned for hunting is a lot closer to the former since there are jackasses swarming around and leaving food everywhere broken up by sudden bangs and corpse defiling.

    But a deer not caring that you are within 100 meters (honestly, more like 10-30...) which is the perfect range to aim and heroically shoot it? Yeah, that is 100% believable anywhere along that horseshoe.

    The point was more "I am so invisible the deer walked up to me", which is a common refrain when you see articles or discussions on this, is idiocy based in ignorance of the animals that these brave men and women of the muja-err, hunters constantly "harvest".

    Understand that I’m not even arguing that shooting a deer is some sort of crazy achievement.

    And on that we both agree. Like I said, the average hunter is just those two guys from south park who screamed "They're coming right for us" as an excuse to shoot whatever they want. Everything else is the same gun nut "if you buy this you will be unstoppable and your dick will get bigger".

    But, to loop back around to the original point before I apparently angered 5.11's community manager: Wearing "human" camo while hunting is idiotic because you are literally making yourself harder to see for the people with guns. Wearing "deer" camo is idiotic for other reasons but... is still way better than rocking the flecktarn?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    People literally hunt in orange bunny suits, just like you're suggesting. It's regulation in several states, especially the more densely populated states. A lot of that "camo" you see is just because people like to wear it in public to advertise that they're outdoorsy people. Even states that allow camo hunting gear require a considerable percentage of it to be orange, which is where you get the mixed orange/camo patterns from. Either that or people wear orange vests over their camo, but the solid orange stuff is usually cheaper so most hunters just wear that.

    We know deer can't see blaze orange because we've dissected their eyes, not because of whatever call of duty internally strawman you're very mad at.

    https://deerassociation.com/can-deer-see-blaze-orange/

    As for why hunters haven't worn orange until recent history, remember that producing whatever color you want cheaply, on demand, and at scale is a relatively modern thing. We produce a lot of colors that simply don't exist in nature these days.

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