Cat Hunting

[Vikram]

Great explanation,XL,as ever.Thank you!

[TC]

Nice post Mark .... love the cat


TC

[veejosh]

Thanks a ton XL.

Regards,

Vikas

[prashantsingh]

Great post,Mark.I enjoyed the photos and the narration.
The title should be "Hunting Cat",.
Best-
Vikram

+1. WHEN i saw the post first I actually thought it was about a mountain lion hunt.

xl . Very well explained.
Hunters in India never used those bright colours for shikar. Khakhi , green and cammo was most popular. I guess we have more monkeys here. The langurs and rhesus would deffinately shout their hearts out the moment they saw something so bright and one would never get to shoot anything.

[Mark]

Mark
How far is the hunting ground from your place?
Regs
sudhaiob

sudhaiob,

It is about a 4 minute walk from my back door, a little bit less if you are in a hurry and it can be much longer if you are trying to keep quiet. As you can tell, it is all uphill so you get a good workout.

Mark

[surajshuresh]

Nice cat you got there i thought it was some wild cat your hunting or something... I had a few cats love them...

[Mark]

Vikas,
Blaze Orange is required to be worn by law. How much and where on the body, varies from state to state.
The Blaze Orange is there so other hunters can see you. Believe me it sticks out like a beacon in the woods.
Colors don't seem to affect deer in any way. Movement is what they will pick up with no problem. When they get close enough (depending on the wind) they can also pick up odors really well.

Thanks for the explanation. But still not clear as to why the camo then ?

Regards,

Vikas[/quote]

Vikas,

XL_Target gave an excellent description. A couple of other things to be aware of is that an orange vest and hat are only required during the deer firearm season and no other hunting season in my state, not even the deer archery season. Especially turkeys have exceptional vision and colors and patterns are quite important. Here is a tiny picture of me with a turkey:

There is even an orange camoflage made for deer hunting, so hopefully you can see that it is the patterns and not the colors as XL points out:


Of interest is that this type is not allowed in my state, the regulations clearly say the orange must have a minimum amount of square inches and it must be solid orange.

Mark

[Mark]

Nice cat you got there i thought it was some wild cat your hunting or something... I had a few cats love them...

Thanks Surajshuresh, he is quite the buddy!

[Hammerhead]

Vikas,
Blaze Orange is required to be worn by law. How much and where on the body, varies from state to state.
The Blaze Orange is there so other hunters can see you. Believe me it sticks out like a beacon in the woods.
Colors don't seem to affect deer in any way. Movement is what they will pick up with no problem. When they get close enough (depending on the wind) they can also pick up odors really well.

Yes deer sees the colours but differently and affect deer .............


You need to know that this deer vision issue is huge. The research was conducted at the Warnell School of Forest Resources at the University of Georgia. It is now run by a friend of mine by the name of Dr. Bob Warren, but it used to be run by well known deer researcher Dr. Larry Marchinton. They teamed up with Dr. Jay Neitz from the Medical College of Wisconsin. They actually transported optical medical instruments to Georgia for this testing and tested the vision of live white-tailed deer.

University testing revealed that deer have no UV filter in their eyes and that they see only two colors: Yellow and Blue.

Some of the best known names in the whitetail research world including Brian Murphy (QDMA) and Dr. Karl Miller worked on the project. Nine whitetail does were tranquilized and then transported into the lab on operating tables. They were then fitted with the exact same instruments that are used in human vision research and their eyes were tested using a variety of parameters. One significant test utilized an instrument that measured the ability of a deer’s eye to detect particular photopigments or color.

Contact lenses fitted with measuring devices were attached to the deer’s eye and tests were conducted using ERG Flicker Photometry. This big word means that the eye was stimulated by rapidly pulsing single color light. The light values were varied to eventually cover and test the entire color spectrum….even the UV spectrum. Data was gathered at each value and what they learned is significant. Here’s the scoop in plain English.

THE RESULTS IN PLAIN ENGLISH – DEER SEE UV

The testing revealed that deer are basically color blind as we describe it humans. They can’t see red or green. They had two sensitive areas when it comes to color. One was at 537 nanometers or Yellow and one in the short wave length…at the left edge of human vision, at 455 nanometers. This describes the color Blue. They see only Yellow and Blue!


This buck see his world in shades of yellow. He can also see the color blue. Bad news is that UV-Brighteners in your camo reflect light at the exact frequency that coincides with the color blue. You’re Glowing like a blue Popsicle.

Humans have a special filter in our eyes that filters out all ultraviolet or UV light…so we can’t see UV-Blue. But deer can see this color and even more significant they see UV (455nm) at their peak of sensitivity! Interpreted into the real world this becomes especially important to hunters because it means that a deer sees UV-Blue better than we see blaze orange.

HOW DOES UV GET INTO CAMO?

About 15 years ago most US based camo manufacturers had the problem solved by insisting that Southern textile mills not put UV-Brighteners into the base cloth that camo was printed on. Since then the textile industry has moved to China. Today nearly all camo is made in China and they commonly add permanent UV-Brightening dyes to all base cloth. As a result much of the camo reaches our stores with brighteners in it.

The research revealed that deer vision is a little blurrier than human vision — about 20/40 — and that deer see the world roughly like a human with red-green colorblindness. Their eyes have only two color receptors (unlike the three in the human eye). Fortunately for hunters, they have a hard time seeing blaze orange.

[Mark]

Very interesting Haji, thank you for posting that bit of information!

It is interesting because the one thing that ALL animals pick up on is movement. If you do not move, as XL_Target pointed out earlier they will walk close enough you can touch them, but the slightest wiggle they can notice from a long distance. Deer also have a keen sense of smell so you need to pay attention to how the wind is moving or will be moving when you are deciding where to sit, but I have had deer quite close that smelled me and were quite skittish but so long as I did not move they could not figure out where I was.

OH, a turkey story-

Once I was watching a turkey that was about 200 meters away, I was quite concealed and sitting against a tree. I was using a pair of binoculars to judge the turkey and I slowly placed them in my lap. (slowly to mean that I knew the turkey might see the movement so I did it quite s-l-o-w). Anyway, just moving the binoculars 18" to my lap the turkey saw it and took off, from 200 meters.

[Vikram]

Excellent post,Haji.

[Sakobav]

Nice Haji light up as Popsicle due to UV Thats bad news for cammo gear guys

[veejosh]

Thanks Haji. It was indeed enlightening.

Regards ,
Vikas

[Vikram]

So, Mark, how did the deer hunt go? Bagged any? Thanks.


Best-
Vikram

[fireblade1]

Hi Mark, I was super p!$$#d when I saw the thread title as am a cat lover, glad you are not killing cats That's an excellent cat you have there! what do you call her & what breed?