Wearing too much blaze orange clothing can alert deer to your presence, says author Ken Nordberg.

Back in the 1980s when portable tree stands revolutionized stand hunting, two black bears helped prove whitetails (which have much better vision) can indeed see blaze orange hunting clothes (black bears are weak-eyed but have excellent hearing and smelling). Back then, whitetails had yet to get used to the fact that stand hunters now perched in trees and had yet learned to routinely search for them there.

I was sitting in a tree stand with a bow in hand at a bear bait site, wearing a new natural-camo jacket and pants that were somewhat worrisome. Like the blaze-orange clothing I wore when hunting deer in November, the fabric appeared to glow in sunlight (In this case the glow was caused by a high percentage of nylon in the fabric). Amid the dark green foliage of the white cedar boughs about me, I felt as obvious as a lighthouse beacon.

An approaching sub-adult bear weighing about 150 pounds suddenly halted on a deer trail about 30 yards away (I hadn’t moved), turned and raced away with all possible speed.

Later, as the sun settled in the west, yet bathed by a bright beam of sunlight, a black bear easily weighing well over 300 pounds came into sight, but like the smaller bear earlier, it suddenly halted about 40 yards away and quickly disappeared into an adjacent spruce bog.

This experience started me thinking the solid-blaze-orange clothing I wore while hunting whitetails might be similarly affecting my deer hunting success. It seemed probable, because twice during the previous hunting season, while I was sitting very still in tree stands, mature upwind bucks 50 or more yards away had suddenly begun bounding away for no obvious reason.

I decided to purchase a three-color-camo blaze-orange jacket, bibs and cap, hoping the camo colors would help subdue the brightness of the blaze orange. They actually helped. We soon found it necessary to use multiple portable stands placed higher in trees that provided greater concealment. With increasing numbers of hunters in deer camp came a growing need to change stand sites more often—every half day—because our older bucks had become frustratingly skilled at quickly discovering and avoiding our best stand sites. And because stand sites never use before had clearly become our most productive, he only practical way to provide enough mature-buck-effective stand sites for everyone in camp during a hunting season was to begin stand hunting at ground level again. Natural cover that provided the best concealment was much more common and needed less in the way of potentially obvious (ruinous) alterations.

More recently, it became evident even all this was no longer enough to sustain our long, great buck hunting success. The main reason being, camo-blaze-orange clothing is awfully tough to adequately hide from the eyes of bucks that have survived three or more hunting seasons. It then began to occur to my sons and me that we were unnecessarily wearing much too much blaze orange. We now no longer wear camo-blaze-orange pants or coats. Instead, for example, I wear heavy, dark gray woolen bibs and a lightweight, well-insulated natural camo jacket with a hood, sometimes a brown rain jacket, over which I wear a soft-surfaced camo-blaze-orange sleeveless vest. This vest and my camo-blaze-orange cap provide all the blaze-orange I legally need to wear during a firearm deer hunting seasons in Minnesota.

Underneath these clothes, I wear layers including long underwear and lightweight clothing appropriate for current weather conditions. Wearing a natural-camo head net (under my cap) and dark or camo gloves to cover my otherwise easily seen skin and beard, which contrast greatly with natural forest cover, completes my outfit. This makes it infinitely easier to conceal myself in natural cover which no longer needs to be perfect.

One more valuable tip: Everything you need to know to annually take mature bucks, based on my 60 years of unique and accurate whitetail field research, is found in my best and biggest book ever, Whitetail Hunters Almanac, 10th Edition. For info, a free copy of one of my smaller previous almanacs and to order, go to: drnordbergondeerhunting.com.

Even seasoned hunters can learn something new about how, when, or where to hunt this fall by reading MidWest Outdoors, available by subscribing on our website.