Principles of Camouflage
Broadening of Scope Statement
As with many of our fieldcraft articles, we've chosen to write this one on camouflage principles from a somewhat broader perspective than that of the tactical world. It is our belief that the principles are transferable, and that there is more to be learned from this increased scope as compared to one intended soley towards solving specific tactical problems.
Much of this article addresses camouflage from the perspective of the natural world. This is where we feel the fundamental principles are best illustrated and studied. In a future article we'll apply some of these fundamental principles to tactical camouflage in both urban and rural settings.
Definition
As defined by the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary:
camouflage (n)
1 a: the disguising esp. of military equipment or installations with paint, nets, or foliage; also: the disguise so applied
2 a: concealment by means of disguise b: behavior or artifice designed to deceive or hide
[etymology] french: camoufler to disguise
Introduction
You'll notice that today's dictionary definition of the term camouflage carries significant weight to it's military application. This is because around the end of the 19th century, advances in weapons technology (more specifically in their accuracy and rate of fire) made successful camouflage important, as troops that could be seen could be fired upon to great effect. Though camouflage is not a human invention. Rather, having evolved by mother nature over millions and millions of years of predator-prey relationships, it is a natural adaptive strategy practiced by many different animals, helping them to evade detection by blending in with their natural environment. It's also the topic of this page here on fieldcraft.ca!
There are several basic principles of camouflage that we are going to talk about here, but other than movement, no one principle is more important than others. It is the cumulative effect of them all that makes for effective visual deception.
Form
Form is the overall shape that an object creates. Many animals (humans included) have a highly developed situational learning capacity. For many predator and prey species (for the most part possessing an acute sense of vision), form plays an integral part in the development of these patterns. Many animals are instantly able to identify the shape of a predator, their very survival intrinsic to this fundamental ability. This is especially true when it comes to their detection capacity for human beings. A human being is universally recognized as a mega-threat by just about every wild species on the planet. They know what a human looks like, and they know that they seriously want to avoid these things. By breaking up your form, you can start the process of deception required stay hidden within our environment. This is not limited to the garments you wear...form alteration is most easily accomplished by integrating your the terrain and vegetation of your surroundings into your overall camouflage strategy.
Silhouettes are another variety of form that merit discussion. While discussed more in our terrain article, they're worth mentionning here in that one careless move that finds you silhouetted from the perspective of your quarry and your stalk is likely for bust. Created when you find yourself between your quarry and a light source such as the sky, sun, or moon, silhouettes broadcast form, amplify the slightest movements, and embody the radical extremes of contrast, tone, and color. Significant attention must be paid in avoiding a situation where silhouette becomes possible.
Shadow
Cast shadows are particularly noticeable, especially the long ones that are present during the prime hunting times of early morning and early evening. They can often reveal an object's form in better detail than direct observation of that object's form itself. These cast shadows also amplify movement, a key element that almost every animal that walks the earth is tuned to detect even in small amounts. That being said, general areas of shadow are excellent places to both use as movement corridors and final hiding places. Contrast detection becomes more difficult given the lower amounts of light found in shadows, and you can exploit this by sticking to them while moving and locating an ambush.
Texture
For the purposes of camouflage, texture is defined as the degree of roughness of a surface. Rough surfaces, such as grass, bush, trees, etc., have the intrinsic capacity to cast shadows within themselves. Smooth surfaces, such as barren rocky surfaces with no vegetation, cast no shadows and reflect much more light. As a result, a surface that is more textured will appear darker than a smoother surface, even if they are identical in color. This is important....as just about everything in our hunting environments carries considerably more texture than the fabrics of the garments we wear.
Color, tone, and contrast
At close range, color differences distinguish one object from another, however most animals are color blind. Color is less important for our purposes, as most animals lack the physiological hardware to see things in color. But color is indirectly relevent vis a vis the concept of tone and contrast.
When compared with the background, brightness is a very strong initial detection cue for many visually orientated animals. Any object that appears brigher than it's environment stands out like a sore thumb. As such, the tone and contrast of a camouflaged position cannot be different than that of the surrounding environment. This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to "blend in" relying solely on 2 dimentional dyed fabrics. While they might be very similar with respect to matching the color of your environment, in the multitude of varying lighting conditions you might encounter 
it is next to impossible to match contrast with your surrounding environment without employing some of the other principles of camouflage. This is because a 2 dimensional fabric does not cast shadows the same way as 3 dimensional natural materials do. These shadows play a major role in the overall tone and contrast of what the quarry will see, and without these texture effected shadows your cloth will reflect much more light than it's surrounding environment. Three dimensional camouflage (talked about in more detail under the "advanced camouflage" section of our physical camouflage page) goes a long way to helping out in this department, although careless attention to this very important concept can foil the most carefully conceived camouflage systems.
Movement
Movement is the single largest visual detection cue. Period. For us, this touches on one of the most interesting sociological aspects associated with people, camouflage, and hunting. Some people spend thousands of dollards on their camouflage, and it all goes to waste when they go trampling through the bush at human walking speed. Yet other people with the rattiest looking garments that arn't even matched color-wise to their environment, but are able to crawl up to almost touching distance on just about anything in the bush. Movement stands out more than anything else we have talked about thus far. You can go a long way with respect to developing a highly refined and sophisticated camouflage technique merely by taking a good, hard examination on how you move (both inbetween stands and while you are on a stand) and then working hard to develop your movement skills. In fact, we feel that how you move is so important to your overall camouflage scheme that it has it's own page here at fieldcountry.ca. Click here to travel to this page.
The basic concept is that slow and steady beats quick and dirty almost every time in this department. This type of movement is a skill that can take alot of time to learn and the more practice you get, the better you are going to be at it. While scouting is an excellent time to practice camouflage via movement discipline. While you are moving from one location to another, do so at a much reduced pace, paying acute attention to everything going on around you. Where is the wind from? How does the terrain mask/effect your movement? How does the light touch the land? Are you moving through the shadows? How much noise are you making while you move? These are all questions that should run through your mind continually while you are out. Take one or two steps, then stop to glass. Two more steps; look and listen. This type of movement is more difficult than it might sound like, and crossing the outskirts of a field like this could take an entire afternoon. You'll have to resist the urge to progress at people speed and fight off the initial boredom that comes with trying to take things at the pace of the forest and plains.
Noise
With movement occupying the #1 place in our list of things likely to expose you to detection, sound discipline comes in a strong second. Every outdoor environment will have a standard background noise. People and especially animals are exgremely attuned to this environmental noise and things that don't belong stand out like a sore thumb. An understanding of the ambient environmental noise is extremely important, as it can be exploited to mask what might otherwise be unavoidable noise you would create while moving along your travel route. Running water is amazing at masking sound, as is the sound made by the wind dancing with the local plants. Environmental conditions will also factor to a large degree in the volume of noise you might make. A wet, moist environment is alot more fogiving than one that has been dry for some time. Movement is again another key consideration; when conditions stack against you about the only option you have in controlling the volume of noise you make is to slow down.
Making a little bit of noise is not the end of the world. It is virtually impossible to move through any sort of well formed bush without making some. The art (and where you shoujld focus the bulk of your effort in this department) comes in how well you camouflage that noise into the ambient sounds that surround you. Animals hear noise in the bush all the time. Most of the time they will stop and listen as they try to recognize a pattern (ie: is that a predator heading my way?). If nothing confirms their initial fears there is a good chance the animal will return to whatever behavior it was engaged in prior to the noise. Additional sound however will likely trigger a different type of reaction from your quarry, one you are not likely to like.
Examples from the Natural World
One excellent place to look for study material on the subject of camouflage is the natural world. Evolution has provided many animals with exceptional camouflage, and careful study of these examples can yield many useful observations. Here again it is useful to point out that while there is much you can learn about camouflage from resources such as our website, the ultimate teacher is to get outside and observe these principles in action out in the field.
If you get out enough and start to study the human sized animals you encounter you'll notice that not a single one comes to mind which has green fur. Rather, a large variation in hues of tan and brown seem to make up the pallette. It turns out that around most of the world across many of the different biomes likely to make up the habitat of any given animal, tans and browns are abundant. This is true even in areas of thick vegetation.
You'll also notice that many of these animals have lighter bellies and darker tops. This has some interesting contrast, tone, and blending properties. Light typically comes down from above and can create highlights on areas of an animal's body that is facing the light. Conversly, the bottom of the animal is most likely to always be shaded somewhat. Lighter colored fur on the bottom and darker colored fur on the top conteracts these properties somewhat, the net effect of which is often extremely effective blending of contrast and tone with the animal's surrounding environment.
Camouflage...the sum of all these quotients
Camouflage is a lot more than just putting on some clothing. It is paying acute attention to the terrain, to the light, to the tone, contrast, and texture of your surrounding environment. It is moving slowly and quietly, and developing a greater awarness about your environmental conditions. No matter how you are dressed, negligence in any of the above departments (especially movement), increases your quarry's odds of detecting you many orders of magnitude. That being said, what on earth are you going to wear today? Click here to be taken to our discussion on camouflage garments.