Deer vision article

[scn]

Pretty interesting article about deer vision. It confirms how important it is to sit still:

7 Facts About Deer Vision Hunters Should See

As prey animals, deer are well equipped to detect and avoid predators. We compiled the seven most important facts for hunters to know about deer vision.

deerassociation.com

 

[tickweed]

Neat

 

[peytoncreekhunter]

I believe the deer seeing the color blue is absolutely correct. I had blue fetching on my arrows one year and I got busted so many times by deer coming in to me it was pathetic! I Re-fletched those arrows very quickly.

 

[G@TOR]

Thanks for sharing.

 

[BSK]

Good stuff!

 

[UCStandSitter]

Always heard the blue thing over the years and steered clear of anything with a blue accent. I'd never thought too much on it until reading this article though about how they see better than us at twilight. If you think about it, they are already adjusted to it. Seeing on the blue wave length it's like it's always twilight to some degree. Kinda of interesting.

 

[BSK]

For me, what is most important about deer vision is two things: 1) how dominated their eyes are with rods, which means they see movement exceptionally well. Every notice how we see movement out of the corner of our eyes so well? That's because, with human vision, our peripheral vision is dominated by rods (light and motion sensitive) while the center of our vision is dominated by cones (color sensitive). Deer eyes are loaded with rods everywhere, so they see primarily motion. 2) We humans have a "fovea" (the area of greatest clarity in our vision) that is a central point. That's why we see what we are looking directly at clearly, but that clarity fades away out into the peripheral vision. Deer have a fovea that is a stripe along the back of their eye instead of a point. This means they see clearly all the way across the horizon of their vision in a massively wide stripe. In essence, they can see clearly out to the edges of their field of view, unlike us, who can only see clearly directly in front of us.

 

[Headhunter]

Interesting, only thing I am not sure I agree with is I almost always wear blue jeans when I am deer hunting. About all I have ever wore. I have killed a pile of deer wearing blue jeans, and more of them with a bow. I wear blue jeans all the time hunting but gun hunting does not count because if it is cool I put either light camo coveralls or insulated camo coveralls over whatever I have on. Because of where I work and where I hunted (most all my close to home spots are gone), I hunted most of the time in blue jeans and whatever shirt I had on and deer seemed to never pay any attention to blue jeans, even the deer I killed from the ground with a bow.

 

[Wrangler95]

Great knowledge you shared that I didnt know,thanks!!

 

[Heath423]

Thanks for the share and good read. Some of it I've heard before and a lot of it was new to me.

 

[RUGER]

Very cool.

 

[redblood]

Other than seeing movement, deers eye suck!

 

[backyardtndeer]

Good article. By some stroke of luck, i killed my first deer wearing faded blue jeans. Still my best buck to date.

 

[C1295]

Good Read thanks for Sharing.

 

[RockMcL]

Always heard the blue thing over the years and steered clear of anything with a blue accent. I'd never thought too much on it until reading this article though about how they see better than us at twilight. If you think about it, they are already adjusted to it. Seeing on the blue wave length it's like it's always twilight to some degree. Kinda of interesting.

I have found that I can get away with a little more motion at twilight, as long as slow of course. I get that they have an advantage on us but too many times for coincidence I have been able to move to shooting position when they would have caught me 30 minutes earlier.

I know there is a major color change the last hour of visible light because I have to take off my glasses which have a coating that screws up my vision at those times. I think at dusk there is a frequency change toward red fairly often which may be a brief disadvantage to them.

I almost exclusively hunt in terrain/hills so MY shooting hours end before the legal end since trees/terrain are blocking the suns last rays. Once I see/feel that light shift, I no longer wait for eyes to go behind tree/bush, just slowly move.

Anyone else noticed this.

 

[RockMcL]

Interesting, only thing I am not sure I agree with is I almost always wear blue jeans when I am deer hunting. About all I have ever wore. I have killed a pile of deer wearing blue jeans, and more of them with a bow. I wear blue jeans all the time hunting but gun hunting does not count because if it is cool I put either light camo coveralls or insulated camo coveralls over whatever I have on. Because of where I work and where I hunted (most all my close to home spots are gone), I hunted most of the time in blue jeans and whatever shirt I had on and deer seemed to never pay any attention to blue jeans, even the deer I killed from the ground with a bow.

I also have killed a lot in blue jeans. I think most of the jeans probably are pretty faded which would be like a white/blue-- light blue which if I recall right is on the green side of the spectrum chart.

I do hunt in camo as well and on ground sometimes use a camo blanket to break up my outline more than cover the color if/when in jeans.

 

[recurve60#]

They see almost everything in blue is what I gathered from it and what I've read since the 80's. Leaves percieved as blue etc. Hunt on. Many of my deer I've taken I was wearing blue jeans. I shoot blue feather fletchings.
Ive killed hundreds of deer some in camo, some in blue jeans. I'd say equally split. I dont understand what this article changes as a hunter.

 

[fairchaser]

Interesting, only thing I am not sure I agree with is I almost always wear blue jeans when I am deer hunting. About all I have ever wore. I have killed a pile of deer wearing blue jeans, and more of them with a bow. I wear blue jeans all the time hunting but gun hunting does not count because if it is cool I put either light camo coveralls or insulated camo coveralls over whatever I have on. Because of where I work and where I hunted (most all my close to home spots are gone), I hunted most of the time in blue jeans and whatever shirt I had on and deer seemed to never pay any attention to blue jeans, even the deer I killed from the ground with a bow.

Very interesting. I think remaining motionless is more important than color. As long as they can't make out the shape and it's not moving, they might see it but it's no threat. I'm constantly moving unless a deer is close.

 

[BSK]

Very interesting. I think remaining motionless is more important than color. As long as they can't make out the shape and it's not moving, they might see it but it's no threat. I'm constantly moving unless a deer is close.

Just because they see something (blue jeans) doesn't mean they care. Everything comes down to movement.

 

[BSK]

They see almost everything in blue is what I gathered from it and what I've read since the 80's. Leaves percieved as blue etc. Hunt on. Many of my deer I've taken I was wearing blue jeans. I shoot blue feather fletchings.
Ive killed hundreds of deer some in camo, some in blue jeans. I'd say equally split. I dont understand what this article changes as a hunter.

Deer vision is dichromatic, unlike our eyesight which is trichromatic. We have three types of cones in our eyes, each sensitive to a different wavelength of light (blue, yellow and red). This is what gives us our wide-ranging color vision. Deer only have two types of cones in their eyes, one most sensitive to blue light and the other to yellow light. They are missing the cone sensitive to red light. Hence they see blues, greens and yellows very well. What they don't see well is orange or red. Both of these will be shades of increasingly dull yellow.