In the age of indulgence, it may serve you well to get back to the simple life.
I suppose the best thing to do here is to man up, put my big-boy pants on and just come out with it. After years of confusion and experimentation, the time has come for me to come out of the closet, so to speak, and say this: I don’t believe in camo. I don’t wear camo. I am at long last, camo-free!
I know, I know. Such sacrilege and blasphemy is going to be hard to take among the brotherhood of bowhunters. But before there is a stampede to flog me to death with your grunt tubes, hear me out. Like most journeys of intimate and personal self-discovery, this one had innocent beginnings and unpredictable outcome. But unlike most journeys of intimate and personal self-discovery, I have photographic proof that I am willing to share.
This whole thing started with a simple birthday present that cost lea than $20. Before I opened that gift, I had camo that looked like tree, camo for the desert, camo for the ridges, camo for the river bottom, snow camo and camo with computer sophistry. At a sportsman show I very nearly bought a suit of camo that would have made me look like a giant mop. I pondered a camo system where a hunter could wear a leafy top and tree bark pants and just go out in the woods and stand wherever he wanted to. I wore a camo tie to church, bought my wife a camo nighty, and fixed things with camo duct tape. One winter when I drove by a frozen lake and all of the ice fisherman were wearing camo, I never gave it a second thought.
All the changed back in 2007 on the day before I left for my first-ever guided caribou hunt, which also happened to be my birthday. I sat on the couch and unwrapped the gift from my wife that would turn out to be the Holy Grail of all birthday presents. A quilted, dark-green plaid, flannel zipper jacket with a grey sweat-hood in extra-large tall. The jacket was made in Cambodia for Field & Stream and sold in Costco for $19. According to the tag, which is sophisticated enough to be printed in two languages, this jacket is made of 180-percent cotton, 100-percent nylon and 120 percent polyester. For you math-challenged readers, that adds up to a whopping 400 percent. Obviously, this was no ordinary garment, and it is definitely not camouflage in any way, shape or form.
The next day I flew out to Canada, and when I stepped off the plane wearing my green-plaid jacket our camp guide, Lou, pulled me aside. Understand that Lou is a tough, hard man-a French-Canadian that only uses one explicit adjective when he speaks English. Actually he creatively uses variations of that same word as a noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Lou told us that earlier in his life he had been sentenced to 18 months in prison for beating. I set up o up a guy who had stolen one of his guns, and reported with grim satisfaction that he had to do all 18 months. No time off for good behavior.
“is that your camo?” he asked me.
“Yep.”
“Are you going to wear it hunting?”
“If it’s not raining,” I answered cautiously.
He Looked into the heavens as if he were seeing a vision. “I never thought I’d see the day when an American got off that plane without $600 worth of brand -new camo on.”
“Hey,” I said, somewhat offended. “This is brand-new.”
I killed the first caribou in camp wearing the plaid jacket the next day, a dandy double-shovel bull, and hung my second tag on another nice bull a few days later.
About a week after I got home from Canada I was itching to get out bowhunting for elk, and my sons had reported seeing a nice bull and a few cows up in a basin not too far from home.
“I’m going to go up and kill that bull today,” I told my boys early one morning.
“Yeah, sure you are Dad,” one of them said. “And while you’re at it you might as well go out and win the Heisman trophy.” They were still snickering as a zipped up my plaid jacket and drove away.
Five hours later I was standing over the big bull trying to get a good self-timer photo.
Just after sunrise id spotted the elk out in the flats a long ways below the timbered basin. But I assumed they would end up in the basin before the day got too hot. I set up on the ground in a little string of brush and waited three hours for the elk to get to me. Problem was, all the elk crossed about 100 yards below me, the bull the last in line. By now a marginal crosswind was wafting toward the cows. I had little to lose, so I gave him a short little spikish-sounding squeak on my bugle. I rarely bugle at an elk anymore, but when I do I like to sound like a vulnerable little sissy. The bull instantly threw his head back and ripped out an enormous non-sissy bugle and came in so fast that I barely got turned around and my bow drawn before he popped onto the open at 35 yards. I saw my arrow hit him a couple of inches high of perfect and heard my arrow hit in the brush beyond him. A clean pass-through. He ran off a hundred yards, bedded down and died. Right there in plain view. No tough trailing job. No drama. No heartbreak.
I looked down at the plaid pattern on the sleeve of my jacket. Magic. Pure and simple magic. While I was thus pondering the miracle of my birthday jacket, my mind’s eye harkened back to the old days when a simple plaid shirt was all the man of bow and arrow needed, back to the days of Fred Bear, Howard Hill and the Bee Gees. I thought of thumbing through my Dad’s ancient Archer’s Bible as a young boy and seeing pictures of archers in plain shirts and canvas pants and felt hats. I thought back to my days in junior high when I would get teased for being a dork, and my mother would tell me that it is not what is on the outside but what is on the inside that matters. I was beginning to believe that this timeless advice is as true for bowhunters as it is for junior high dorks.
Beside the two nice caribou bulls and the six-point bull elk, by the end of September I had also killed a huge whitetail buck that grossed 172 ½ out of a wobbly 8-foot ladder stand attached to a scrubby little juniper tree, a couple of whitetail does, and my first ever archery antelope buck out of a ground blind. Some were taken on private land, but all with archery equipment. Al completely fair chase, and all wearing that green plaid jacket.
By season’s end, I would add a wild buffalo near West Yellowstone, Montana, and a Javelina in Arizona. Regulations required I shoot the buffalo with a rifle, although I could have easily shot the big bull with my bow. To be fair, I could have worn some Barney the Purple Dinosaur camo and killed the buffalo. Not the wiliest of God’s Creations.
In 2008 I decided to simplify even more. Before the season started, I emptied my daypack on the floor of my office. I was surprised how much that pile of junk looked like a sporting goods store’s close-out bin. Only those items deemed absolutely necessary went back in. Now my daypack weighs 8 pounds. With a lighter daypack and my trusty green plaid jacket, I had another great season. Not quite as spectacular as before, but by my standards pretty awesome. I shot another six-point bull out of the same rickety ladder stand, another antelope, a few whitetail does, and a little mule deer buck, spot-and-stalk.
This past season, I determined that the next evolution in my quest was to go completely camo-free. The only camo I grandfathered in was on my bow, because I really like my bow. All I needed was some camo-free pants and a new daypack. Just try to buy a good hunting daypack and a sturdy pair of hunting pants that is not camo. In the end, I went to the place one might naturally turn to when faced with a vexing personal fashion issue- the U.S. government. After literally months of looking around. I finally found two pairs of pants at the Army surplus store in Utah, one pair olive green, the other dark brown. I also came up with a green canvas daypack, although at first glance you’d expect a pack like that to have a couple of textbooks called: The Criminalization of Capitalism and Global Warming: To Die For inside, along with a pair of grimy open-toed sandals. An upgrade in this area is still on the front burner, but I was at long last ready for my truest test to go camo-free.
And the results? A Boone and Crockett-sized black bear spot-and-stalk in the spring, an archery whitetail that scores 153. By sheer luck I shot a Pope and Young six-point bull elk one morning in the wide only cover I had-a fence brace. I got a decent antelope buck point-blank out of a treestand about 6 feet up. And finally, I bought a pocketful of extra doe tags and then attached each and every one to an archery killed doe. I completely tagged out, something I had never done before in 25 years of hunting. All 100-percent fair chase and camo-free
As usual, I found out my dear mother was right. It is not what is on the outside but what is on the inside that counts. On the outside, camo-free plaid works for me. On the inside I’ve learned to be creative with whatever cover I have to work with, keep the wind in my face at all costs, sit a little longer, and be doggedly persistent. Buy less stuff and buy more gas. Shop less, hunt more—that’s what I say.
So what’s next? It has been that perhaps the next step in this quest is to go completely clothing-free, or at least a plaid loincloth and a pair of boots. This is ridiculous, of course, and so far a plaid loincloth has been even harder to find than a non-camo daypack. The lingerie store had some possibilities, but I’m sure black leather would be way too hot.
Written by Chris Dahl