We never get close enough to deer for them to taste or touch us. However, the senses of vision, hearing and smell are big on the deer radar screen, and ignoring these when hunting can keep you from tagging a buck or doe.
With Saturday?s opener to the firearms deer season quickly approaching, Dr. Karl V. Miller, professor of wildlife ecology and management at the University of Georgia and a renowned expert on deer physiology and senses, says hunters need to know that deer see differently from humans. We see trichromatically, seeing all colors; deer are dichromatic ? a form of color-blindness. They see differently than us with better vision of blues and poorer vision of the red/green spectrum. Reds in particular tend to go black with deer.
The tip here: Don?t wear blue jeans into the woods. Deer can see you very well in your Levi?s. Anything blue is a no-no.
Deer also have a horizontal band of cones (the part of the retina that sees color) rather than distribution concentrated over the back of the retina as we do. That explains why we move our eyes or head to track objects.
Deer track objects not by moving their eyes but by allowing the moving object to track across the band of cones. The rest of their retina is made up of a mix of cones and rods, the latter found in both deer and humans and designed for low light black-and-white vision.
“They are uniquely designed to pick up movement but not to pick up detail,” Miller said.
The next tip: If you spot a deer, don?t move. It probably will not see you if you remain motionless, but it can spot any slight movement very easily.
Deer still see the DayGlo orange that is required for most hunting (all firearms-season hunting), but it is not as visible to them as it is to us. As with red, it seems darker. The black-and-DayGlo-orange camouflage clothing that is legal for hunting ? provided that the orange is above the waist and provides at least 50 percent of the covering ? works well.
Stay away from clothing detergents with whiteners. They can make clothing brighter and more visible to deer. The bright colorful clothes that you want for the office Christmas party are not what you want for deer hunting. Get them ? along with the blues ? out of your deer-hunting wardrobe.
