Gore's New Marsh Camo

Chad Fix

Chad Fix

New member
Looks like Gore is introducing their new line of waterfowl based camoflage this year: Concealment Marsh. The new DU mag references it a few times (a new camo for beretta shotguns and gear - also sitka too). The advertisement on the back cover also shows it off as well.

The Marsh Pattern
To develop the Waterfowl Pattern, Gore worked with the same panel of experts who helped create the original GORE OPTIFADE pattern: animal vision scientist Dr. Jay Neitz; Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Tim O’Neill, PhD; and founder and CEO of HyperStealth® Bio Technology Corp. Guy Cramer (some of these guys, I believe, were the creators of digital camoflage which is used in our military)
Like the other patterns, the GORE™ OPTIFADE™ Marsh pattern is digital concealment, not mimicry. Rather than trying to make the hunter look like something, the pattern’s intent is to make the hunter appear to be “nothing” to the animal.

Here's a couple good reads on it:
Official Site
Click HERE to see some pictures of it
Seems pretty interesting.
Sitka.jpg


They developed two different patterns for ungulate "hoofed animals" (i.e. deer, elk, etc.) over the past couple years that seem to be quite successful. Click HERE for more details on them.
 
Where does one go to become an "animal vision scientist"?
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Bob, I spent some time looking up Dr. Jay Neitz, since I thought your question was a good one. He currently holds a position at the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Washington and had held a couple other very good positions associated with vision research (one at a Wisconsin school, which I hear produces excellent scientists). His is a prolific researcher in mammal vision and I think it would be safe to call him a color vision specialist - his current approach focuses on molecular genetics of color vision. I have no idea how involved he was in the development of the stuff, but I doubt very involved (just a guess based on his research). I also doubt there are very many folks with the training and expertise to give a better stamp of approval given the look I had at the breadth of his substantial list of publications.

That being said - for me, I'm fine with just not moving when I have game animals working. Worked fine this morning in my original (and faded) realtree bibs and the non-matching advantage timber jacket I had on.

T
 
There are a few dubious statements about avian vision on the website for the stuff. It may be great stuff that everyone needs but isn't this SPAM?
 
There are a few dubious statements about avian vision on the website for the stuff. It may be great stuff that everyone needs but isn't this SPAM?
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As I said, he is a mammal expert from my read.

T
 
I wasn't disputing your comment, I was adding that the mammal expert likely didn't review the website for the stuff for scientific accuracy. It may be accurate but I found a few statements that I thought were dubious but hey what do I know?
 
I wasn't disputing your comment, I was adding that the mammal expert likely didn't review the website for the stuff for scientific accuracy. It may be accurate but I found a few statements that I thought were dubious but hey what do I know?
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I wouldn't be surprised if he had not seen the website :).
 
In my humble opinion. Camouflage is the least important thing to consider when deer hunting. I think all these camouflage patterns are just fads developed by marketing agencies for the sole purpose of selling more stuff. Young hunters in particular are all caught up in having "this seasons" super awesome camo patterns...It's really no different than the metro city slicker crowd having to have the latest fashion that their told to wear by the NYC fashion police. You have all the hunting "stars" on TV that are just like any other "stars" that are paid by the manufacturers to wear their clothes in order to influence others to buy the stuff. "Oh, is that realtree such and such??? That is so 2010, man, what a looser."

I haven't purchased new camo in 10 years. In fact I usually don't wear anything but brown jeans and a camo coat or shirt. And I'm more successful every year. Now for duck hunting camo is important but in my experience if I'm exposed enough for my body to be seen by the birds then it's not going to work. That's what blinds are for. Turkey hunting?? People have been shooting turkeys for a long time.

I don't mean any disrespect. This is just something that bothers me. I feel that this type of thing "cheapens" hunting and I suspect that there are others amongst the Duckboat.net crowd that understand what I'm saying.
 
In my humble opinion. Camouflage is the least important thing to consider when deer hunting. I think all these camouflage patterns are just fads developed by marketing agencies for the sole purpose of selling more stuff. Young hunters in particular are all caught up in having "this seasons" super awesome camo patterns...It's really no different than the metro city slicker crowd having to have the latest fashion that their told to wear by the NYC fashion police. You have all the hunting "stars" on TV that are just like any other "stars" that are paid by the manufacturers to wear their clothes in order to influence others to buy the stuff. "Oh, is that realtree such and such??? That is so 2010, man, what a looser."

I haven't purchased new camo in 10 years. In fact I usually don't wear anything but brown jeans and a camo coat or shirt. And I'm more successful every year. Now for duck hunting camo is important but in my experience if I'm exposed enough for my body to be seen by the birds then it's not going to work. That's what blinds are for. Turkey hunting?? People have been shooting turkeys for a long time.

I don't mean any disrespect. This is just something that bothers me. I feel that this type of thing "cheapens" hunting and I suspect that there are others amongst the Duckboat.net crowd that understand what I'm saying.
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John, I think you speak for a large portion of our membership here and are in good company (if you can call anything about my company "good").
 
There are a few dubious statements about avian vision on the website for the stuff. It may be great stuff that everyone needs but isn't this SPAM?
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If it looks like SPAM, and smells like SPAM, the waiter may say it's prime rib, but I'm sending back to the kitchen...

Not sure what "Fixer's" connection to the product is, if any, but figured this would be the general consensus of the group and would sink in more than my mearly censoring it.
 
There are a few dubious statements about avian vision on the website for the stuff. It may be great stuff that everyone needs but isn't this SPAM?
Click to expand...


If it looks like SPAM, and smells like SPAM, the waiter may say it's prime rib, but I'm sending back to the kitchen...

Not sure what "Fixer's" connection to the product is, if any, but figured this would be the general consensus of the group and would sink in more than my mearly censoring it.
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I'm hungry for a nice piece of beef, myself.
 
I have no doubt that there are folks with credentials in the fiel - Just struck me as humerous along with all the other "big name" retired military, bio-stealth experts cited. Wonder how we killed ducks over blob-o-flage & coveralls all those years ;-) This statement from the website tells me they're a whole lot smarter at selling stuff than I am : "With more than $2.5 billion in annual sales and approximately 9,000 employees in 30 countries worldwide, W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc., provides diverse, high-performance solutions ."

Actually when I looked up animal vision, I read that one hypothesis is that because of the way it is believed animals see things, blaze orange would probably be as effective as any camo pattern.

......Of course we could always ask this Gore Corp test lab employee, and have him give us the definitive answer on how he actually "sees" it:

View attachment animalvision.jpg
 
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My question back is why do the decoys need to look like decoys if ducks see things so much differently than we do? According to the info on the website provided, this new camo is better able to conceal the hunter and is better than the stuff curretly available because of the way ducks see (verses how we see), why are decoys painted to look like real ducks effective. Shouldn't they be painted to look better to the way ducks see them?

Just a random thought.

Mark W
 
Here I thought this was going to be a new "Green" camo introduced by Al Gore. Major bummer!

Back to mismatched camo for me.

Tim
 
Any time the discussion of camo patterns comes up I always can't help but think of the old-timers who shot piles of ducks wearing brown canvas and checkered wool shirts. To my eye, many of the modern patterns are too "busy" and finely detailed, while they may look good from 5 feet away, if you move back to 20 or 30 yards the hunter just looks like a dark blob. The best field camo I've ever seen was my father-in-law's 25+ year old, old school "blob" brown and tan camo. That and being still, and not looking up will render you just about invisible.
As far as big game goes, I've only hunted big game in Utah and Wyoming but my feeling is that if you need camo to hunt big game you're doing something wrong. If the animal sees you, and you need to try to hide you've put yourself into the wrong position. Probably a different story for you eastern and midwestern guys that hunt treestands and thicker cover, I can see where camo would come in handy there!
 
My question back is why do the decoys need to look like decoys if ducks see things so much differently than we do? According to the info on the website provided, this new camo is better able to conceal the hunter and is better than the stuff curretly available because of the way ducks see (verses how we see), why are decoys painted to look like real ducks effective. Mark W
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HERESY!!!!

View attachment 20080915-john.jpg

Sounds like radical, hippie thinking to me. Besides, I employ some famous, retired ducks who told me what they like
 
Bob, you brought up a good point. I was thinking of all those mentors I had back in the early 50's, who were my age at the time back in the 1890s. It made me think of how successful they were as hunters and then I began thinking of "our" camo back then. It was all the same tan canvas for the jackets, Jones cap, with flannel shirts of some sort and that was about it. Some guys from the "cities" even wore pants of the same tan color but we always thought that was a waste because our hip boots normally covered that up. My mentors never applied face paint----mud or whatever, no one discussed anything about camo but if you hunted in the cattails, you covered up with them just like you did with corn stalks in a corn field.
All those mentors had one saying in common----"Don't move for gosh sakes!"

Over the past few years I have experimented quite a bit with "Ducks and Inanimate Objects"---the latter being me. I sat at the edge of a teal pond that was no bigger than 40 feet long and 20 feet wide. I used 4 decoys at the far end and was sitting in the wide open.

Many times I will sit in my folding chair right at the Rio Grande's edge with nothing in front of me to cover me up. No face mask either. It has been fun. I'm a believer in being patient and not moving. I always will try to have something behind me to break up my silhouette, however.

As for the new camo material, I'm all for it because there will be a ton of duck hunters who will make sure that they have the latest and greatest. Not only that, it is good for the economy. Who knows, maybe someday I'll need a new shirt.
Al
 
Even though I hail from the state that created Spam, thank you Hormel, I have ZERO connection to this new camo line. I was merely inquisitive about it since the new Ducks Unlimited catalog is advertising it on nearly every page. I apologize if it looked like I was advertising.

Since this is a forum centered with the premise on waterfowl hunting, I thought I might post this and find out some of your thoughts since camouflage in the waterfowl industry hasn't had a recent development in quite some time. For some people it's something to look forward to getting. For others, it's something to laugh about because it may be just as effective as the old brown camo (which I own and wear on a regular basis when hunting waterfowl).

I know that there are companies that paint their decoys to reflect UltraViolet rays to look more realistic. It's interesting, to me, that Gore is trying to figure out a way to blend more into the terrain so we essentially "disappear."
 
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Did I just see a turnip truck go by?

So if a company is just trying to blend in, then wouldn't this be the kind of post they'd submit?

Ok, back to the topic, as creatures operating in three dimensional space a lack of depth perception would seem to be a serious fault. Why don't we see ducks flying into things more often?
 
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