light filters for hunting

[James Bosley]

is it true that animals can't see red

[gasman]

I do not know about all animals but i shined my light in the face of my Lab one night and it did not bother him at all.

[Kain]

I have a red laser pointer that my dogs go nuts over.  I dont know if it is the same thing but they can definitely see red.

[bowhuntin]

I have read some articles about what colors deer and elk can see and they claim that they can see yellow and blue really well but other than that are color blind. They see things in shades of gray. I always use a red light filter for my petzl head lamp and assume the animals don't see it. I would bet they would pick up on movement before they picked up the filtered light.

[luvtohnt]

The color that the eyes reflect will be what color their eyes can't take in. Usually deer can't see green, and predetors are red, and some wavelengts of yellow.

Brandon

[bowhuntin]

The color that the eyes reflect will be what color their eyes can't take in. Usually deer can't see green, and predetors are red, and some wavelengts of yellow.

Brandon

So are you saying they can see red?

[Kain]

My eyes reflect red but I can still see it.   

[James Bosley]

for like raccoons coyotes and other varmints

[ivarhusa]

It is my amateur understanding that it isn't that they "can't see red" per se, but that they can' distinguish red from other colors in a useful way. Light is absorbed by proteins (opsins) and a neural signal generated by each receptor in a "normal distribution" way centered around a specific wavelength.  See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_vision for details.

Mammals had tricolor vision (eons ago), then lost it in the time of the dinosaurs. Most modern mammals, including deer and coyotes, still only have two-color vision. Man evolved again to get tri-color vision after we split from other primates on the family tree. These changes are attributable to changes in diet.  Man became more dependant on ripe fruit, so seeing colors provided a survival advantage. 

So, it isn't so much that the critter can't see red, it can (it doesn't go to "black"), but the apparent intensity is not as great and is less distinguishable from blue.  I haven't tested this information out with a camo pattern, but in theory (if I understand correctly) one should be able to blend in a red color into a camo pattern without drawing too much attention. Along those lines, I heard a story a while back that Hawaiian shirts made pretty good camo, despite their bold colors (and the fact that they have short sleeves, etc). Does this help?
-Ivar

[luvtohnt]

My eyes reflect red but I can still see it.

If you are basing this off of the "red eye" factor from a camera, then tell me why the flash is not red! This happens because the red light within a camera flash is outside of our visible spectrum, therefore the red is deflected off our eyes and creates "red eye".

In a human eye we have a trichromat, meaning a cluster of three cones. These cones are tuned to allow for all colors of the visible spectrum to be seen. K9's have a dichromat, meaning the same cluster has only two cones in a dogs eye. With the lack of the third cone, and loss of the upper end of the spectrum the dogs eye turns everything beyond ~500nm into white. So a red light will simply be a large white spot. Now this study was done on domestic dogs which seem to have developed a slight advantage over wild dos for detecting color.



 
 

[atomicjoe23]

I've read a lot of the camo articles in the recent predator hunting magazines and they all say that predators (and deer) see shades of red, orange etc. as varying shades of tan. . .that's why you can blaze orange while deer hunting and it apparently doesn't affect the deers ability to see you (as long as it's camo blaze anyway). . .

I've used a red spot light before, but nothing came in. . .so I can't say whether it did or didn't bother them. . .

[Kain]

My eyes reflect red but I can still see it.

If you are basing this off of the "red eye" factor from a camera, then tell me why the flash is not red! This happens because the red light within a camera flash is outside of our visible spectrum, therefore the red is deflected off our eyes and creates "red eye".

In a human eye we have a trichromat, meaning a cluster of three cones. These cones are tuned to allow for all colors of the visible spectrum to be seen. K9's have a dichromat, meaning the same cluster has only two cones in a dogs eye. With the lack of the third cone, and loss of the upper end of the spectrum the dogs eye turns everything beyond ~500nm into white. So a red light will simply be a large white spot. Now this study was done on domestic dogs which seem to have developed a slight advantage over wild dos for detecting color.



 
 

Neat!  I wondered if it was infrared that caused "red eye".

[FrankDown]

Ive sat in trails that racoons use and waited for them withthe army flashlights with the red lens frame put in the light.  I could hear them coming downt he trail through the leaves.  When they got to where I though tthey were I pushed the button adn the light came on.  THey continued like nothing was out of the ordinary, however I was very still except for my thinb.  When they got in a claer shot path I shot them with my autoloader.  I then sat back down and waited fo rthe next one to come to the marsh via the trail of no return.  One night my cousin and I got about 5 racoons ina  couple hours without dogs or any extra walking.  It doesnt appear to bother racoons, if you are moving they willknow, but for whatever reason the light itself without movement doesnt seem to bother the ones that I have shot like that.