Using signal colours like signal red or blaze orange when shooting may save a life – your own! Quite a number of trends have found their way from the US to Europe and Scandinavia. Some of these trends are praiseworthy, while others are downright silly. But one trend from the US which I will consider a good and even an intelligent trend, is the use of colours like blaze orange or signal red when you are shooting in the field together with others.
Not required - but definitely a smart thing to do
Unlike many States in the US, it is still not obligatory or required by law to use signal colours when you are field-shooting in Europe or Scandinavia. Most places in the US you have no choice. The requirement to use such colours is not optional. Typically it is required when people are doing Upland Shooting for birds like pheasant, chukar, sage grouse and quail. In the US you traditionally shoot birds together in a group, while you stalk and hunt big game on your own, often with a hunting guide to aid you. In Norway, the tradition is often the opposite; We hunt elk, deer or roe deer in groups called “jaktlag”, but often shoot grouse, black grouse or capercaillie on our own! Whatever the quarry you are pursuing, I think it is both intelligent and wise to use signal colours as part of your outfit when you shoot with others. On days where many guns are gathered in a relatively small geographical area, safety and security must always be at the top of the agenda. During my more that 30 years as a shooting man, I have witnessed too many dangerous situations that potentially could have had a fatal outcome! Often these situations have been the result of guns not knowing where other guns are located in a given moment. I have experienced dangerous situations both during driven shooting as well as during walked-up shooting. Shooters typically dress in earth-colours like different nuances of green, brown, tan and grey. Sometimes they are extremely difficult to spot when they are not moving!
Signal colours make you visible to others
Of course, it is not for the quarry`s sake that we ought to use signal colours like red or blaze orange. It is, of course, for the sake of the other guns. It is to maximize their chances of them spotting you BEFORE they do something stupid and irresponsible, like firing a shot in your direction. Definitely, something like this should never happen, but do you always know the people that you are shooting with? Maybe there has been a misunderstanding, and maybe the shoot captain has given out misleading, incorrect or insufficient information to the guns? Maybe the shoot captain was under a lot of pressure and forgot to tell a gun where one of the other pegs was located? Communication requires both a receiver and a sender, both output and input. It can be easy to misunderstand what is being said by the captain when a gun is stressed or when he is disturbed by other people or distracted. Again, do you always know the people you are shooting with? Do you know if all of them are mentally stable? Like the rest of the population, there are shooters who are addicted to alcohol or drugs, people shooting who use psychopharmaceutic medicines which may affect their judgements. Maybe none of the people you are shooting with are in this category, but nevertheless, I think it is wise to use apparel that makes you visible to others, just in case.
When not to use Blaze Orange
As most of us know, mammals like deer and roe deer are colour-blind. The same goes for the wild boar. For wild birds the story is a completely different one. As a matter of fact, wild birds have very good or even extremely good colour sight. It is therefore virtually hopeless to use signal colours when wildfowling, when you are shooting wood pigeon, geese or wild ducks! It is not recommended by anyone. But when shooting ground birds like pheasant, grouse and woodcock, typically on a walked-up shoot, using signal colours will definitely not affect the shooting in any negative manner. On the contrary, it is important to know where your fellow guns are in comparison to you, when you are doing walked-up shooting. Obviously, it is easier for you to shoot well when you know where the other guns are at the moment when the birds flush! Having shoot driven pheasant in Denmark since 2002, I have never experienced that the use of blaze orange while shooting driven pheasants has affected the birds flight-path in any significant or negative way. So, using blaze orange works well for driven shooting too!
