Chris Schneck

If playing paintball in the woods is your thing, you undoubtedly own something in olive drab or some other easily available camouflage pattern. Camouflage has been evolving since the beginning of the predator prey relationship, with survival being its only purpose. Human adorned military camouflage and the science of visual acuity have only been around since the mid 19th century, but our big human brains have learned much.

The sole purpose of camouflage is to break up and conceal the recognizable geometric shape of an object with its surrounding environment. Camouflage makes an object difficult to detect by emulating the immediate visual background. The colouring, size and distribution of pattern elements must necessarily be in aspects pertinent to the visual system of the observer.

So literally the best camouflage is one that looks as similar as possible in all aspects to your immediate surroundings in both colour and pattern.

There are all kinds of terrains and climates with their own flora and fauna, it will be nearly impossible for you to own the perfect camouflage for every event and locale. Even if you do own a pattern that matches the surroundings that you normally play on, are you using your camouflage in such a way that it breaks up the recognizable geometric outline of the human body? Regardless of your body being covered in a sufficient visually disruptive pattern, what about your mask and marker? If anything is going to give you away while playing woodsball its going to be thundering around like a fool, the silhouette of the visor on your mask, the mask itself or the silhouette of your marker.

Movement, or lack of movement, is very much a part of effective camouflage. You’ve most likely seen pictures that demonstrate a particular camouflage patterns capabilities and there’s one thing that all these pictures have in common. The concealed subject isn’t moving! On top of a still picture not recreating the movement of a natural environment the concealed subject in the demonstration pictures is, 90% of the time, not carrying any paintball gear! As long as you remain motionless, theres less of a chance your mask or marker will give you concealed position away, but as soon as you raise your marker to take aim, or poke your head up to see whats going on, its pretty much all over.

There is one expensive solution that might be practical depending on your style of play, the ghillie suit, aka the ‘yowie suit’. This form of camouflage first made an appearance in 1916 during the second Boer War and is named after a type of tree spirit that is supposed to disguise itself in leaves and vegetation. A ghillie suit is often comprised of several pounds of jute thread, and is incredibly hot to wear. Since these suits take a considerable amount of time to manufacture, they are often also expensive. Although highly effective, the ghillie is only as capable as its wearer, again movement will give you away even if you are head to toe looking like a mossy swamp thing.

So which easily available camouflage pattern is the best? How much do I have to pay and who do I have to go to, to get the best camouflage?

It’s been my experience that as long as you are wearing a natural and abundant colour, like the very common olive drab, and you pay attention to how you move and your position in your surroundings in relation to potential objectives you’ll regularly surprise people. Stay low, move cautiously and with intent, crawl often as people aren’t expecting that. Don’t second guess yourself, once you’ve decided to move, commit to the movement. Use brush as cover, as long as there is 2 or 3 inches of foliage between you and a potential hotspot you are less likely to be seen, natural cover is the best!

Sound is also an integral part to camouflage, shut the hell up and remember to practice and use your hand signals or invest in some radios and headset / mic combos. Combat boots are nice, I wear them, but running shoes are quieter and should be considered as an alternative.

In the end the camouflage is only as good as the person wearing it, very much like a paintball marker is only as good as the person operating it.

Sometimes it’s very handy to be able to communicate your intentions to a teammate  without saying a word. This can be very hard to accomplish if there was no forethought put into the process, as you might very well appear to be just swatting flies or asking  them for the time. Yes there are standardized hand signals floating out there on the Internet, but what good are they if not everyone on your teams understand what your hand flapping means?

The funny version can be found here.

Its best to designate your own set of hand signals, as using a standardized set that is available to everyone will make it possible for players on other teams to also interpret what you are trying to communicate. Dont try and overcomplicate it, unless you play with the same group of people all the time you will again run into the problem of not being understood or miscommunicating your intentions.

Keep the series of hand signals brief, make all hand movements below your shoulders to reduce the chance of being spotted. Here is quick run through of how you might organize a chain of thought :

1. Get your teammate(s) attention - Normally I would just hold my hand about chest height and wave hello until my teamate(s) knew I was trying to say something
2. Outline the situation - Point to an area of interest and describe what it is that is in that direction that everyone should be paying attention to
3. Describe what you intend to do - Pointing again to yourself and where you intend to go, or what you intend to do to address what you pointed out in step #2
4. Describe what you want your teammate(s) to do - Pointing to your teammate(s) and tell them where to go or what you need them to do to back you up in step #3
5. Get confirmation that everything was understood - Make sure everyone is nodding in agreement or gives a thumbs up
6. Take action - Dont hesitate, you probably spent a few precious moments getting this all out, just do it at this point

As long as your entire group is on the same page to what all your hand gestures mean, you should be good to go. If you manage to get the drop on another group of paintballers and they dont see or hear you before you make your move, you have a much greater chance of success.