Painting Hunting Rifle An Easy Camo Idea

I have been a big deer hunter since I was a kid in the great state of Wisconsin. Every year, it never fails that at least one deer will spot me to my suprise and bolt out of view. This last year it occured to me that just maybe the deer can see the bright sun reflecting off of the blued stainless steel of my rifle barrel, or even off of the rifle's scope. It makes since the more I think about it, as deer aren't stupid unless they're crossing a road, that "if it's shiny, it doesn't belong". We hunters spend so much time and money on camoflagued clothing, and face paint if you get that far into it, not to mention even going as far as spending a bunch of money for a quality deer blind. The clothing that we wear has all sorts of woodland shapes to break up our pattern in the woods, but we tend to forget one other thing. Our rifles. As mentioned, I am pretty sure deer can see the sun reflecting on the steel, and there really isn't anything there to break up the pattern. Turkey have much more keen eyesight, therefore it's not uncommon to see camoflaged turkey shotguns.

I had the wild idea to camo up my treasured Remington 700 30-06 bolt action rifle last fall. I tried a "sock" of sorts to slip over the rifle. Problem was that it got in the way of the bolt, ejected cartridges, and my eye when looking through the scope. So, I thought that I would just paint it.

I left the rifle all together as there really isn't any need to take it apart. I taped up the glass lenses of the scope, making sure that only the glass gets covered. I then closed the bolt and put enough tape over it in the open area to keep it from getting paint on it. Here's why I didn't paint that. The first time I did, then when trying to cycle the bolt open and closed, the paint wore off and gummed up the bolt tracks making it very stiff. So I just cleaned off only the portion that sits inside the receiver. For my project, I decided on a two-tone green scheme. Light green and Forest green.