i have been having an age old discussion and thought i'd try to get some input. personally, i have never had a game animal "spooked" by glare from a glossy barrel or scope.....as far as i am aware. have any of you..??

my friend says he needs to get a rifle matte finished.....my contention is to leave it alone. what are your thoughts..??

I think a lot of game got killed a long time before matte finishes were around.

What part of OK are you from?

Me either, but I've seen the flash of a shiny rifle barrel from half a mile away myself on a sunny morning.

The rule is: you can't mix gloss and matte on the same gun. They should match.

Source: MuskegMan's book on Rifle Etiquette [copyright 1991.]

How would you know if you are spooking game @ 1/2 mile plus? I have seen the reflection from SS pistols & rifles in excess of 1/2 mile. I like matte for all of my hunting guns.

old cane: i'm from the NE part of the state, just a little ways from Tulsa.

fred: good point. i suppose part of the situation here is that a long shot would be closer to 100 yards. normally, game is heard or seen pretty early on. and if they spook, it is pretty easy to hear them running off. in the situation you describe, a flash may become an issue and you'd never know it.

Matte finish blued or stainless. It does make a difference.

I like matte, but you can bet that I won't discard all of my shiny guns.

I've found that gloss spooks game when you are hunting the game at close range on a bright sunny day. Although we like to be n the shadows for concealment, we all know that sometimes isn't the way it happens especially, when you are a stand hunter.

Good Luck!

Reloader

20 yr.s ago I did the thing of putting all my gear down and walking around it about 25 meters out. Since then I don't buy gloss finished anything. I simply put fabric camo tape over the glossy barrels, scopes etc. that I don't want to replace and strip it off after the season. That's simple, cheap stealth.

Depends on what you are into. I have all my stainless guns bead blasted because of the glare. Drives me crazy. For predator hunting you cannot have that glare. All it takes is a little flash off the barrel when sneaking into your calling area to alert every coyote in town.

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Originally posted by bill smith:
.....as far as i am aware.

Ah ha. There's the key. You'll never know it because you won't see 90% of the game you spook. It will just quietly sneak off...

I've used that cloth camo tape on barrels and it works great. Cheap and comes off when ur done.

I seriously doubt that "glare" or glint alone actually spooks game. Some amount of glint (water, ice, snow, polished antler) is present in the natural environment.

What glint from highly polished metal (and stocks) may do is attract the game's attention to your location; it's actually movement and not the glint that does the spooking.

Matte finish probably helps a little, but I don't think it's nearly as big a deal as concealing motion, scent, and noise. In other words, a cautious hunter with a shiny gun has a better chance of success than a careless hunter with an invisible gun.

Besides, the most likely source of glint is from the lenses of your optics as you scan with your binoculars or aim with your scope, and you ain't gonna fix that with no camo tape or anything else.

quote:

Besides, the most likely source of glint is from the lenses of your optics as you scan with your binoculars or aim with your scope, and you ain't gonna fix that with no camo tape or anything else.

I think Leupold has come out with filters for their scopes to knock down the glare. Also there are filters used for sniper deployment. I know there are sunshades available which will keep the sun from shining directly onto the lens unless you are pointing the scope at such an angle as to allow the sun to shine down into the scope.

quote:

Originally posted by Elkslayer:

quote:

Besides, the most likely source of glint is from the lenses of your optics as you scan with your binoculars or aim with your scope, and you ain't gonna fix that with no camo tape or anything else.

I think Leupold has come out with filters for their scopes to knock down the glare.

Right you are, but the Leupold filter is designed to reduce the glare seen by the shooter when looking into the light, not so much the opposite. It would undoubtedly also reduce some of the glare visible to the target from obtuse angle of incidence, but not the more acute angle glare. A long target-type extension lens cover would accomplish much the same thing in reducing glare.

Realistically, though, I've never known of a "glare-o-phobic" hunter who went to the extreme of trying to mask his objective lens in some way, although that potential source of glare is likely more problematic than a shiney gun. Besides, the scope lens is but a single lens that comes into play only when the gun is being aimed. The two binocular lenses are flashing glint all over the place as you scan and spot and I know of no fix for that.

Stay upwind, still, and quiet, and glare won't be a factor.

A number of years ago, a friend & his stepbrother were guiding sheep hunters up in the Brooks Range. Each of them had a client & a packer with him & they had left base camp and hiking to their respective spike camps. The client in the stepbrother's group had a stainless steel barreled rifle. My friend's group decided to take a breather & sat down on the side of the mountain. It was then that my friend caught the flash of a reflection off the rifle of the client in the other group. As I recall, my frind said they were about a mile or so apart. Even though your question was about matte vs. gloss, I think the principle is the same. If my friend caught this flash of light then you know darn well a sheep could.
Sorry, I prefer matte when possible but I too am not gonna get rid of my other scopes.
Bear in Fairbanks