The DEC encourages every hunter and outdoor recreationalist to wear blaze orange, or fluorescent pink. These vibrant colors are used to prevent another hunter mistaking you for wildlife and accidentally shooting at you.

Hunters who wear orange or pink are 7 times less likely to be shot. New York State law requires armed deer and bear hunters aged 14 and 15, along with their mentors, to wear a fluorescent hunter orange or pink. The vibrant colors must be visible from all directions. A shirt, jacket, or vest must have at least 250 square inches of solid or patterned fluorescence. You may instead opt to wear a hat with a least 50 percent orange or pink

Deer can NOT tell the difference between blaze orange (or pink) from green. Hunters who insist on wearing camo and hunters who wear blaze orange are both invisible to a deer granted they don’t move. The only thing camo hides you from is other hunters. Hunting is safe, and should be kept as such, so long as you follow the DEC’s guidelines. Here are some statistics about hunting and hunting safety:

• Hunting is among the safest outdoor recreational activities. Nationally, the injury rate from hunting (1/24K people) is much lower than other activities like cycling (1/71), snowmobiling (1/300), and swimming (1/313).
• In NY, the hunting injury rate has been reduced by almost 70 percent since the 1970s.
• There are over 600,000 hunters in NY and only 1 in 14,000 will be involved in an accident. 99.9 percent of hunters do not cause firearms injuries.
• Nationwide, more people are killed by deer-vehicle collisions than in hunting-related shooting incidents.