Spring is here in the UK and with its arrival came a covering of the white stuff. As much as some people enjoy being covered in white stuff, it does mean some quick and temporary changes are required to our camouflage.

The day before skirmish, I sat with a large glass of hot mulled wine and watched the snow hit our area hard, and it didn’t take long before everything was buried. I made a quick essential car journey to the local hardware store for some white painters coveralls, because if everything is completely white it’s an easy solution, and I packed some olive green and dark earth spray paint to add to it if needed.

Now, snow in the UK is a rare treat and in nearly 30 years of airsoft this was the first game day that coincided with it, that I was free for. Such is work. For us who play in the UK it doesn’t make much sense in having a purpose built snow camouflage suit, or to have anything permanent. I’ve seen a few solutions down the years from various sources that include snow camo netting or even bits of cut up PTFE tape (some YouTube sniper channel lol, didn’t get the name of it). The netting isn’t a bad idea, but it might catch on stuff if it’s too loose.

I didn’t have time to order any netting though. My wife however is a Rugby coach and with their game cancelled, I decided to help myself to the team first aid kit for some bandages (sorry guys but my need is greater). Come game day, most of the snow had unfortunately melted which is fucking typical, but it was still patchy in places so I thought I’d leave the coveralls, grab my winter dirt suit and set about the rifle with some bandages;

This follows the same principles outlined in the Tree Bark Rifle Camo article, and after taking the above photo I figured it’d be a really good illustration of rifle breakup as opposed to trying to make it look like a stick.

Camouflage isn’t about mimicking whats around you – it’s about disruption and shape breakup to disguise what the eye is looking at, ie not a person or a gun, rather than trying to unite it all as one object or pattern.

Back to the rifle camo, as you can see in the photo gallery above, a lot of the dead, brown, underlying vegetation is visible (it didn’t go anywhere) so it’s a case of leaving that camo visible and adding a simple wrap of bandages around the gun to break it up, held in place with medical tape which also worked on its own in places. I didn’t do anything to the suit itself because a lot of the treelines were thawed out, and it would mainly be the rifle visible if anything. Bandages would have been very easy to cut up and add patches onto the suit with zip ties.

Contrast is king. As soon as I got home all that old Jack Pyke tape came off, ready for a makeover which will enhance the breakup the same way the bandages did, with a stronger light/dark/light pattern. One day perhaps there’ll be an ice age with all this global warming and I can get out there and do a full winter suit like the Finnish players do.