Making a paintball ghillie suit follows many of the same steps as a normal ghillie suit. You must assemble it according to your surrounding and you must also make sure it blends. Nowadays many folk have decided to forgo the building of a good paintball ghillie suit in favor of pre-manufactured suits already covered in grass, leaves, and other twigs. The problem with this is that many of these will not match, and much of the added foliage is artificial, meaning it wouldn't match even if you drug it behind a truck through the Paintball Park itself.
The best paintballing arenas are those in wooded areas that allow for easy camouflage and hiding. Such forest settings will always have an abundance of leaves and twigs, along with dead grasses, mosses, and other things to adorn your paintball ghillie suit. The right paintball ghillie suit is usually assembled beforehand and will have much of the groundwork laid. Even if you go to a different park it can be blended in through some simple steps of just adding local leaves, dirt, and mosses to it. You could take a ghillie suit from the red dirt of Oklahoma to the dirt in California and still remain invisible - all you need to do is get it wet, drag it through the dirt, and then replace any missing patches with local foliage.
The paintball ghillie suit that your enemy wears may be just as good - so be careful to look for any unusual patterns. Sometimes something will seem a little too green, or too brown. Watch it for movement. If you watch long enough you're bound to see a slight up and down with each breath - and then you will know your enemies paintball ghillie suit. Also, when you are hunting for targets, and you have your suit in a superior condition, you can sneak up on those who are using poorly made paintball ghillie suits - such as those made from artificial foliage. Blast them away without revealing your position; and you will have a chance to get another without moving.
Paintball ghillie suits can become filthy, dirty, and smelly. That is a good thing, because you want your suit to smell like dirt, but if the odor becomes too strong you may consider wetting it down and freshening the dirt, or even using manure to hide the other smells. In all likelihood though, smell from it may actually hide your own, and your paintball ghillie suit becomes another kind of mask for you - a scent mask. Paintball ghillie suits can also hide items for you in pouches, or in other secret locations. Some people even make paintball gun paintball ghillie suits, so their gun is just as undetectable as they are, and they will remain unseen.
Just remember, when you're putting together your paintball ghillie suit, you need to make sure it matches; you need to make sure it is hidden from sight and from smell, and you need to make sure you don't have any missing patches. The ghillie suit you use in paintball can determine the outcome of the game itself.
The word 'ghillie' is an old Scottish term for a special kind of game warden. Back in the day, Ghillies were made to protect the Lords land from poachers, and adopted the use of camouflage suits to help with this. They would also hide in the long grass and wait for unsuspecting game to wander by, then jump out and grab them with bare hands. They would then take their catches back to the castle so the Lord could shoot it in the castle courtyard in a “mock hunt."
These olden day Ghillies, using their keen tracking and stalking skills combined with their incredible camouflage paved the way to the evolution of Ghille Suits. These suits completely change the odds out in the forest and make it a lot easier to hunt successfully. More recently Ghillies have been introduced into the game of paintball, giving a whole new sniper element to the game.
The base of the Ghillie is laden with heavy canvas to help pad the snipers torso during the long hours of the day while he lay on his stomach. Ghillie suits are made specifically to act as camouflage in certain environments, whether it be desert, woodland, moss or all seasons. The Ghillie suit is covered with numerous strips and strands of burlap/jute and cloth along with other natural material attached primarily to the garment. There are a range of different Ghillie suit variations for each environment, and often local elements including vines, twigs and branches are entwined into the suit. The most common are the Bow Hunter, the Bush Rag, the Stalker and the Chameleon. The strips and strands that make up the camouflage vary in length from 6-18 inches. A complete Ghillie suit may have up to 1,000 strips and strands attached to it. These attachments are what make the Ghillie suit so effective in breaking up the human form and blending with the area surroundings. Ghille suits normally come in 3-4 parts, often including Ghillie gloves, a Ghillie hat and a rifle wrap, which compliments your Ghillie suit by concealing your rifle also.
Making the right decision on what Ghillie suit to use is also very important. When hunting from a blind where only your torso is exposed a Ghillie Jacket is best to use. When hunting in thick low growing vegetation, the Ghillie Poncho will give you greater mobility and still offer all the camouflage you need. When in hunting in sparse cover its pretty hard to camouflage yourself, even with a Ghillie, you can use the base of a large tree or rock as a good way to breakup your profile, standing next to anything will improve the effectiveness of your camouflage.
These days, the top Ghillie suits have seamless, synthetic material on the inside which is comfortable and light weight. Material would also be water-proof , rot-proof , mildew resistant , fire-retardant , washable , odor-less and non-allergenic. An ultimate Ghille suit is one where one can stalk effectively but still stay very mobile, it also pays to look for breathable Ghillie suits as they tend to overheat very easily.
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