Best Camo for Turkey Hunting of 2025

While whitetails have fairly keen eyesight, turkeys, hands down, have the best eyes in the woods. These birds see a much broader spectrum of color than deer, even wider than humans. Although you can get away with any pattern that breaks up the human outline during deer season, (even a red flannel shirt), the best camo for turkey hunting needs to match your surroundings and make you disappear in the woods. 

With approximately 6.5 million wild turkeys roaming every state except Alaska, matching camo with hunting habitat means different things to different hunters. Chasing Rocky Mountain Merriam’s looks a good deal different than calling Osceolas in the Everglades. Thankfully, there are plenty of camo patterns to match every setting and season. Here are some of our favorites. 

How We Chose the Best Camo for Turkey Hunting

We have some dedicated, die-hard turkey hunters on staff at Outdoor Life. With more than 80 years of collective experience, we’ve seen a thing or two in the turkey woods. We’ve had hot gobblers lock up just out of range. We’ve also had them strut right into our laps. Longbeards have a way of keeping even the savviest turkey hunters humble, and it can be difficult to predict what will fool one bird but spook another. However, these are all patterns we’ve used to fill turkey tags in 20 different states. 

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Best Camo for Turkey Hunting: Reviews & Recommendations

Best Overall: Mossy Oak Bottomland

Key Features 

• Looks like dirt and trees
• Proven pattern
• Year-round option, if needed

Created by Toxey Haas and released in 1986, Mossy Oak Bottomland is the OG turkey hunting camo. The iconic pattern was inspired by a fistful of leaves and dirt and a burning desire to get up close and personal with big gobblers. Since its inception, Mossy Oak Camo has undergone a ton of innovations. The brand has introduced dozens of new, highly-specialized stick-and-leaf patterns. But that doesn’t mean the original Bottomland is outdated. It’s recently reemerged in a major way, appearing on everything from bedroom slippers to prom dresses.

While wearing a Bottomland sport jacket to most weddings won’t do you any favors when it comes to blending in, it is perfect for melting into the background in the dark, drab environments turkeys most often call home. Bottomland is a great year-round option for all kinds of hunting but works incredibly well in early spring before things start to green up. But that doesn’t mean you should ditch it when the leaves burst open, because this pattern disappears almost any time you use a tree trunk as a backrest. It also looks stylish while pumping gas or grabbing a post-hunt lunch at the local mom-and-pop. 

“I like Bottomland on a jacket, pants, gun, and turkey vest. But, my favorite piece of turkey camo is my Bottomland leafy jacket,” says OL’s executive gear editor, Scott Einsmann. “ It helps break up my outline when my back cover isn’t perfect or if I get caught in the open.”

In addition to being a downright effective camo pattern, old-school Mossy Oak Bottomland is also dripping with tradition. It’s what our dads and granddads, the first stewards of turkey hunting and conservation, were wearing into the woods long before turkey populations rebounded to the healthy numbers we enjoy today. There’s a ton of nostalgia and probably some pretty amazing stories in those muddy browns and mossy greens. Wearing Bottomland is more than a way to blend in the woods, it’s also a way to pay tribute to our turkey hunting heritage. 

Full Mossy Oak Bottomlands Kit

Best for Greenup: Sitka Optifade Cover

Key Features

• High-performance technical gear suitable for a variety of environments
• Designed to break up human outlines at close range
• Color palette matches the eastern woods 
• Can be used from spring through late deer season in the South

In 2017, Sitka designed its Optifade Subalpine pattern for early-season elk and mule deer archery hunters. While the pattern was quickly adopted by turkey hunters across the country, Subalpine just didn’t have enough green for most spring turkey hunting landscapes. In response to the need for a greener palette, Sitka released the new Optifade Cover pattern in the fall of 2024 (you can read my full review here). This stuff looks right at home in the deep green swamps, river bottoms,  farm fields, and big woods that stretch east of the Mississippi River. 

Sitka has long been a favorite of hunters from the Deep South to the Rocky Mountains and beyond. One reason is that Sitka makes high-performance (although admittedly spendy) technical clothing. Turkey hunters looking for slimmer cuts, better materials, and more features in their clothing often prefer Sitka over more budget-friendly options. It certainly helps that the company has a camo pattern that works well in areas where turkeys are prolific.

One major selling point for Sitka’s Optifade Cover pattern is that it is available in the brand’s Equinox Guard line-up. Equinox Guard is made from bite-reduction fabric with built-in insect repellant to help keep springtime creepy crawlies like ticks, mosquitoes, and chiggers at bay. It may be one of the best things to happen to turkey hunters in warmer, bug-riddled climates like my home state of North Carolina. The gear blends perfectly into the lush woods that I hunt and helps me focus on the birds instead of the insects that would otherwise form a swarming cloud around my face mask.

Full Sitka Optifade Cover Kit

Best for Early Season: Realtree EDGE

Key Features 

• Blend of light to mid-tone colors
• Works throughout spring, especially in hardwoods
• Uses organic shapes

Once spring is in full swing and everything starts to foliate, you want camo with enough green to help you blend. Choose something too dark and you’ll look like a big brown blob in a verdant green field. However, since greens vary by geography and where you are in the season, it can be tricky to match the perfect shade of green to the woods. Realtree EDGE addresses this by adding a decent amount of green without going overboard. “EDGE” stands for “Effectively Dominating Geographical Environments,” and the pattern accomplishes that domination with an intricate mix of realistic branches, leaves, and tree trunks.

Full Realtree EDGE Kit

Best Late-Season Camo: Mossy Oak Obsession

Key Features

• Bright green leaves 
• Good mix of foliage

When the woods are fully leafed out and radiate with the electric green of late spring, this is the camo pattern you want to wear to tag your last gobbler of the season. It is brighter and greener than most other patterns in our lineup and blends perfectly with tall, new grass and young saplings bursting with fresh leaves. The only downside is that this pattern is not ideal for earlier in the season. Because of this, it wouldn’t be my first choice for the camo pattern on my gun. But every turkey hunter should have a pair of pants and a hunting shirt in Mossy Oak Obsession. You’ll put them to good use in the late season. —Alex Robinson

Full Mossy Oak Obsession Kit

Best for Dry Regions: First Lite Fusion

Key Features 

• Uses algorithms derived from the golden ratio to mimic natural patterns 
• Incorporates large regions of color and “crackleture” to distort the shape of the human body

If you turkey hunt in Texas or Oklahoma, you need camo that blends into lighter desert backgrounds. First Lite’s Fusion pattern uses hues that replicate the mesquite and scrub quite well. The pattern also has a great mix of light and dark areas with micro and macro patterns, so it doesn’t stand out or blob up, even in open terrain. First Lite Fusion also features something called “Crackleture,” a marketing term for the unique “cracks” in the pattern that further contrast your silhouette against the patterns of the natural landscape.

Full First Lite Fusion Kit

Best Budget: TrueTimber Strata

Key Features 

• Bright green leaves 
• Good mix of foliage

TrueTimber is a relatively new camo company (compared to Mossy Oak and Realtree) and has become popular in big outdoor stores like Cabela’s and Bass Pro. The Strata pattern has a similar color scheme to Bottomland, so it matches nicely with hardwood tree bark. It’s slightly darker, so it’s not the perfect choice for electric green woods. It has a modern, textured pattern (not just sticks and leaves). The best thing about Strata is that it’s printed on a wide variety of clothing that can be had at affordable prices. This is a great option if you’re a turkey hunter on a budget and just need a simple camo shirt to wear under your vest. —Alex Robinson

Full TrueTimber Strata Kit

Best Low-Key: Voormi Blowdown

Key Features 

• Subtle vertical pattern, ideal for breaking up the human profile 
• Available in pieces with a water-repellent finish

More and more folks are realizing that they don’t need to wear camo to kill game. I’d argue that the turkey woods are one of the few places where camo clothing, or at least some earth-toned clothing, is a real requirement for success. That’s why the Voormi Blowdown pattern is an ideal option. It has enough texture and vertical lines to break up your outline when you’re sitting against a tree, but it’s not your typical sticks and leaves camo pattern either. You can throw this on for casual scouting trips (or serious hunts), and then show up at your kid’s track meet without your shirt screaming “I’m a turkey hunter.” Because sometimes, I like to keep a low profile even after I’ve left the woods. —Alex Robinson

Full Voormi Blowdown Kit

Best for Snow: TrueTimber Tundra

Key Features 

• Clean white background with a brown-gray textured overlay

Turkey hunting in the snow? You betcha. In northern states with early turkey openers (like my home state of Minnesota), it’s not uncommon to have a few inches of snow during the first week of the season. Plus, there are plenty of fall and winter turkey seasons around the country that get snowy. If you wear your typical bright green turkey camo in the flat-gray, snow-covered woods, gobblers will pick you out well before they get into shotgun range. TrueTimber’s Tundra pattern is a perfect option. With a little gray-brown texture over the white background, you’ll melt right into the tree you’re sitting against. —Alex Robinson

Full TrueTimber Tundra Kit

How to Choose the Best Camo for Turkey Hunting

When I first entered the turkey woods in the 1980s, I was garbed in some old Army camo my dad had salvaged from a military surplus bin. Jim Crumley’s famous TreBark camo had only been out for a couple of years. TreBark, the first camo pattern designed specifically for hunting, appeared in Cabela’s 1983 fall catalog.

Today, there are hundreds of camo patterns for hunting that line physical and virtual shopping racks. Most fall into two main categories – stick leaf and abstract.

Stick leaf camo uses realistic images of leaves, sticks, limbs, and bark to help you blend into the natural environment. It can be highly effective, especially for hunting animals with high visual acuity such as turkeys and waterfowl. However, the pattern should match the natural vegetation in your hunting area. Examples include Realtree Edge and Mossy Oak Obsession. 

Rather than using lifelike bark and foliage images, abstract camo uses patterns in earth-tone and green color schemes to break up the human outline against the environment. Examples include Sitka Optifade, TrueTimber Strata, and First Lite Fusion.

Because turkeys see colors vividly, finding the right color camo can be even more important than the pattern. You want the colors to match the habitat you’re hunting. If it’s early spring and the woods aren’t green yet, something drab and brown like Mossy Oak Bottomland is a good idea. If everything is awash in emerald, Sitka Optifade Cover is an excellent option. Since foliage tends to change much quicker during spring, it’s wise to have a few options so that you can blend in naturally, no matter the conditions.

FAQs

Final Thoughts on the Best Camo for Turkey Hunting

Due to their wary nature and phenomenal eyesight, wild turkeys are challenging critters to hunt. They pick up on movement at long distances and can spook at the drop of a hat when something doesn’t seem quite right. Even though modern ammo and optics have helped hunters knock down birds that hang up beyond 50 yards, there are situations when turkeys end up in halitosis range before you can react. The best camo for turkey hunting will still help you stay hidden even when that happens. Then all you have to do is sit still and pull the trigger.