HELIKON-TEX offer you an old classic, the “Duck Hunter Camouflage”. Originally developed in 1942 as a standard camouflage pattern for US military forces, “frog skin” camo served mostly with the US Marines in the Pacific Theater. Although it was used for a while by some US Army combat units in Europe during the Normandy invasion, it was rather quickly withdrawn from service and replaced with the standard OD green uniforms because it was too often getting confused with the spotty camo uniforms worn by the Waffen-SS soldiers of the Third Reich.

Post-War the more brown dominant version of the pattern became popular with duck hunters, and thus the pattern’s more common nickname of “Duck Hunter” became popular. In the 1960’s Duck Hunter camouflage uniforms and hats also became very popular with US Army Special Forces advisors and US Navy SEAL commandos fighting in Vietnam.

Many different styles of non-standard fatigue sets, ‘boonie’ hats, patrol caps, and even berets were worn by US special operations forces in Vietnam. Some sourced from commercial suppliers in the US, and some were produced by local Vietnamese tailors. The paramilitary South Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Group (CIDG) also made wide use of the pattern as part of its standard equipment – where it picked up another nickname “Beo Gam” (Vietnamese for ‘leopard’).

Frogskin / Duck Hunter camo saw widespread international military and para-military use from the 1950’s up to the 1980’s, and has continued to also enjoy popularity among American duck hunters and urban hipsters right up to modern times. Now perhaps blurring the lines between camo hipster and retro tacticool is the global Polish brand HELIKON-TEX with their new Duck Hunter camo line. First teased at the IWA trade show back in March, their full line-up of Duck Hunter is now available – and there’s enough to deck yourself out from head to toe (almost).

The HELIKON-TEX Duck Hunter Camo Collection contains a great range of products for shooters, wanderers, hipsters, and everyone in-between – including:

and much more e at HELIKON-TEX

HELIKON-TEX online

A big thank you to our friends from STRIKEHOLD for this post.