"Hunting Shirt Colors Suggestions" Topic

I have nearly picked out all the colors I want for my militia in hunting shirts. However, there are still a few I am not exactly sure what I want to go with. Please note that the paint jobs are still quite rough as I am still determine the basic colors for everything.

From left to right:

1)drab brown, 2) buff shirt/dark gray trousers, 3) blue with red trim, 4) gray shirt/buff trousers, 5) green shirt/white trousers, 6) white shirt/blue with red trim trousers, 7) dark green shirt/tan trousers, 8) light blue shirt, brown with dark brown trim, 9) tan, 10) buff 11) white 12) light purple (lavender I guess) shirt/white trousers

Two Questions:
Is there anyone colors that I'm way off base for hunting shirts or trousers?

Is there any common colors for hunting shirts that I am missing? I purposely left out red as these men have been told that color might get them shot when moving through the woods. Also, I know black seems to be a favored color, but I don't know how much I like it for these models. I might go with one in German Gray as it is very dark but not quite black.

I always thought Henry Fonda looked rather dapper in his hunting shirt.

link

I don't know about the light blue but I have seen plates of all the others. Including the "lavender", which is likely a faded red.

Basically, cheap homespun. I go with a craft paint like Old Parchment, and then The Dip.

I don't think any look unlikely. If you are satisfied with the choices then you're good to go.

The shirts were *heavy* homespun fabric, they were supposed to shed rain and stand up to sticker-bushes.

Un-dyed cloth was probably most common, and would be off-white to tan to grey to dark greasy grey or brown, depending on how old and dirty the garment had become.

The cloth *could* sometimes be bleached to a fairly light off-white, and *could* be dyed, mostly with cheap, locally available dye-stuffs that gave subdued shades of grey, brown or green and that faded quickly.

Somebody told me once that the backwoodsmen used purple berries to get that lavender shade, and I can't say he was wrong. I've seen documentation of shirts made up in light blue cloth for one particular company.

Black dye from black walnut hulls was in pretty common use, but this did not yield a solid black, it was more of a rusty dark grey to begin with, and it faded lighter in use.

Wouldn't they all be safety orange…? :-)

Nice academic article on hunting shirts: link
Sadly not a word about color.

I keep reading that hunting shirts were linen which could be dyed, but there's little written about what colors would be chosen.

A Google Book search turned up this quote from "The Revolutionary War" by Charles Patrick Neimeyer:

The men dyed these shirts a variety of colors ranging from brown, white, yellow, blue, to even purple. However, the bleached of off-white color was generally favored by many soldiers.

This is in the context of Washington's general orders specifying that Continental soldiers wear hunting shirts, so strictly speaking applies only to the AWI period.

- Ix

I used Osage Orange to dye my reenactor hunting shirt. It produced a rather bright yellow. I then gave it a tea dye to darken it a bit. Quite satisfied with that though I don't think it would be a common formula, even if Osage Orange is easily obtained. (At least in the Midwest.)

I have quite a few figures in hunting shirts for my 1811 Tippacanoe battle militia. I looked up examples of militia reenactor units on the web. ''Militia uniforms 1812" will find you quite a few examples. Also look up Tippacanoe uniforms . All realistic hunting shirt shades.

Zippy: Poke berries! Yuh cain't eat'em--y'all'll "dye"!

Question – exactly where are these militia supposed to be from? Most militia probably wore civilian clothing, not hunting frocks.

They probably should look like this:

link

Here are some others, including hunting frocks

1nj.org/photo.html

Why wouldn't these woodsmen decide to use rough brown, grey, and green stains obtained from nuts, berries, and plants to produce a sort of blotchy, primitive woodland camouflage? I'm surprised they didn't invent these modern patterns and shades.

I want to thank everyone who posted here as I am quite new to any kind of historical gaming past the 20th century. While I did accomplish many internet searches for any pictures and descriptions of these clothes, I could never be sure if I was following the correct path or being led down the same wrong one as others.

That is not to say I'm too hung up on complete historical accuracy and don't mind a little Hollywood-fication of my troops. However, I didn't want to get too far down that rabbit hole if I could avoid it. My hopes was for someone with a casual interest in the American Revolution to go, "Oh, those must be militia in hunting shirts at a glance."

I have added a golden yellow color and dark gray into the colors. @dBerczerk I did add a dark blue one too. Can't say he looks like Henry Fonda though.

@historygamer
I intend these to just be general purpose militia for Black Powder games and perhaps Musket and Tomahawk (assuming MaT supports AWI). I bought the Warlord Games (featuring Wargames Factory Miniatures) Starter Box. At the moment, I don't have plans to pick up more so I wanted to cast the widest net to cover any given time and place. Also, I wanted to try and show all the differing colors men wore in the era.

Understand that the above picture is only representative of most of my hunting shirt militia models and a fraction (12/40's to be exact) of my militia models. Additionally, I have 8 more Continental Regulars that I am considering modeling as militia to give me two full units. The problem is most of what I have left are short coat, light infantry figures which seem oddly dressed for militia to me, but I don't know.

Probably because the linen shirt was so dirty and grimy they didn't have to.

Yeah, that uniform would be kind of odd for militia.

exactly where are these militia supposed to be from?

Brown's force, which I believe those re-enactors represent HG, were composed of New England militia. Hunting shirts would have been more common among militia raised further south and west. While I do have a few companies of exclusively hunting shirt militia, it would probably be more accurate to mix in figures wearing other civilian attire with your hunting shirt figures.

For painting ideas you may want to check out Troiani's views of Huck's Defeat and Kings Mountain.

I've read somewhere that the Maryland companies raised at one point all had hunting shirts dyed differently per company. The only one in detail that I've read about was the 4th, and they went with purple.

I agree with Bill N. Hunting shirts would be more common among militia on the frontier, also further north in New York and Maine as well as the Kentucky, Tennessee and Carolina borders.

Militiamen would usually wear their personal clothing, so their hunting shirts would be a variety of colors and cuts, not very uniform, and regular civilian coats could also be worn in the same unit.

On the other hand, a Continental regiment that was issued hunting shirts would probably get a batch from the quartermaster that was made up at one time from the same cloth, and would look fairly uniform in style and color, probably off-white, at least when new.

On the third hand, Kiefer is also correct that some militia and volunteer companies and battalions had uniform hunting shirts. And it's also true that Continentals' clothing could wear down into a very ragged mix of styles.

In any event, no matter what color you choose, The Dip always brings out the details on fringe and straps.

We did do an article on Patriot uniforms including frock shirts in time portal passages any years ago.