Show Filters

A ghillie suit, yowie suit, or camo tent is a type of camouflage clothing designed to resemble heavy foliage. Typically, it is a net or cloth garment covered in loose strips of cloth or twine, sometimes made to look like leaves and twigs, and optionally augmented with scraps of foliage from the area.

Snipers and hunters may wear a ghillie suit to blend into their surroundings and conceal themselves from enemies or targets. The suit gives the wearer's outline a three-dimensional breakup, rather than a linear one. When manufactured correctly, the suit will move in the wind in the same way as surrounding foliage.

The name was derived from gille, the Scottish Gaelic for "servant" or a "lad", in English especially used to refer to those assisting in deer hunting, deer stalking or fly fishing expeditions in the Scottish Highlands.
 
The ghillie suit was developed by Scottish gamekeepers as a portable hunting blind. Lovat Scouts, a Scottish Highland regiment formed by the British Army during the Second Boer War, is the first known military unit to use ghillie suits. In 1916, Lovat Scouts went on to become the British Army's first sniper unit.

The Australian Army sniper's outfits are nicknamed "yowies", named for their resemblance to the Yowie, an unidentified hominid similar to the Yeti which is reputed to live in the Australian wilderness.