It’s always wise to give the enemy a target for his wrath, John Plaster (The Ultimate Sniper) says — a false position to take the counterfire that’s certain to come:
The enemy usually will have a fair idea of where your shot originated, probably to within 20 or 30 degrees. Depending on how terrain and weather affect your muzzle blast, he’ll likely guess your distance to within 100 or 200 yards. Within such a sector, he’ll instantly shoot up any obvious sniper hide, hence my repeated warnings about being inconspicuous.
But the corollary to blending in is to ensure there’s something else nearby that will divert his fire away from you. Capt. H.W. McBride, the World War I sniper, usually located his hide beside or below a natural dummy position. He wrote at length of a barn that the Germans repeatedly blasted, but it was well above and to his rear. The only advice I add is to make sure you’re not too close or a long or short round might hit you.
If there’s no natural dummy position, you must construct one, which doesn’t need to be very elaborate. Just a few straight lines in the midst of foliage can do the trick, such as stacking a few logs or scraping together an ankle-high berm. And recognize a long-known aspect of deception: it’s far easier to reinforce what your opponent thinks already than it is to get him thinking something entirely different.
Recall, too, that there’s nothing like a bit of movement to attract attention. During World War II, a Japanese sniper would jerk a distant bush with a string to diver fire, a tactic that caused his opponents not to cooly conclude a bush was moving but to declare excitedly, “There he is!” On a more subtle level, Captain McBride often tied a piece of red closth to nearby barbed wire because it invariably drew German observers’ attention away from his hide.
Anticipate how the enemy will view your area, how he will scan it, what he’ll see. And remember that, psychologically, he needs the gratification of returning your fire.