I personally think it just depends on where you happen to be hiking. If there are a lot of people on the trail your on and there isn't a good spot to hide well off of the trail, then yeah, I'd do a little hiding or camo job of some sort on your gear.

But like others have already said, the farther back you are in the middle of nowhere, the less likely you are to have to worry about theft. I usually just look at it as I had to carry all of that in, they aren't going to probably want to haul it all out knowing I might be around or back soon, and can find them a lot faster with nothing on me than they can carry my stuff out. Plus anybody back that far tend to be pretty decent people in my own experiences and aren't ones for stealing.