Paul,
You're correctly describing emissivity
which is "the measure of an object's ability to emit infrared energy. Emitted energy indicates the temperature of the object. Emissivity can have a value from 0 (shiny mirror) to 1.0 (blackbody). Most organic, painted, or oxidized surfaces have emissivity values close to 0.95." [from Raytec site]
Interestingly enough the Infrared temp sensor that Jay pointed out in in post #1 does have a setting to compensate for surface emissivity whilst my high buck temp guns don't.

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