Prevention of horsefly bites ?
- Thread starter mikehill
- Start date
It when it swells so much that the skin goes yellowish with fluid, and then that starts seeping out and sort of crystallises...and if it gets you on a joint, then it's totally immobilised. Had one at the very crease of the back of my knee once, couldn't walk for a fortnight. That was fun, not
Scariest one was on the front of my throat. When it started to swell inside, and my heart felt like I had a bird trapped in my chest, that was when I started to worry a little.
Sorry, not trying to one up; I hope things settle very quickly indeed for you. The almost unbearable itch is I think the worst of it.
Blimey. That sounds horrendous. And I don’t much like the sound of Toddy’s experiences either.
@mikehill if you want PM me your details and I will send you over a bottle of bug spray from Thailand. Its what the locals were using and worked for us, we brought a few bottles back. I use it all the time while camping and out on the bike. You're welcome to try it?
Soffell - Mosquito repellent
Soffell - Mosquito repellent
Not a repellent, I have generally not needed one, but I have seen that horse flies are attracted by darker colours. Walking with other folk wearing Fjallraven trousers that had dark brown and khaki panels, it was the dark reinforced areas that were absolutely mobbed by flies. Similarly, my brown hat proved much more attractive than the rest of my light-stone clad self.
Slightly off horseflies but be careful what you use to wash outdoor clothes, tensids and DWR don't mix well at all.
I suspect that horseflies' eyes spectral range might differ from human quite a lot.
Has anyone trie zebra stripes, they apparently confuse some flies so much that they don't know where to land and bite the beast.
Regarding zebra stripes...It is well known that Tsetse flies are attracted to large, dark, warm objects. I have read an anecdote of a man with much bush experience using a zebra hide object (bag maybe) in his tent as a focal point for flies, any that got in would gravitate to the bag and be easier to squash. Pure white hides would probably attract fewer flies than stripes, but flies are not the only thing zebra have to worry about biting them! Being all white might work better for flies, but less well for lions! The effect of stripes is at least in part a cumulative one, where a herd of striped animals really confuse anything looking to single out a single shape.
I tried the colour clothing thing. To be honest I didn't notice any difference at all.
My working clothing is usually fairly natural in materials and colours; think more the Autumnal range of greens, rusts, tans, but I deliberately bought pale fawns, creams, beige coloured clothing to try.
I was on a three week dig in the middle of Summer, and it was utterly scorching. We were working beside a flooded henge, with a double ring ditch. The centre never dried out, and was used in Winter time as a curling pond. The pond was a heaving with life, and masses of insects, and it was on a dairy farm.
Every single one of us got bitten that year, really badly bitten. It didn't matter whether I wore the dark clothing or the light, I got bitten just as often and as miserably.
I think the insects prefer to land on dark as part of their sneaking around, but that doesn't mean that they're not there just because we don't notice them. They happily rest on the ground at your feet, on the tree/grass/bush beside you, on your spade and bucket, they'll just sleekity sneak in under the radar and get you anyway.
It was an SSSi, so no insecticides. I have never been so tempted in my life to find the fly spray.
My working clothing is usually fairly natural in materials and colours; think more the Autumnal range of greens, rusts, tans, but I deliberately bought pale fawns, creams, beige coloured clothing to try.
I was on a three week dig in the middle of Summer, and it was utterly scorching. We were working beside a flooded henge, with a double ring ditch. The centre never dried out, and was used in Winter time as a curling pond. The pond was a heaving with life, and masses of insects, and it was on a dairy farm.
Every single one of us got bitten that year, really badly bitten. It didn't matter whether I wore the dark clothing or the light, I got bitten just as often and as miserably.
I think the insects prefer to land on dark as part of their sneaking around, but that doesn't mean that they're not there just because we don't notice them. They happily rest on the ground at your feet, on the tree/grass/bush beside you, on your spade and bucket, they'll just sleekity sneak in under the radar and get you anyway.
It was an SSSi, so no insecticides. I have never been so tempted in my life to find the fly spray.
One play with a few thoughts, depending on the visual system of horseflies there might exist a colouring system, possibly in the UV, that would have the contrast required for dazzling but not look totally strange to humans. The tiger stripe camos would be something I would test first, maybe adding the the UV to that. (Funny, somehow looking like a tiger feels better than looking like a zebra.)
I must admit they do look kind of special but then again a tiger striped one might look awsome.
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