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I apologize if this belongs elsewhere - I'm posting in the hiking thread because you folks seem like you would have experience with this problem. I adopted a dog last year in fall, and so I've been outside more than I've ever been in my entire life. Which means that now that bug season has started, well. Help? I live in Upstate NY, in a rural area - my backyard is a swamp, so we're usually swarmed with mosquitos and other critters. I can handle mosquitos! But walking my dog multiple times daily means I run right into swarms of gnats, noseeums, and other horrible, horrible things that want to be close to me. Google is giving me lots of conflicting advice - smoke cigars, use a net, use this chemical, etc - and I trust goons over google. So. How do you hikers handle these bugs?
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May 2, 2018 11:34
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I just use a high concentration DEET spray like Off! Deep Woods. Maybe I'm dumb though, who knows?
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May 3, 2018 07:59
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DEET for skin (higher concentrations work better but may also do bad things to synthetic fibers or plastic things you touch). Permethrin for clothes. Consider insect shield clothing (which is just a very persistent permethrin treatment), either by buying clothes already treated with it or sending in your existing clothing to be treated. Obviously long sleeves and long pants that cover your skin are helpful. Denser fabrics like higher denier nylon will prevent mosquitoes from biting you through clothes whereas thinner cotton or polyester clothing often won't. For extreme bug pressure head nets are indispensable but honestly if things are that bad maybe just move. DEET will actively repel mosquitoes and some other bugs but not all. Permethrin doesn't have much of a repellent effect but it is basically nerve agent for bugs and will kill the poo poo out of any insect on contact and prevent mosquitoes from trying to bite through clothing. You are not supposed to apply permethrin to your skin, although their are prescription topical permethrin treatments so it's not like you are gonna die if it gets on you. You can apply DEET to clothing but, again, at higher concentrations it can damage some fabrics. Be very careful applying permethrin around cats, if applicable. It is extremely toxic to cats until it dries, after which it is completely safe (dogs aren't nearly as sensitive to it and its the same stuff used in a lot of their flea treatments). Be sure to do tick checks after an outing if needed. If you remove ticks within the first several hours you are much less likely to catch anything from them. Mosquitoes in some regions seem to be developing resistance to permethrin, but this is mostly an issue in warmer climates where mosquitoes can survive the winter and have more opportunities to pass down resistance genes. Picardin also works OK as a mosquito repellent, but permethrin is uniquely effective for its ability to just straight up kill any bugs that aren't deterred by repellents and land on clothing.
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May 3, 2018 09:09
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Walk faster
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May 3, 2018 20:44
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