Bugged Out

Summer Camp has to be one of the worst time of the year to go camping because of bugs. Being stuck out in the heat and being eaten up my mosquitoes, ticks, chiggers, and horse flies is never fun. This past summer camp experience my troop tried several new methods of bug control. I’ll go over the traditional methods that work well and then the experimental.

Bug Spray – I bet you didn’t expect to see this one. I’m not a terribly big fan of standard bug spray. Ruins watches, leave you sticky, and is a hassle to keep up with. I carry it and put it on my boots only. I use the squirt bottle kind. The aerosol version can be used upside down, but the squirt is more environmentally safe in the disposal of the bottle.

Skin So Soft - When I was in scouts, this was one of those rumor repellants. Now it’s a little more main stream. It’s deet free and relatively affordable. I had one adult who had really good results this at camp.

Sulfur Water – Camp Orr has some awesome tasting water. I drank about 4 Nalgene bottles of sulfur water and a little bug spray on the boots and my bug bites were minimal.

I had one tick bite the first day, but after that I had three chiggers and no mosquitoes, horse flies or other bugs. Taste is bad, but it won’t kill you.

Here are the two big experimental methods that leaders and boys had tried.

Cow Ear Tags – I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this one. You have to wash your hands a good long time due to the chemicals in the tags. Had one leader and one boy try these by putting them on their boots and they seemed to have really good luck with them. I’m probably not going to mess them, but if you’re brave and resistant to chemicals go for it.

Flea Collars – I had two boys try this and they didn’t have issues at all. They put them around their ankles and around a belt loop or two. These seem a lot safer than the cow tags. I’m definitely going to try this one out at my next campout.

So there you go! I’m going to try to post more often. I have a new design in the works that is looking kinda good.