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I read somewhere that the Karankawa Indians who used to inhabit the TexasGulf Coast used some concoctions containing Alligator Fat as a repellant. Can you imagine being next to naked in mosquito country? Seems like it would attract bugs. I don't particulary believe it worked to well until it got rancid. Actually I find it hard to believe it worked at all. Then it probably had that "garlic" effect where it repelled everything and everyone. But then you use what's available. These naked Indians didn't just stroll on down to the neighborhood drug store and buy some repellant with Deets in it.
 
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Some years back a group of us went up to a friend's land right on the Itchitucknee River. It was still a sort of old Florida at that time. No electricity on the property, bad dirt roads to get to it, and really overgrown. I was wearing canvas jungle boots and cargo pocket utilities trousers tied off at the ankle with a wrap of duct tape. Everyone else was wearing shorts and flip-flops. The only time I came out of my set-up was to go swimming and even then I got right back into them as soon as I could. Everyone was ragging on me. But it wasn't a day or two after getting home that everyone except me had a serious case of red bugs. I never attended Jungle Warfare School, but I know a lot of guys who did. And I listened to their advice.
 
I spend all summer in the northwoods of Wisconsin, my range is butt up next to a swamp. We have skeeters so big they've been known to carry off the smaller scouts, and there's a couple of them can wrestle a decent sized Scoutmaster to his knees.

The best cure I've found is no cure at all. Use 100% unscented soaps, shampoos, and anti-perspirant. Cloths get washed in unscented detergent, none of them froofy dryer sheets either.

Once the scent is gone from clothing, body, and what little hair there's left, the skeeters don't bother me at all, maybe three or four bites for the whole summer.

Now, black flies and deer flies... nothing short of new-clear weapons keep them darlins away.

vic
The big attraction for mosquitoes is CO2. It comes from living animals
and rings the dinner bell for them. They will always be around, well, as long as you are breathing, which does bring up one possible cure.....but not a very nice one... None of the commercial products seems to work for me for more than an hour or so. They all seem to work about the same.
 
Decades ago when I spent a summer working in and around Waycross Georgia - I'm also a native Georgian - the guys and I would fill up our canteens from a spigot outside. The first one to turn the knob had to step back because of the alien creatures that came pouring out for several seconds before fresh water started. And I DO mean alien as in science fiction. Have no idea what all those huge bugs were but none looked friendly. Of course we're talking about Georgia and South Georgia specifically. I've seen spiders so large and rough looking that while they were climbing fence wire they made it sag.
 

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