Defeating the Deer Fly

[Jafo]

If you have ever camped up in the Adirondacks in the summertime, then you have definitely met the Deer Fly. It is related to the common horsefly and I can tell you first hand that they are the most miserable creature in the woods. They are relentless. Even black flies are not this ferocious. With the dark spots on their wings, and their painful bite, it isn't hard to identify them:



I had read some literature by Dr. Russell Mizell about a deer fly trap he designed which is basically a blue bucket covered with a sticky substance. The flies are attracted to the blue over any other color, especially when it is in motion. He surmised that a blue solo cup attached to your hat would work just as well.

As much as I like science, I was not going to be seen walking around with a buzzing blue solo cup on my head, so I decided to buy a blue hardhat instead. A quick shopping search at Amazon and I found this one for $6.40:



I then purchased some Tanglefoot Tangle-Trap sticky coating:



My sons and I went up to our yurt in the Adirondacks last weekend and we had a bunch of wood to cut from trees that have either fallen down or were leftover from logging. I wore the hardhat during our first couple hours and here is the video of the result:

How to beat deer flies.mp4

It was neat to watch them work. First the flies would circle your head like they always do before they attack, and then all of a sudden they would be gone. You knew they just landed on your hat lol!

By the end of the day, the entire hat was covered. We were joking that my afro was about to fly away if I didn't hang on to it. Another thing we noticed is that only one of us had to wear the hat. We were sitting around a small camp fire at a neighboring camp (my cousins) and the deer flies that had been mauling them all day stopped and just swirled around my hat leaving everyone else alone. When I would take the hat off and set it down, they would go back to biting us.

I am thinking an old style batting helmet or a catchers helmet may also work, but they are usually much more expensive than a hard hat, though a bit more stylish.