Poland: Stamps

Many years ago when I was working in hunting camps in Northern British Columbia and the Yukon, horse fly's were always a major problem. 

As you can imagine the toilets was nothing more then a hut with a hole but most of the time it was just a patch of bear ground. Many bites happen during those few minutes.

We had horses in the camp as it was the main mode of transport so plenty of horse fly's, we would light what we called smudge fires, this was just a low temp fire with plenty of wet grass and anything else that would produce heavy smoke . The horses would stand right over the fire to get relief from the fly's right to the point of getting burns.

As we were young guys we came up with many novel ways to combat the fly's. One chap would catch a horse fly and impale him with a toothpick then take a piece of the horse tail and tie the strand of hair to the tooth pick and then tie it to his finger. This really worked seemed to act as a warning beacon to the other fly's stay clear.

Another thing we would do is take the chain oil for the chainsaws and coat out arms with the oil. Now picture a crew of guys working in the bush for up to 60 days at a time the only means of washing was in the river. We would not use soap as the sent would attract bugs so it was nothing more then a swim and wash of the heavy gunk . On one trip I seemed to have left my sleeping bag behind and had to use the horse blankets to sleep in. Lucky that was only for 2 weeks, each night I would try and dry out the horse sweat and then wrap myself up in wet damp blankets. During those 2 weeks I had more bites that I can count.

Sorry about the rant but I have no love for them creatures.