Bugs and your tent...

[Bugler Don]

I was wondering what methods are used to help keep bugs and other pests out of your tents at reenactments. If there is one thing I hate, it is sharing a tent with an uninvited insects. :D

[huntdaw]

Limit yourself to winter events. That should do it. Other than that, you just live and cope the best you can with it - they did.

[Swag]

at least you sleep under a tent :) Start campaigning you get to spoon with all sorts of bugs and beasties. Really as the previous poster stated you have to just deal with it. You can always take garlic pills, helps to keep bugs away, and people as well; its natural and you don't get deet all over your gear.

[Company C, 9th KY]

I haven't done it myself but I've heard about it, the day before the event while they're setting up camp, gents would spray the area where their tents will be pitched with something like "yard guard". Critters don't bother me that much to worry about doing that. Although, ticks and chiggers do make one think a little! :lol:

Pvt. Kirk

[Bugler Don]

Ticks are main thing I want to keep away, but I figured I'd see if anyone had a special method to keep bugs away. I don't want to go through an event covered in bug bites, that plus the wool would make one itchy time, haha.:D

[Swag]

Also before an event you may want to just rub your body down with deet free bug lotion, not spray but lotion. Usually have ones with spf and what not in them, but usually this will help keep the creepy crawlers away during the course of the weekend; or at least keep them at a minimum. I'll do this just to make sure I don't get any ticks.

[David Meister]

to keep mosquitoes away rub some dry lye soap on your exposed skin if you're not too sensitive. My personal method is I smoke my pipe in my tent and that tends to keep the bugs away.

[harley_davis]

I have been told that if ya chew on a hunk of cake yeast prior to an event, the bugs dont pester you near so much. Havent tried it yet, cant get past chewin' on the stuff. Let me know if it works. As previous poster said, good load of tobacco in your pipe, some green wood on your fire helps. Helps make your sack coat a bit more aromatic and gives ya a headache, then ya dont notice the bugs so much.
Respectfully,

[M.Metz]

The only bugs that has ever bugged me was the overwhelming amount of grass-hoppers at Cedar Creek during the Manassas reenactment two years ago.

[7thNJcoA]

Don, The answer is sit around the Fire lol once you leave its open season Most of our Events are not that bad you wont mind it to much. Youll be fine just keep tootin your horn! Have flaps on the bottom of your tent will help a little but they are on the ground before you are. Roll yourself up in a blanket and pray the bed bugs arent biting!

[Bugler Don]

I know I just felt like seeing what a lot of people do. Plus if I start blowin the bugle during the night to chase off bugs, I may be killed by some of you!

[Dave Myrick]

Join the cavalry an sleep near the picket line. Bugs love horses and horse poo. Keeping your drawers tucked into your socks and wearing your shirt tucked into your trousers and not your drawers will go a long way to keeping them out of your nether regions. Keeping your sleeves rolled down and minimizing exposed skin also helps tremendously.
Dave

[rebel yell]

What I do is stick my bayonet in the ground at my head, and drape the blanket over it. But I don't use a tent though...;)

[commancherro]

Garlic tablets Gentlemen. Not only will they keep you in good health, but ticks, skeeters, and Vampires will avoid you.
The Garlic tablets do work very well on keeping off little buggers that bite. Those and Deet, you should be bug free.

Maurice

[31stWisconsin]

Wow, some of you really go all out. All I do is make sure I have no bare skin exposed, usually by draping my blouse or coat over my face and cover my midsection with a wool blanket.

I sleep in a shelter half.

[flattop32355]

When sleeping without tentage, I pull my sleeping cap down over my ears and pull the wool blanket up over my head. It keeps the skeeters away quite well. As for ticks, well, you just pick 'em off as they try to hitch hike. Snakes, ants, millipedes, etc. are dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

After all, we are invading their space.....

[Pvt Schnapps]

"Not all spiders are poisonous. Most just want to be friends."

[TexConfederate]

at least you sleep under a tent :) Start campaigning you get to spoon with all sorts of bugs and beasties. Really as the previous poster stated you have to just deal with it. You can always take garlic pills, helps to keep bugs away, and people as well; its natural and you don't get deet all over your gear.


May I respectfully suggest, that unless you want to end up with Lyme Disease, which I contracted while reenacting, then you had better use something with DEET.

Garlic Pills will NOT keep ticks away.

[BigDuke634]

Sleep in the truck with the windows rolled up. No ticks and very few skeeters! Or, hang a "bugs keep out!" sign on the tent. :D Seriously though, garlic does work, although you need to start taking it well before an event. When you can smell it coming through your pores. you're good to go. At one event, some of the others in the unit were having problems with ants during the night. I had spilled some coffee grounds in my tent that afternoon, and wasn't bothered by them at all. Maybe that bears looking into.

[Evan3MD]

Hmmm - I never had much trouble with bugs - in fact this whole season I've only encountered 3 ticks, none of which have bitten.

Anyways, I don't do anything special. I just keep my Drawers tucked into my socks, sleep on a ground cloth and cover myself with a blanket or shelter half (I rarely set up a shebang).

I reckon the best thing you can do is make sure your exposed parts are covered. I learned that the hard way at a LH at the C&O Canal in the summer, it was quite warm out so I decided to sleep on my blanket instead of under it and I took my Sack Coat off - big mistake. Them skeeters were biting everywhere, through my socks - through my shirt, on my hands, ect.

[Kevin O'Beirne]

I was wondering what methods are used to help keep bugs and other pests out of your tents at reenactments.

Personally, if I don't want bugs in the tent, I leave the tent (shelter half) folded up inside my blanket roll and sleep outdoors without it.

[flattop32355]

Personally, if I don't want bugs in the tent, I leave the tent (shelter half) folded up inside my blanket roll and sleep outdoors without it.

Ah....Humor! AR,AR,AR,AR,AR!!!!

[MBond057]

Don,

I live in the desert.

How do you keep out the scorpions? I do miss the little east coast insects. They seem harmless now that I have seen a few scorpions in camp. :)

[Bugler Don]

Don,

I live in the desert.

How do you keep out the scorpions? I do miss the little east coast insects. They seem harmless now that I have seen a few scorpions in camp. :)

Scorpions, now that could make it interesting!:p

[7thNJcoA]

when I was in Iraq the scorpions would crawl in our boots I used to tel my Marines all the time shake out ur boots before you put em on or you may be in for a shock literaly! Some scorpion stings only feel like an electric shock others are very poisionus wanna find out which is which?

[Kevin O'Beirne]

Ah....Humor! AR,AR,AR,AR,AR!!!!

Where's the joke?

[Kevin O'Beirne]

How do you keep out the scorpions? I do miss the little east coast insects. They seem harmless now that I have seen a few scorpions in camp. :)

Same way ya keep out the bugs. They have scorpions--admittedly they're smaller than the desert variety--in the South. I personaly saw 'em at Pickett's Mill 2004, near Dallas, Georgia. My comrade screamed like a little girl when he discovered one on his blanket on Sunday morning. I was awakened by the shriek.

[Evan3MD]

Where's the joke?


I guess you can't have bugs in your tent if you don't set it up

[toptimlrd]

Same way ya keep out the bugs. They have scorpions--admittedly they're smaller than the desert variety--in the South. I personaly saw 'em at Pickett's Mill 2004, near Dallas, Georgia. My comrade screamed like a little girl when he discovered one on his blanket on Sunday morning. I was awakened by the shriek.


Smaller yes, but those suckers sting like the dickens. I gre up near there and will beback for New Hpe Church this year. Wll be checking for icks and scorpions regularly. Of course worse than both of thes are the chiggers or red bugs.

[reb64]

I read somewhere some hardcores use real lice etc. for that period effect. sounds gastly. i wouldn't want to be authentic in this respect and whatever farby method works so be it. but doesn't garlic tabs also make you smell bad? i like koreans, but while in korea some of those hardcore garlic users were unbearable.

[M.Metz]

And we don' already smell bad in our wet wool and sweaty shirts that the closing thing to seeing a cleaning is in the rain?? :)

[Kevin O'Beirne]

I read somewhere some hardcores use real lice etc. for that period effect. sounds gastly. i wouldn't want to be authentic in this respect and whatever farby method works so be it.

(sigh) Another myth trotted out every so often. Urban legend, actually. I've been among probably the most 'hardcore' in the hobby for eight years and I've never seen or heard of anyone fast (diet) for "the starved look" (quite the opposite, actually), or happily sleep in the rain without shelter, or get lice, or eat rancid meat, or ... ah heck, you all know the urban legends and this post sure won't change how anyone subscribes to those urban legends.

[PVT.THIB]

If you've ever experienced the fire ants in South Louisiana, those can sting the dickens out of you. Having grew up there, I had many an encounter!
Thanks,
Jason Thibodeaux
Independent Rifles

[Parault]

Fire ants......You haven't lived until you find out you placed your groundcloth above their front door. OUCH !!!

[tompritchett]

Fire ants......You haven't lived until you find out you placed your groundcloth above their front door. OUCH !!!

I can't find it now but I remember William Fletcher of the 4rth Texas writing about he, and possibly a pard, ended up setting up for the night on top of a nest of ground hornets.

[RJSamp]

The good news about fire ants is that they eat chiggers.....

Tablespoonful of vinegar daily.
2 garlic tablets daily (get the kind that doesn't make you stink, read the label).
DEET/Deep Woods off PRN

Before you leave your car for the weekend, spray some anti tick spray on your clothes cuffs, waist, and neck....(not on your skin, on the clothes).

Always shake out your brogans before putting them on....never put your hands into something you can't see into.....

Keep covered up. Skeeters (even the tiny southern bayou types, up in Wisconsin and Minnesota they've been know to fly off with small children) can go through a shirt....but a shirt and a fatigue blouse with some deet around works well.

Smudge pots were used back then as a bug deterrent as well as lighting.

Anybody have a good story about sleeping with a rattlesnake for the night IN your sleeping bag?
We also put a circle of horse hair braid rope around our sleeping area...the Sioux say that the rattlers don't like crawling across it.....

We've got it easy compared to packing up into the Beartooth's, et al....rattlers and grizz.....trumps scorpions and brown recluse spiders anyday. And no you cannot neither outclimb nor outrun nor outswim nor outride a bear.....and they don't scare easy.

[BigDuke634]

RJ Ihave heard about snakes and a rope , I've also heard that using mothballs {not the cedar type} also keeps the snakes away.

[M.Metz]

(sigh) Another myth trotted out every so often. Urban legend, actually. I've been among probably the most 'hardcore' in the hobby for eight years and I've never seen or heard of anyone fast (diet) for "the starved look" (quite the opposite, actually), or happily sleep in the rain without shelter, or get lice, or eat rancid meat, or ... ah heck, you all know the urban legends and this post sure won't change how anyone subscribes to those urban legends.

Just like the myth a guy had his buddy shoot him in the leg a week before a reenactment only to have a field amputation that weekend?

[captain_kirk]

Way back in "68" while in the "Union Army", we were set upon by chiggers, ticks, mosquitos (the Minn. State Bird), no see ums, and a varity of other things that tried to make life miserable. If you are hard core, just tuff it out or roll throughly in horse manure. The flies will buzz but very seldom bite.
If not, flea collars worn around the ankles seem to discourage ticks and definitely keep the chigger away unless you sleep as I did one night in a honeysuckle patch. Around that time peroid,the unofficial bug repellant for the USMC was skin so soft. I have used it and it works to a certain degree except on biting deer flys. Also, if you can still find it, Cutter in the stick, for me, works for just about everything. The spray of liquid in not very effective.
Also, "groddy Ed" Johnson,in my platoon never seemed to bath, you could smell him at 20 yards if the wind was right, but he never seemed to be bothered by anything. I heard that he once held off an entire NVA regiment for two hours while the rest of the platoon withdrew to safer confines.

Kirk Fuller

[harley_davis]

Keep covered up. Skeeters (even the tiny southern bayou types, up in Wisconsin and Minnesota they've been know to fly off with small children) can go through a shirt....but a shirt and a fatigue blouse with some deet around works well.


It is true that up here in Minnesota the skeeters have indeed, been known to carry off younguns. The upside is that they are big enough to shoot and cook in place of saltpork. Makes a mighty tasty fillin twixt a couple peices of hard bread!!

Your humble (tongue in cheek) servant,

[Bushwhacker Bo]

Three things that I have used and proven through many years as a farmraised deer and turkey hunter:

1) Sevin Dust sprinkled over the area you set your tent over works very well.

2) AVON Skin-so-Soft... (smells like a bouquet of flowers and keeps ticks and chiggers and your pards away, although it does attract those girly-boys sometimes :rolleyes: )... works great and hides the sweaty wool smell.

3) Cedar chip animal bedding under your groundcloth if you are in an area for a longer period than a weekend and you can leave it behind afterwards. If you have to pick it up after, may want to just renew the sevin dust.

Bo

[Busterbuttonboy]

All
Ticks is are a grave concern and can be beat with garlic pills. Otherwise if your worried about bugs you might want to just start collecting baseball cards or something.
Drew Gruber

[tompritchett]

All
Ticks is are a grave concern

The thing about ticks is that you are just as likely to pick them up from moving through the brush as you are from sleeping on the ground.

[hendrickms24]

I have not gotten a tick in the field yet even with all the reenacting that I have done since 2002. I know I've been lucky! The last tick I got was last summer when I walked my son from my car to his Day camp. I had to walk under just one tree! You can get tricks anywhere. :x

[Bugler Don]

All
Ticks is are a grave concern and can be beat with garlic pills. Otherwise if your worried about bugs you might want to just start collecting baseball cards or something.
Drew Gruber

Once again, I started this thread not because I'm scared of bugs, because I'm not. I was just curious of what methods are used to keep your tent belonging to you.

[Charles Weathers]

Spend all day firing a cannon! :mrgreen: Seriously, you smell like sulphur and other chemicals that bugs hate. I have never had a problem. Standing close to the fire so you and your clothes become saturated with smoke also helps.

[vamick]

Spend all day firing a cannon! :mrgreen: Seriously, you smell like sulphur and other chemicals that bugs hate. I have never had a problem. Standing close to the fire so you and your clothes become saturated with smoke also helps.

Thats tha truff! all my pards smell like the 9th ring, the only thing we attract is the devil. which can be problematic whilst dancing!:razz:

[Poor Private]

What chases away pythons?? According to todays edition of USA Today the south is being invaded by pythons.

[tompritchett]

What chases away pythons??

Noisy people. I wonder if there is a breeding population in Arkansas yet.

[tompritchett]

Once again, I started this thread not because I'm scared of bugs, because I'm not. I was just curious of what methods are used to keep your tent belonging to you.

Unless you are camping in the middle of the bushes or trees, I would not worry about the ticks too much. There are other critters of more concern. For example, in the South I would think twice about picking up wood from a year old wood supply at night as certain not so nice spiders like to hide in such places and do not like to get disturbed. For those of you that reenact in the Land Between the Lakes, I can remember back in the late 70's & early 80's when the deer tick population exploded (I hope it is down now). Certain areas of the country, you have to be careful how you store your food because of such animals ranging from skunks and raccoons (often the two most common wildlife carriers of rabis) to old Smokey himself (or his sister). We have heard of the fire-ants (be careful of where you take a hit). I can even remember an event where all the reenactor activities starting stirring up the various ground hornet nests causing several dead to resurrect and run for their lives.

[Parault]

Noisy people. I wonder if there is a breeding population in Arkansas yet.

Nothing down here yet.
If they show up they will be skewered Bar-B-Qued,and served with slaw

[tompritchett]

If they show up they will be skewered Bar-B-Qued,and served with slaw

On the bun or off to the side? :D

[toptimlrd]

What chases away pythons?? According to todays edition of USA Today the south is being invaded by pythons.


Just tell the pythons they didn't exist in 186X so they are just too farby or your event. ;-D

[flattop32355]

Noisy people. I wonder if there is a breeding population in Arkansas yet.

Of noisy people or pythons?

[Southern Cal]

I sprinkle Boric Acid around the perimeter of the tent. Boric Acid (or Roach Proof) is non-toxic to people (unless you get some dust in your eyes, then it irritates them) and ants, spiders, and other crawling critters don't like it at all (irritates their exoskeleton). The dust is micropscopic, and once it gets on the bugs they pass it to their friends when they touch each other. Once ingested after cleaning their antennae, the boric acid stops the insect's stomach fom working then they starve and dry up.

I mix up a very thin "syrup" of sugar water with a little boric acid mixed in and place it in a cut off Dixie cup where ants are congregating. The ants love the nectar, bring their friends, take it back to the nest, and within one to three days, they are all gone, thousands of them. Cheap too.

[bill watson]

Ticks are no joke, and weren't funny in 186x, either, when they sometimes went by the name of "wood louse." But in the last 18 years or so of reenacting, I've encountered maybe three, from Florida to Massachusetts and west to Corinth, with the exception of Recon I, when I put the Brooklyn zouaves in a Virginia thicket for a bivouac that turned out to be crawling alive with ticks.

Compared to where I grew up in southern New Jersey, most of the places I've reenacted have been what I'd consider almost bug-free. Or maybe it's just that after a certain amount of time even bugs won't go near my shirt....

What you really need to do about ticks is check for them, daily. With the amount of sweat most of us put out, nothing we ingest or coat ourselves with is a sure thing.

[RWelker]

What chases away pythons??

The World's Funniest Joke* should do the trick.
Or did you mean the other type of Python?

*http://youtube.com/watch?v=hsW9DO1k5-s