How to keep the flies away

For extreme situations in the back country or camping the use of a couple of smudge pots work good. All you need is an empty soup can or coffee can. Next for your smudge use conifer pitch. Spruce gum or pine sap or balsam.

It is easy to find in big hardened chunks where limbs have broken off or been cut. This stuff is great in a bush situation. It stays lit for hours because of the wood alcohol in it; even in wet conditions, and best of all it smokes like hell and doesn't even smell that bad.

I love the stuff for lighting fires. Heat it up to melting point and spread it on cat tails or rags for torches. Makes great glue too for leaks in canoes or boats or even tents. Fresh wet sap can be used as a coagulant when cut or injured. Also good for signal fires if you have enough of it.

Kinda of like nature's duct tape.

One of those things you hear......you file away 'just in case'....

You'd probably want to try this as a totally last resort.....

Urinate into the ashes left from your campfire, rub a thin coat of the gray paste on any exposed skin. I don't know if there is a specific type of wood you'd need to burn, or if any old wood would do....

I heard this on a 'national geographic' type program, eons ago. The people who actually did this were natives living in the jungle and exposed to a constant barrage of biting bugs, yet they seemed mostly unaffected. Their secret was in their 'dusty' appearance.

I have never tried this.....I have been almost that desperate on a few occasions, just not quite. So you're on your own if you want to experiment.
(try a small patch first, in case of any dire allergic reactions.)

It might get rid of house guests even faster than that smelly cigar!